How I Learned to Stop Worrying, etc.
We are into Day Four of the L.A. Times' Manhattan Project (for background, see the links and especially comments at this post, and also this one). Commenter Gingerguy has divvied up the reader suggestions/diagnoses so far thusly:
8...liberal bias of the Times
7...improve the content
4...focus more on regional news
3...increase online vs print
?...could not figure out what they wanted
4...all other opinions
To further the discussion into the concrete, here's a tripartite question for the peanut gallery:
1) Name three features you think the paper should add.
2) Name three features you think the paper should kill.
3) Name three features you like just the way they are.
"Feature" can mean anything from Column One to a comic strip to a columnist to My Favorite Weekend, etc.
Meanwhile, here's the latest batch of reax to the not-so-top-secret plan to save the world Times:
The LA Weekly's Nikki Finke continues her enthusiasm for all things Dean Baquet:
So now there's yet another distraction. Seems a couple of those Baquet cultists went to him with an idea to find ways that the paper could reengage readers. Suddenly, the paper drops a bomb: there's a new emergency "Manhattan Project" overseen by some handpicked internal committee of reporters and editors. Sheesh, you couldn't make up stuff this hilarious. The very idea of the lunatics taking over the asylum, down to the ridiculous name that demonstrates yet again that the men who run the LA Times are forever NY-centric in their thinking, sadly. Do these people even know we're in one of the busiest news periods of the entire year? So while the Washington Post and The New York Times are scooping the LA Times on the biggest stories of the day, Spring Street will be wasting its diminishing resources senselessly contemplating its navel. The brass at Tribune Co. must be laughing their asses off: after all, the more time that the LAT worker bees busy themselves with this project, the less time they have to battle the Chicago bosses. The readership problem and its solution don't require rocket scientists, much less a trio of investigative journalists.
Media critic Matthew Sheffield gives some recommendations:
* Stop patronizing to your audience. You aren't better than them. That you know how to write or edit a story says nothing about your intellectual capacity.
* Recruit newer blood into the pages. Expand your employment search beyond the drones coming out of America's journalism schools. These kids have no experience with real life and no educational background beyond journalism. And for god's sake, hire some conservatives and libertarians.
* Put the kibosh on the left-wing bias. Stop with the immature photos of Republicans. Stop treating people who oppose abortion like they're the scum of the earth. Start realizing that most folks don't want higher taxes like you do.
* Expand your outreach to the reader. The regular American has a lot to say.
The blogger known as penraker looks at Saturday's Meghan Daum column in which she interviews a former member of the Weather Underground, and comments:
Maybe the Times would not need a "Manhattan Project" if their writers had anything more than the moral intuition of a gnat.
And a journalist calling himself "Gadfly" observes:
The seven-day daily has never been the same since the AP, Reuters and AFP began providing free online content. And that genie will never be put back in the bottle.
As a former intern with the Times' outstanding infographics team, I'd personally like to see them given more free rein on the web side, creating animated Flash infographics and packages that bring together existing content in new ways.
I also tend to agree with Jeff Jarvis about the creation of 'Content APIs' that allow others to reuse and recombine existing LAT content in new ways. Not only does this open up and flatten out content, but it also could become a new product line, as these APIs do not have to be free; even Google only gives you 1,000 free API calls per day.
But as for the content itself, I'd probably put more resources into two areas: improved local reporting (including 'hyperlocal' reporting) and 'reporters at large' doing investigations and major packages, but with a real local angle.
Posted by: Douglas Arellanes | October 20, 2006 at 04:53 AM
Mike - nowhere did I imply that California is a conservative state. I merely pointed out that your claim about the liberal makeup of this state was grossly exaggerated.
You did stumble across an interesting nugget of information though. If the voting demographics for the LA area are as you state, then why wasn’t the Times more successful with its supposedly liberal bias? Why weren’t these people supporting the Times before it turned “conservative” and fired Robert Scheer?
Perhaps it’s a mistake to assume that someone who votes Dem is a liberal. I’m acquainted with a couple who are successful Hollywood types, hate president Bush and most of his policies, are observant Catholics and against abortion. What does that make them – liberal or conservative?
I think it would be a mistake for the Times to take on either a liberal or conservative tilt. I believe most people would be satisfied if their viewpoint got a fair hearing.
Posted by: TakeFive | October 20, 2006 at 09:21 AM
For being a newspaper in Los Angeles your focus seems to be more national. You're losing many readers because of the unbalanced, bias, spin reporting you do. The paper's consistent personal attacks and negative stories on LAPD are shameful. Other newspapers report the facts when LA Times reports bias, unresearched stories. Its reporters fail to report the other side of issues. Every media outlet reported Officer Ripatti who was shot and paralyzed in the line of duty chasing a felony suspect was getting a new home thanks to ABC's Extreme Makeover. The LA Times was the ONLY media outlet that didn't report it. It was covered on every local tv news channel and newspaper. This is a perfect example of what I'm stating.
Posted by: Monica | October 20, 2006 at 09:36 AM
Hey kids! Three more questions here!
Posted by: Matt Welch | October 20, 2006 at 09:32 PM
5,
My initial assertion (implied, at least) was that the LA Times should maintain its liberal bias (if there is one) because most Californians are basically liberal. I cited an erroneous 66.67% voting record as an example.
You correctly pointed out that the actual statewide results were 54.4% to 44.4%.
You went on to claim "...and it certainly changes the complexion of Mike's argument."
What does that mean? Taken at face value, I read it as rebuttal of my point that California is a liberal state, because the incumbent conservative President was rejected by a mere 10-point margin instead of a 33.3-point margin.
In effect, what you were implying is that my argument was wrong because my numerical calculation was in error to a degree. If my argument is wrong, then my point that California is essentially a liberal state is in error, ergo, California must then be the opposite of Liberal.
That's the great thing about the power of the English language - what is implied but not stated directly has a powerful effect on how people percieve information (and I'm getting back to the thread of this blog). Whether a person or newspaper is liberal or conservative has a lot to do with which words are used to describe stories. If the paper finds "evidence of corruption in the LAPD", they don't mean to say that EVERY LAPD officer is corrupt, just one or three. But we READ that to mean every LAPD officer is corrupt.
When you say that my argument is changed because my fact is off to a degree, I (and everybody else)read that my whole point is wrong.
Posted by: Mike Havnaer | October 21, 2006 at 07:24 AM
And...
Your friends are probably Liberal. Just as Conservatives don't have to toe the line on every issue, so too can Liberals have widely divergent opinions on different subjects - and there are a lot to choose from. Do your friends support social welfare programs? Zero-tolerance immigration policies? Free-market, laizzez-faire economics or tightly regulated government policies? They're Catholic, but do they think Federal Law should be based on Biblical scripture? Add it all up and I bet you'll find a preponderace of evidence they're pretty liberal.
And of course, there's context. Most Oklahoma Baptists probably think they're pretty moderate. Drop them into a Westwood party and they'll be perceived as one step removed from the KKK. Conversly, if you insert an Encino Real Estate agent into a Texas barbecue, folks there will ask if he has links to al Qaeda.
And is the Times really doing badly? there are about 10 Million people in LA County. ( http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06037.html ) Divide that by about 4 per household to get about 2.5 million. "The Times’ total average paid Sunday circulation is 1,231,318 and Monday-Friday circulation is 851,832." ( http://www.latimes.com/services/newspaper/mediacenter/la-mediacenter-circulation,0,7813109.story ) Lets take the 80% of the M-F figures to more accurately reflect local circulation (The LA Times is pretty popular in Orange County) So 681,000 divided by 2.5 million is 27% of households get this paper. Given demographic factors like Language, economic status, usefulness, political resentment, and the fact that the whole paper is available free on-line, I think they're doing pretty well.
Posted by: Mike Havnaer | October 21, 2006 at 07:58 AM
1) Name three features you think the paper should add. - stronger labor coverage, more science coverage besides the embarrassing Science Files snippets on Saturday, more web content, sports coverage of the business and cultural aspects of sports (a columnist that does more than human interest stories.
With only.
One sentence paragraphs.
Like Bill Plaschke.).
2) Name three features you think the paper should kill. - Bill Plaschke, Joel Stein (maybe not kill Joel Stein, but please get him off of the OpEd page), West Magazine--as it stands now, it's a pointless read. Either improve it (why not put the long feature stories that no one I know reads in here, along with essays like in the NYT Mag), or save yourself the costs.
3) Name three features you like just the way they are. - Steve Lopez, Outside the Tent, Mike Penner.
Posted by: Evan | October 25, 2006 at 06:43 AM