Hollywood papers struggle; L.A. paper loses local news section [UPDATED]

Variety and the Hollywood Reporter have always been big competitors in covering Hollywood -- and in seeking lucrative Hollywood advertising. But they have both been hit hard by the economy. Reuters reports:

Winking headlines like Daily Variety's "Katz-and-Mouse Game Over," describing the rift between Jeffrey Katzenberg and then-CEO of Walt Disney Co. Michael Eisner, speak volumes to Hollywood insiders. But [USC professor Jonathan] Taplin, among others, said the papers are rapidly becoming outmoded as readers go to blogs that provide an edgier version of film and TV news. MovieCityNews editor [David] Poland said he expects The Hollywood Reporter will become a Web-only news outlet, and Daily Variety will cut back to publishing twice weekly. Both have long histories, and can raise revenue online from their archives.

Of course, L.A.'s big daily is having its own financial woes. And L.A. Observed reports that the publisher of The Times has come up with a controversial plan: Killing the "California" section of the paper. The move would allow later deadlines for the "Calendar" section, which now goes to press in the early afternoon. Kevin Roderick reports that top Times editors are bracing for the angry reader calls.

-- Shelby Grad

Updated at 12:12 p.m: Here's the memo from Publisher Eddy Hartenstein:

Colleagues: 

As you know from reading our front page and our homepage, not a day goes by that we don't give our readers the latest news and analysis on the deepening troubles of the US economy. The same challenges that face the companies we report about also are affecting us.  We need to implement changes to our flagship print product, and throughout our organization, that will ensure our future as the #1 source of news and information in Southern California. 

In the coming weeks, we will introduce a number of changes to the way we do business, including a new sectional line-up for the paper.  These are necessary to facilitate greater efficiencies in how we approach our operations, production and distribution and, as a result, we expect to eliminate approximately 300 positions. 

Beginning March 2nd the paper will be presented in four main news sections:

A/Main News will be repositioned to present local, national and international coverage and opinion together - as each informs, impacts and shapes the others in our everyday lives. The California section report will lead A, followed by The Nation, The World and then Opinion.  The result will combine the stories and reporting of our two most widely-read print sections into one cohesive section.

Business will be the second section in the paper, and the report will be enhanced by bringing back the "Company Town" feature, which will serve as the anchor for our "business of entertainment" coverage.  The obituaries and weather pages will remain at the back of this new B section.

Sports will be the third section, and we'll be moving the classified advertising pages to the back of this new C section.

Calendar will be the fourth section, and this move allows its deadlines to be pushed deep into the evening (aka "second-daily"), allowing us to make our primary space for entertainment coverage more news-driven. This will enrich this current "must read" section even further, enabling us to add features such as overnight reviews.

The feature-section lineup will remain unchanged, with Health on Monday, Food on Wednesday, Home on Saturday and Image, Travel and Arts & Books on Sunday.  The Sunday lineup also will be unchanged, except for the California report appearing in the A section. 

These moves are designed to help us deal with the economic realities of the day, while continuing to allow us to deliver a high-quality product to our readers and advertisers.  We remain unwavering in our commitment to serve our community and to our mission. 

We'll be providing more details in the days ahead.

eddy

Comments

[AH]

The last straw. I will be canceling my subscription. What a joke. I mean, if I want world news, I'll read the NYT. The only thing the LAT offers me at all is the California section, and that's it. I'm out. I am so angry words cannot describe it. If the only thing in the entire paper was the metro section, I'd subscribe. Good god, it's time to give up, fail, and rebirth a new paper in LA.

[Evan]

By "LA paper," you mean your own paper, right?

[GEAH]

You guys should have listened to angry readers who for years complained about the liberal bias in the Times.

Don't you wish you had those folks back now?

[Big Fella]

This is the last straw. The Tribune Company, and Sam Zell have completed the raping and pillaging of the Los Angeles Times through their greed and incompetence. I'll be calling and canceling my subscription in short order. The Los Angeles Times is no longer relevant, or even substantial enough to line a bird cage.

[Tiffney]

Getting rid of the California section? Really?!?!? It's always my first read section in the morning. Do us a favor and roll 'Business' into the front section and keep the California section separate. Please keep something 'Los Angeles' about the LA Times!

[Scott]

No California, No Subscription

Despite the continuous shrinking of the Times, I have maintained my subscription to support the public service which the paper performs. I believe that service is strongest in its investigation of and reporting on local news and events, such as the failure of King Drew Hospital or corruption in local government, which no other news organization appears able to perform. The demise of a separate California will signal the end of the Times’ commitment to this service, and with it the need for my subscription. What Times management has never understood is that while readers can get national and international news from many, often free, sources, we can get real, substantial local news only from the Times.

[LKitsch]

All this is inevitable and there is not much we can do about it besides complain. Being a print newspaper reporter today is what it must have been like being a blacksmith in 1910, watching the first Model T's putter around town: "we have seen the future, and we ain't part of it."

At this point, it's either adapt or die. It seems like the Times' publisher no longer has any control over the paper's destiny---all he can do is keep cutting and/or hope for a white knight to buy it (as long as it's someone who will settle for piddling profits and won't meddle, a la Wendy McCaw, meaning that even a white knight may not be the answer).

Not a lot of options, though local papers should look at the non-profit community corporation business model, sort of like public TV and radio, with some revenues from subscriptions, some from advertising and some from donations.

[Irate]

Congratulations to Eddy Hartenstein for putting one of the last nails tino the coffin of what was a world class paper and tremendous asset to this region. What is really pathetic and indicative of what's going on at the Times is how this story is broken on another blog and then mentioned in the Times' own blog cryptically and only referring to LAObserved's story. Cowardly move Eddy.

If I wanted a paper filled with Hollywood news I'd subscribe to Variety (or what's left of it) or US Weekly. Kiss another subscriber goodbye.

[Marie]

That's positively insane. I almost wish I hadn't already canceled my subscription so that I could cancel it all over again.

[Omar]

You should rename the Los Angeles Times to Once Upon a Time.
I was ok with the 25 cent raise, considering your fiscal budget, but eliminating the California section?.......shameful.

[Mylika]

How dare the Times charge more for a diminishing product? And don't even give readers the courtesy of notification. Everyone who pays attention knew what Zell had in mind when he bought Tribune -- and bringing in this new publisher, who had no connection at all to the news business, just confirmed it. To eliminate the one section (arguably, outside of Sports) that we can't get anywhere else is cynicism of the highest order. Will someone PLEASE buy the Times before it basically becomes the Daily News? Or has that moment already arrived?

[GD]

First, it lost its national and international reputation. Now, it's losing its local relevance. Adapting to a changing market is expected and is one thing, turning your back on the communities that should be the foundation of your newsroom is a death wish for the paper.

[Livey]

Among the many reasons for the LA Times downfall is the fact that many of the people who are responsible for the running the paper don't care to understand the needs of their readers, as is reflected in the possible elimination of the California section. They function based on the needs of the advertisers and those sections that will stay are the ones that are ad heavy.
The last thing any newspaper should do is cut out their "local" news which is the heart and soul of the paper. If in fact this does occur, well then after 15 years of being a loyal subscriber I will cancel the Times and find news about California elsewhere.

[Alan Mittelstaedt]

Consider this an angry reader call, but please renew my subscription for another year or until you go out of business, whichever comes first.

[Had Enough]

I've read the Times since I was about seven and had my own subscription for 32 years. My subscription expires in a month and I will not be renewing. The Times has become a two-bit paper that isn't worth reading.

[Thorsten Rhode]

...uhm, wait a minute, let me get this straight:
- Sam Zell is amputating the Washington bureau and thinking about shutting down international offices, saying it's not worth it.
- Eddy H. is performing a C-Section on the CA section, arguing...what, exactly?

Two minutes ago, the solution was to go 'hyperlocal' to salvage the paper. So now you're cutting the international and the local coverage -- what is the plan behind this? Let me rephrase: Is there a plan???

(No need to answer that question.)

[Paul]

The minute I wake up and find the California section missing is the minute I cancel my subscription. Wake up, retards.

[Jean B]

The key difference between the LA Times "paper" and its website is the physical nature of the paper artifact. IIf you are a subscriber, the paper's core customer, the paper arrives at your home without your having to lift a finger. If there is more than one individual in the household, it is easy to divide the paper into sections and share it.

My husband knows that to avoid domestic discord, I get the first section first, and he can have California. Now, all the news content of the paper is in one section. It makes the paper more difficult to share as one person has all the news content. I guess it's either divorce or cancel my LA Times subscription in favor of the New York Times.

[Sell the paper to Eli Broad or David Geffen NOW!]

Sam Zell and his henchmen should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.

Sell the paper NOW!!!!

[Cathy]

Well, I have been getting news off the blog more than the printed local section, but the elimination of 300 positions will definitely affect reporting of the news - too bad you guys couldn't transfer the printed to the web and keep reporting. What about the columnists? Have they all been fired? People like Steve Lopez that give us in-depth analysis of what is happening? We will all be a lot worse off and poorer informed due this.

[Anabel Adams]

Why don't you just publish one section -- Calendar/Hollywood? It seems that is the only thing that is of interest to Times management anymore anyway. California doesn't provide any local news to those of us in LA County who live outside of the city of Los Angeles, and hasn't for a long time. Just become a Hollywood paper, and the rest of us can read the New York Times and the community rags. The slow painful decline of the Times is just pathetic.

[David Burke]

Last week, after 49 years as a daily subsriber, I weent to Sundays only. with this news, will most likely stop that. A real shame, the Times was one of the great ones,. now just the name remains. Someone should start up the Hearld Examanier again...

[LA Womah]

This is insane ... and very sad. The LAT is circling the drain. Their primary function should be to provide local news. Add me to those not renewing their subscriptions.

[Jay]

Like David we also recently went from daily to Sunday only. We now have the New York Times delivered five days, and it's worked out very well. They've been covering quite a few SoCal stories, maybe they can take up the slack!

[AJ]

I called to cancel my subscription, but was guilted into keeping the Sunday delivery at a reduced rate. When asked why I wanted to cancel, I wanted to cry. Canceling the California section? Local news should be the backbone of a regional paper. I can (and do) read the New York Times for national/international stories. The Calendar section has already begun to resemble the puff pieces floated by publicists. The biz section? Jeezus. The NYT biz section ran a piece on the psychology of Bernie Madoff and a detailed look at Obama's stimulus plan on the front page of their business section; on the same day LA Times ran a half page photo and accompanying article on how men can shop at thrift stores. painful.

[Herod Lowery]

What a terrible deal. I started reading the Times in 1967 at age 12 when my uncle delivered it before going out to his regular job in the oilfields. This Sunday will be the last time for me. Zell is a rich idiot and Lee Abrams is a compete moron. The paper is a joke now. Goodbye LA Times!

[Joe]

Of all the LA Times sections that could be cut, eliminating the California section makes the least sense. For me, this is the one section of the Times that none of the other media duplicate. I can find national, foreign, business and sports news on cable TV and the web. But state and regional news? Not at all unless I spend a lot of time every day going to the websites of the state's various newspapers and also watch the local newscasts for an hour or two every day as dribs and drabs of local news are reported amidst national and foreign and sports and weather and features coverage. A newspaper shouldn't cut an area in which it demonstrates its superiority to non-print media.

Joe Georges

[FreeThinker]

Another nail in the velvet coffin. Like a dying empire, Journalism is a fast-fading bastion dominated by culturally tone-deaf 60's hippies, leftists and self-indulgent elitists who live and think in their own insular bubble. Almost every story has a blatant leftist bias, openly attacks traditional family attitudes and expresses hostility at a cultural norm newsroom dwellers barely know exists.

Today's sickening front page paean to the sad-sack anarchist killed near New Orleans is vintage L.A. Times. Instead of focusing on anything with classic virtue, the writers and editors subject readers to the glorification of the fringe element, as if we all agree with you. Day-after-day Jessica Garrison and Duke Helfand's Prop stories 8 feign objectivity --maybe they don't even try that anymore-- while spewing thinly-veiled barbs at all who oppose their not so hidden point of view.

Modern Journalism has fully lost its way. Instead of defending the rights of all middle America, it attacks the values of a system that makes possible the free practice of its craft. Instead of seeking truth, it marches to drumbeats pounded out by god's of its own invention. Instead of honestly seeking common good, Journalism seeks itself for the sake of itself. The industry's existence is close to its economic end and the wailing of its lying voices will soon only ring in the halls of its own house. Look at the Journalism blogs. You all collectively bemoan the death of your industry.

Now look around carefully. No one else cares. Good riddance to the false prophets of society. You have no one to blame but yourselves

[keith]

The New York Times is The Los Angeles newspaper. Game Over.

[mediawest]

as someone who has read the times everyday since 1965, and has been a subscriber for over 20 years, i will also cancel my account. it was bad enough when they stopped the local editions [valley, westside, etc.] this is the last straw. all they are reprinting are ap wire feeds and other national news feeds. i can get that info a day before i see it in print on the net. i can get my coupons on the web. i cant take my laptop in the bath with me every evening when i get home.... i will switch to the nyt, though its going down too..... another sign of the end of days. see you on the other side.

[Mike]

Did the people who run the Times actually sit around trying to come up with new ideas so horrible that they make your previous terrible decisions look like small change in comparison?

[Jan Hart]

I've watched the deterioration of a once great newspaper with great pain, hoping that some of the supposed great minds would realize that a Los Angeles newspaper needs to be produced by Los Angeles people. Do you want to scrub the California section and replace it with Chicago's news?
Snap out of it. The biggest state with the biggest economy and some of the biggest problems must have its news in a section of its own.
Echoing others, if the California section and/or Chris Erskine go -- so do I.

Growing up in Pasadena, our family read three newspapers a day: the Herald Express, the Daily News, and the LOS ANGELES Times. The Pasadena Star News and Independent as well. Great days with opportunities for learning differing opinions as well as real news.