Bottleneck Blog being folded into L.A. Now blog

There are some big changes in store for the Bottleneck Blog starting this week: in short, Bottleneck Blog is being folded into The Times' L.A. Now Blog.

The idea is to provide a local news blog that covers a wide range of issues that people deal with each day in the Southland, including traffic and mass transit. I'll still be posting on a frequent basis about the same issues that have been covered here at Bottleneck and readers can still post their comments.

Readers who want only transportation-related posts can bookmark this link and they'll be redirected to a version of L.A. Now that filters out those items. All the older posts from the Bottleneck Blog will also remain available at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/bottleneck.

The goal of this change is very simple: we're trying to construct the best blogs we can for our readers.

As always, feel free to email me with story ideas, concerns, praise or a stiff wag of the finger. And I hope to see you over at L.A. Now.

Update: The new Bottleneck Blog RSS feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/latimes/cSWs

 

--Steve Hymon

Comments

[Spokker]

The LA Times can cut and cut and cut until there's nothing left to cut. No wonder readers are turning away from the newspaper in droves.

Invest back into the paper. Make people proud of reading it. Shortchanging readers isn't going to make them proud.

10 celebrity/gossip blogs. No wonder most people consider the LA Times a RAG now.

[Jaime]

NOOOOOO!!!!! Why must this be done? This was one my all time favorite blogs! By merging it with LA now, I have to sift through worthless garbage! Why must bottleneck blog leave now? The fact that this blog was just about transportation was what appealed to me the most! STEVE DONT DO THIS!!!!!!!!!!

R.I.P Bottleneck Blog.............=(

[Browne]

Good bye Steve, well not so much good bye, but see you on LA Now. We may not agree with the LA Times, but until we have another real daily, what can you do?

Browne
www.thebusbench.com

[John]

Although I can't decide how I feel about this until I see the final project, I am just wondering, why? Is this a cost-saving measure? I know the LA Times has gone through several in recent years. Wow, this is just like Season 5 of the Wire, and the Tribune does own the Baltimore Sun!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/business/media/03paper.html

[J in Pasadena]

I agree with Damien -- L.A. transportation issues need a far more diverse audience. Unfortunately, I think executing this move shuffles transit issues to the back burner and not to the forefront.

Plus, it's just plain dumb. Blogs really exist to give voice to edge issues -- the "long tail" in business parlance -- and "jack-of-all trades" blogs are just reincarnations of the "expert at none" news. I don't understand how the Times leaders miss this critical and oh-so-obvious point. Simple solution: Link Bottleneck from the Times home page. Or, at least tag transit items in L.A. Now.

[Kymberleigh Richards]

Well, I tried the "filtered" URL and what I didn't see there that I do see here is the story on Measure R's final vote count.

Doesn't bode well for this new "combined" blog if the most important transportation news story in our region is either missing or filtered out.

I also looked at the new blog unfiltered and I don't see how anyone is going to be able to deal with the quantity, much less become inclined to comment on transportation issues as a result.

ubrayj is right. What we needed was better visibility, not a consolidation into something unwieldy.

[ubrayj02]

I can understand why they would fold Steve's hard work into a more "prominent" blog.

The Bottleneck Blog is impossible to find unless you are already a transportation junkie.

I think that diluting his efforts to cover this critically important issue is a bad move on the Times' part. Bringing more eyeballs to his work, however, is a good idea.

Why not ditch the worthless LA Now property, and simply bump the Bottleneck Blog to prominence on the homepage? LA Times management is so lame. One happy consequence of their crappy work is that smaller papers in L.A. are covering more stories and getting more local advertisers.

[KateNonymous]

I'm glad that they've found a way to deliver only transportation-related posts. However, an RSS feed would be really helpful as well--frankly, more helpful to me than a basic bookmark.

[thedessie]

Thank you Steve, for making this such a valuable resource in the past. Folding this blog into LA Now makes it unusable for me - I could care less about Polanski's child molestation charges. I'm interested in transportation, not the rest of the baloney. Best of luck to you. :)

[Damien Goodmon of Fix Expo]

Good move. This important discussion needs to be far more diverse than it currently is. Folding this into LA Now should do that.

[Tony Reader]

Another bad move, LAT.
It's so strange: the blogs that seem to find their own voice and develop an audience get shuffled off into the scrap heap. Leovy's Homicide blog was a brilliant use of the medium. What does LAT do? End it. Villes' LA Land blog was great to read, with real estate making headlines almost every week and Peter's distinct take on events enjoyable. And that blog? Ghost of its former self. Now the Bottleneck is on its way out. It was once boring traffic updates and press releases. Hymon revived it by making it relevant and informative on a topic the LAT has given little effort to cover in the last 10 years (transit, that is). What to do with that one? "Hasta la vista!" as our friend in Sacto would say.
That same phrase is my feeling about the LA Times, and I've been willing to give it a number of chances, always doubting the shouts of its demise. It's on its way out, I really believe it now.

[J in Pasadena]

You know what is really retarded? (And, it goes to show how behind the times newspapers are on the technology front.) The Bottleneck Blog could continue as a view of transportation related stories on L.A. Now and at the same time those stories could appear within L.A. Now. Then, regular readers could read and comment on Bottleneck. No hassles, no changes and really just a couple hours to set up. Then everyone is happy. Computers do that fancy stuff, but it's the stupid people who get in the way.

[Kymberleigh Richards]

I have no interest whatsoever in this new blog.

The blogs I read are transportation-specific. They are not general interest blogs where I have to filter (and yes, that is what the "special URL" is, a filter) to get the content I am interested in.

It is a shame, after Steve brought Bottleneck Blog back from near-death, that this is his reward ... to be part of a bigger, unfocused blog instead of the one he has devoted his full attention to.

But then, I've gotten used to bad decisions being made at the Times. Especially since Sam Zell arrived.

[James N.]

There are two and only two LA Times blogs worth reading: this and Homicide Report. First Homicide Report goes on "hiatus" and now this?! What is up LA Times? I wonder what the readership numbers for the other blogs are. I am guessing that Bottleneck has one of if not THE highest traffic (ha) among all Times blogs. If this is true one can only surmise that the editors want to let LA Now piggyback on Bottleneck's popularity.

[D]

This is the best LA Times blog! why are they getting rid of it? im sick of these stupid decisions by the Times. Enough. Every time there is something good, they get rid of it. whos running this ship? Keep the Bottleneck separate. Now is the time where LA needs a transit specific blog with the passage of 1A and Measure R. Bring back the bottleneck. Who do we complain to?

[Derek]

Steve, you singlehandedly revived this blog. It's a shame that now there's actual NEWS on the transit front, it's being killed. Kind of like the Fiero.

[David Galvan]

Unfortunate that the L.A. Times is giving up it's transportation-specialized blog. I'm guessing that financial times are tough for the Times, and they probably have to look at ways to cut costs, but I could think of other blogs that should be folded into L.A. Now instead of Bottleneck. How about one of the TEN entertainment blogs, for example? Why get rid of the one transportation blog in a city with such huge transportation problems as Los Angeles?

(I see the Web Scout blog is being folded into the LA Tech blog as well. . . but that still leaves 9 other entertainment blogs!)

Many thanks to Steve for providing excellent content for this blog. I'll check L.A. Now for a while, but I hope others meet me at streetsblog and MetroRiderLA!

[Oscar]

can we complain to the reader's representative department on this move?

I think there are enough people that are not happy with this move that we might get some action out of this.

[The Real Zajac]

Stupid Idea.

[Dan W.]

For people who interested in public transit coverage, may I recommend the following sites:

www.metroriderla.org
(there is also a Forum here)

la.streetsblog.org

I too think there ideally would be a specific transportation related blog. However, there are other blogs out there for people who have interest in these issues, even if the L.A. Times chooses not to have a separate blog anymore.

[Travis]

Thanks Steve, for a great blog. This is a bad move by the Times. i'll say no thanks to local human interest stories or celeb news.

[Cahwyguy - Daniel]

I think this is a bad idea. I tend to read the blog via an RSS feed, and there is no distinct feed under the new approach.

If San Jose can sustain a dedicated traffic columnist who addresses traffic needs (Gary Richards, of the San Jose Mercury News), the Los Angeles Metro region certainly deserves an equivalent resource.

This blog has been an excellent distinguishing characteristic for the Times over its competition. Folding it in lessens the Times.

[Chris W.]

This is upsetting. I have no interested in the LA Now blog and Los Angeles needs dedicated coverage to transportation issues.

Not only that, much of LA's public transit development is only now beginning to be realized. I hope that the Bottleneck Blog comes back in the future.

[KateNonymous]

I'm sorry to hear that; transportation in L.A. is a big enough issue to deserve dedicated coverage. I've enjoyed this blog over the past few years, and am sorry to see it be subsumed.

[anon]

very disappointing. with headlines like:

"Investigation into death of Kanye West's mother looks at her nephew, source says"

and

"Heavy fog hanging over Southern California"

and even

"Chow chow gets out of a messy situation"

i really want nothing to do with that la now blog. too bad there is no separate rss feed. guess i'll have to get my news from other sources.