Battle Lines Are Drawn at The Los Angeles Times
A divided newsroom in search of an editor who will give the newspaper its journalistic soul
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Off the Record
Sam Zell, the Rabelaisian real estate billionaire who bought The Los Angeles Times’ parent company for $8.2 billion in December, went out to Los Angeles last week to shake things up at the left-coast newsroom notorious for its turmoil—overturns, layoffs, bad management. He did.
At first it seemed just an amusing counterpoint to all the Romenesko-style journalistic hand-wringing and self-examination that has plagued the paper these past few years when, speaking in the newspaper’s Chandler Auditorium and at the paper’s plant in Orange County, he encouraged browsing Internet porn in the workplace, said it was “un-American not to like pussy” and accused former executive editor James O’Shea, who left the L.A. Times last month and publicly criticized management for not raising the newsroom budget, of “piss[ing] all over the paper” on his way out.
For days afterward the previously harried and pit-stained editors were dropping “F-bombs.”
“Let’s get to this fucking meeting,” read an e-mail invitation to a weekly staff meeting for Calendar, the paper’s entertainment section.
“There’s a certain lasciviousness descending on the newsroom—I just look forward to using rude words in everyday conversation,” Dan Neil, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist told The Observer in the days following the meeting.
Then, on Feb. 11, as if responding to some unquantified undertone of dissent, Mr. Zell wrote in an e-mail to staffers: “My goal was to shock you, to shake you out of complacency, and to help you understand that the game has changed, and we have to change with it.”
And, a few hours later, three newsroom officials, including John Arthur, the paper’s managing editor, co-signed an e-mail to the editorial staff.
“Last week you may have encountered some colorful uses of the lexicon from Sam Zell that we are not used to hearing at the Times,” the letter began, before clarifying that viewing porn on work computers is indeed verboten, as is “profane or hostile language.”
“In short, nothing changes; the fundamental rules of decorum and decency apply. As Russ Newton, the Senior VP of Operations, observed in a note to his managers, Sam is a force of a nature; the rest of us are bound by the normal conventions of society,” the e-mail concluded triumphantly.
It was not just a bit of beadledom from the top of the masthead; it was a permission to unleash the counterrevolutionary spirit against the sudden burst of enthusiasm for Mr. Zell’s program.
“Listen, I’ve been here for the better part of 19 years, and there have been a lot of ups and downs, but [Zell] brings a whole new ballgame into town and people are excited to try this out,” said Jim Newton, the editorial page editor.
“At first, the newsroom embraced his coming here and saving us from the wimps from the Tribune, but I think Sam shot himself in the foot in his presentation last week,” said William Rempel, a special projects editor who oversees investigations.
IN REALITY, MR. Zell’s Molotov cocktails and his guarantee of change only further underscored the newsroom’s deepest division: the debate over who should replace Mr. O’Shea as the paper’s lead editor.
On this issue, the paper is literally torn in two. There’s the innovation editor, the 49-year-old Russ Stanton, the man credited for transforming latimes.com from a barely functional, moribund Web site into something of a machine; on the other side is the 60-year-old Mr. Arthur, a 22-year veteran of the paper who has worked his way methodically up the editorial chain.
“Is there a divide?” said Mr. Newton. “Absolutely.”
“It’s a battle over the heart and soul of the newspaper,” said Jeffrey Rabin, a transportation reporter and 20-year veteran at the paper. “What is the L.A. Times? The place is in a panic, it has been for some time and that’s why the choice of who’s going to be editor is so interesting. John represents one school, Russ represents the other school.” Next Page >
from looking at the first sentence in this article, one might think that the LA Times were itself responsible for "bad management", rather than the Tribune Company--the Chicago outfit who never cared about LA or respected its readership.
I agree with anonymous above. If old Trib management was Capt. DeVries (spelling? Herman Wouk fans redact if necessary), then Zell is Queeg: the neurotic spouter of cliches whose an even bigger f-up than his predecessors. I lived in Calif. back in the '70s when the LAT was a great paper and I've lived in Chicago since the late '70s and I've watched spineless/bottom-line obsessed management destroy first the Chicago Tribune and now the LAT, and Zell is moving fast to finish the job. Old Yellowstain, where is that quart of strawberries? No doubt Zell will turn the ship upside down/inside out to wring every last bit of prophet out of the West Coast property, to hell with traditional journalistic quality or ethics. And who's to stop him? He's the only game in town: the LAT has no local metro-daily competition of any size in its home market, and back here in Chicago, the Sun-Times is about to fail.
Ruefully, ghostof'lectricity
Whoops. Two egregious and inexcusable misspellings in my last post. Need to contain the rage before I write; otherwise rage-intoxication upsets my judgment and spelling.
That should be "who's and even bigger f-up...," not "whose." And "profit," not "prophet," however much Zell may look like a low-comedy version of and Old Testament Isaiah.
Ruefully, ghostof'lectricity
or more accurately, "who's an even bigger ...".
Who are they kidding? The LATimes website is an unmitigated disaster. There's nothing remotely intuitive about it and the search engine is simply broken. The only reason traffic is up is that people are FORCED to go to it. News consumption is migrating to the web, and their web traffic would go up even if it only gave the time and the temperature.
The one and only thing the LATimes needs is the only thing that will fix it: some competition.
Amazing that Zell can be so successful, yet a complete wack-o. Would he treat others in the business world like this? He must think of newspaper reporters and editors as children. I'm amazed that he would lash into them for not "understanding the game" as if they are idealists who don't understand how the business is run. They want the necessary means to do world-class journalism. They also need money to expand their web presence. Taking money and talent away from newspapers is only destroying the product. They are still turning a profit, but not enough for the greedy. Where is your social responsibility? Ok. Run the product into the ground and see how viable it is. Brilliant.
Many at the Times were hoping Zell would be different. Yet he comes in "pissing on the place" himself. What a complete joke.
It seem so obvious from reading this account about the atmosphere at the LA Times that neither Mr. Arthur or Mr. Stanton is the right choice for editor. Arthur is probably too "old school" to envision and lead the type of significant changes the paper needs to survive and thrive. It's not about his age (the ridiculous AARP comment), but rather about whether he has been a leader in promoting the integration of print and online. And Stanton does not have anywhere near the journalistic gravitasse needed to lead one of the largest metro dailies in the country (if he can't command the respect of most of the staff, he will fail, and that would be disastrous for the Times.) Hiller and Zell need to spend more time and look outside the paper and select someone who has distinguished themselves as a journalist but who is also engaged in new media thinking and is committed to transforming the journalistic model into something that will serve the public good while also being economically viable.
Many of you tech-smart bloggers think that newspaper people are archaic in their approach to the net. Any of you super savvy people think you could lend a hand? They'd probably welcome any suggestions.
You have a few major hurdles to jump in putting out a good product. 1. Advertising on the web does not yet work. 2. The corporate belief that 10% profits are not as good as 20% so trim the product until it is more generic. 3. A public, especially people under 40, who no longer have an attention span.
Until we stream most of our entertainment through the television, people are not going to use the product enough to gain sufficient advertising.
Newspapers should not be held to the same big corporate demands as a place that sells doughnuts or coffee. Otherwise it will turn into the same kind of boring, generic crap we consume everyday. Weeeee......
Many of you tech-smart bloggers think that newspaper people are archaic in their approach to the net. Any of you super savvy people think you could lend a hand? They'd probably welcome any suggestions.
You have a few major hurdles to jump in putting out a good product. 1. Advertising on the web does not yet work. 2. The corporate belief that 10% profits are not as good as 20% so trim the product until it is more generic. 3. A public, especially people under 40, who no longer have an attention span.
Until we stream most of our entertainment through the television, people are not going to use the product enough to gain sufficient advertising.
Newspapers should not be held to the same big corporate demands as a place that sells doughnuts or coffee. Otherwise it will turn into the same kind of boring, generic crap we consume everyday. Weeeee......
As a former L.A. Times reporter, now living in the Bay Area, I have a few observations:
1. The Web site is weak, nothing to be crowing about. I'm a news junkie, and my homepage is MSNBC.com. Easy to navigate; carries the top stories of the day from a variety of sources (NY Times, LA Times, Newsweek, Time, etc); great political blog ("First Read"), constantly updated throughout the day. That should be your model. You have the content producers -- now figure out how to delivery it.
2. We currently subscribe to four daily newspapers. Most days, we throw them away unopened and head to the Web sites of same (NYT, SF Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, Marin IJ.) We also routinely view latimes.com but come away disappointed.
3. The Web is the future. You have to get on board. Quickly.
4. The newsroom has to embrace cost-containment. You can't be everything to everyone. Focus on what the LA Times can do uniquely well, and make yourself an indispensable resource.
5. The waste in reporting is staggering. It struck me last year watching UCLA in the Final Four. The press pool must have included 200 people, writing about a game that most who were interested in had already watched the night before. Does that make sense? Can't we find a way to pool resources?
6. You made a bargain with the devil (Sam Zell), now you must live with it. It's going to get very ugly.
The LA Times web page is totally confusing. So many random blogs, who reads them? And this guy Stanton got promoted because of his great work with digital? Yikes. I get that the page views are up, but it's mainly for the Hollywood/entertainment stuff. Brittany Spears has really helped their cause. Go journalism.