Staff changes: Chad Terhune to cover healthcare industry

A staff announcement from Business Editor John Corrigan:

Reporter Chad Terhune joins the Business staff today, where he will cover the healthcare industry. An award-winning reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Businessweek and SmartMoney, Chad will report on topics including health insurance, healthcare costs and the implementation of the new national healthcare law.

Chad spent more than a decade at the Journal, covering beats including healthcare and retailing. His series of front-page stories on health insurance won a National Press Club award in 2003. At Businessweek, he covered topics from health reform to the global financial crisis. He co-wrote a November 2008 “Subprime Wolves” cover story that won a New York Press Club award and recognition from Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Chad is relocating here from Eastpoint, Fla. Chad enjoys coaching his daughters in softball and soccer and cheering on his alma mater, the University of Florida.

 

Staff changes: New online political editor; new bureau chiefs in Las Vegas, Houston

Washington Bureau Chief David Lauter and National Editor Roger Smith have announced the following staff changes:

ASSISTANT POLITICAL EDITOR, ONLINE

David Meeks will take on a new assignment as assistant political editor for online. Meeks, who joined the Washington Bureau in 2010, will have responsibility for planning, coordinating and overseeing our online efforts, particularly the Politics Now blog, which is the primary online venue for our political report. He will work closely with political editor Cathy Decker, who oversees all aspects of our coverage online and in print, and assistant national editor Steve Clow. He will report to National Editor Roger Smith. This new job marks a major step in our efforts to fully integrate our online and print coverage of a highly competitive story that will continue to dominate the news for the rest of the year. For the next several weeks, Meeks will also continue his work as an editor in the Washington Bureau. Later this spring, he will move to Los Angeles.

LAS VEGAS BUREAU

John Glionna will become Las Vegas bureau chief, succeeding Ashley Powers, who is taking over the civil courts beat for Metro. Glionna, who joined The Times in 1989, has been bureau chief in Seoul for the past three years. In Las Vegas he will be responsible for coverage in the city, Nevada and other states in the Rocky Mountain region. He will begin reporting from Las Vegas in May.

HOUSTON BUREAU

Molly Hennessy-Fiske has joined the national staff in Houston. She fills the position vacated by Nick Riccardi, who moved from Denver to the Sacramento bureau last year. She will be responsible for coverage in Texas and neighboring states and share reporting duties with other national correspondents in the Midwest. She joined The Times in 2006 and most recently was a general assignment reporter in Metro. She has already relocated to Houston.  

 

Top of the Ticket columnist David Horsey chats with readers Monday

The Times' new Top of the Ticket columnist, David Horsey, will be chatting with readers in a live Q&A at 11 a.m. Monday. 

Horsey won two Pulitzer Prizes as editorial cartoonist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He joined The Times in January.

 

Two new ways to contact The Times

As of this week, there are two new ways to contact The Times. News tips can now be made anonymously via an online form. And subscribers have a new "My Account" page.

News tips

A new online form allows readers to submit news tips. Tips also can be emailed to newstips@latimes.com.   

Subscriber feedback

A new “My Account” page for subscribers launched Thursday. Subscribers will need to re-register, but once they do, they will be able to send feedback on a number of topics to The Times: Customer Support, News Rack/Retail, Editorial/Content, Advertising, Billing, Mobile Apps, LA Deals, eEdition, latimes.com or Times Select. (Editorial/Content reaches the readers’ representative.) 

Other contact links:

Newsroom staff directory

Report an error in an article

Send a letter to the editor

 

Open-casket photo surprises some Etta James fans

Reporter Randy Lewis noticed that the first comment on his article about the funeral Saturday of R&B singer Etta James wasn’t about the story but the image that accompanied it. The photo, above, which ran online and as one of two in the print edition, showed mourners passing by James’ open casket.

In the discussion section, commenter budsaylor wrote: “pretty surprised they showed her actual BODY laid to rest in the photo. not usual (or really that cool to do)”

Another commenter, Lucy_Furr, added, “much better to remember someone in life (how they looked), than in death.”

Lewis thought the concerns were valid, and noted that mourners had been specifically asked not to take any photos when the casket was opened at the end of the private service.

“What are the parameters for deciding when this is appropriate and when it's not?” Lewis asked.

Deputy Director of Photography Calvin Hom said there are generally three factors that photo editors consider before deciding to publish an open-casket photo: “taste, newsworthiness and proportion.”

With the photo of James, the photo editor and page designer discussed whether it might be considered obtrusive, Hom said, and concluded that “the photo had a quiet dignity about it” and displayed “love and respect.”

Photographer Anne Cusack, who covered the funeral, said she had put her cameras down when the no-photos request was made. She then obtained permission to resume taking photos; the request was intended for members of the public carrying cellphones or personal cameras.

“We do not run open-casket photos just because we can,” Hom said. “In this case, the deceased was a famous woman, and the family was open to the idea of us covering the event.”

A later commenter on Lewis’ article wrote that he’d attended a public viewing for James the day before the funeral and had no problem with the photo: “I saw her Friday night, and she was beautiful.”

--Deirdre Edgar

Photo: Mourners pass by Etta James' casket at City of Refuge Church in Gardena. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

 

2011 a year of record growth for latimes.com

A note to the staff from Managing Editor/Online Jimmy Orr:

No better way to put it:  2011 was a remarkable year for journalism at the Los Angeles Times on the digital front.

Not only did our overall readership soar by unparalleled numbers but we recorded significant growth in every major category.

We’ll go through a few of those categories here, but suffice it to say that we’re reaching more readers and engaging with them better than ever before.

Much of our success can be attributed to the fact that we are jumping on news when it happens.  Year-over-year readership on our blogs increased by 139%.

As you’ll see by the top 10 most-read stories (below), our enterprise journalism was also very well-read.  It probably won’t surprise you to hear that Christopher Goffard’s two-part series recounting the ordeal of a man falsely accused of viciously attacking the mother of his young son was our most read online story in 2011.

Congratulations on a terrific year.
 
Page views

After only growing by 1.6% in 2010, we exploded in 2011, growing by 28% and topping 2.1 billion pages read.  Outstanding.

Artist looks back on a year of drawing The Times

Los Angeles artist Erik Shveima set out last Jan. 1 on a personal project to draw the Los Angeles Times every day of 2011. In a guest post, he looks back on the endeavor:

This past year the paper kept me up at night.

Not because I worry about its future (although I do, in fact, worry about its future), but because of what that worry compelled me to do.

In late 2010 I decided to dedicate the coming year to drawing the Los Angeles Times — the front page in particular — every day.  By the end I would have a portrait of the year’s news, a 21st century commonplace book dedicated to the mystery of news cycles, serif fonts and spadeas (which, I learned from a commenter, is what those half-page ads that wrap around the A section are called). I called the project Mixed Media Daily, and I posted the drawings every day.

It felt like the right time to do this project. Newspaper readership is in decline. Cities across the country were seeing their local rag stop the presses forever. If these ominous indicators eventually do add up to a death knell for my local paper, I wanted to at least try to give it a proper sendoff, and maybe help myself understand why exactly I was so sure that I would miss it if it were gone.

I settled on simple materials: a red correction pencil to work out the sketch, a B or 2B pencil to clean it up, markers for color, acrylic paint for fill and sometimes for other effects. About halfway through the process I began inking the drawings for a tighter, crisper line. 

For the first several drawings I felt like I was still using reader’s eyes; I was reading the paper as a series of discrete stories interspersed with photos and the occasional ad from some guy named Bijan.

Eventually, I began to see the front page differently. I was no longer just reading the paper but also engaged in a daily dissection and reconfiguring of its guts. I read it as an object instead of a collection of stories, and in so doing found a network of repetitions and rhymes and curious text fragments embedded in the headlines — like the front page was having a conversation with itself. 

These sometimes appealing, sometimes appalling, often funny relationships were so prevalent that mashing together rhyming couplets from the day’s headlines became a daily compulsion. There’s so much hidden poetry in each A1, and once you start looking closely it’s like getting on your knees to examine the desert ground and discovering a whole rich ecosystem thriving in what appears at a distance to be nothing but sand.

And I did draw the actual paper every day — the thickness of the A section, the particular way the pages were askew, the dog-eared corners that result from the paper being held and folded and unfolded and, you know, used.

I really do enjoy the feel of the paper, the inky residue left on your hands afterward, the smell and weight of it — I get tired of spending so much time in a digital world where half of one’s senses are completely neglected.

The common thread binding the mostly unrelated stories on the front page is that they all occurred at roughly the same point in time. That’s a lot of random information to cohere, and somehow the front page makes the union of this disparate information inevitable.

Even a day when the paper is devoted to the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 and there at the bottom of the page is an ad announcing that the Kardashians are appearing in person at a local Sears — that feels about right. Of course it would happen that way; that’s our world, after all. I used to think of these occurrences as a hilarious friction, but now I understand that it’s just a big reflecting pool filled with soy-based inks. Every part of the paper, every story and every photo and every bar graph ultimately resolves into one big experience.

I still read the paper every day, only now the paper looks different to me. I’m pretty sure this is a permanent change. When I look at the front page I am confronted with a beautiful surrealist assemblage that floats up and out of the day’s top stories and sometimes gives me the real story. I don’t know if my way is any better or worse than the way the average reader sees the paper, but I will roll with it. I’ll get my news through a scrim of psychedelia.

RELATED:

Q&A with Eric Shveima: Drawing The Times every day

— Erik Shveima, Mixed Media Daily

Photos from top: The Jan. 1, 2011, page; the page from Nov. 12; the Sept. 11 page. Credit: Erik Shveima.

Seattle residents to Times reporter: 'Who are you calling wimps?'

Times Northwest correspondent Kim Murphy's recent story about the snowstorm in western Washington state -- in particular its headline, "Snow wimps: Seattle is shut down by first real snow of the season" -- didn't sit well with a number of Seattle residents, many of whom seemed to take special offense because the story originated from a Los Angeles news organization.

Murphy's story has been a topic of discussion for the Seattle Times and Seattle's KING-5 News ("The LA Times?! I will listen to the LA Times when it describes the microclimates on Kim Kardashian's continental derriere. That, it would know."), led to an interview on the city's KIRO FM and caused a mini-uproar on Twitter. (Apparently not all Seattleites take criticism over their response to winter weather as lightly as the creator of this series of videos, which we can't show here due to a wee bit of rough language.)

Thursday morning, Murphy, formerly The Times' Moscow bureau chief, reported that the storm "turned ugly ... blanketing much of western Washington in slick sheets of ice," prompting Washington's Gov. Christine Gregoire to declare a winter storm emergency. Hundreds of thousands of western Washington homes were without power as of midday as a result of the storm, and Oregon was facing its own problems as a result of flooding. 

Below, some of the responses to The Times' story from Twitter users. (Unfortunately, profanity prevented us from including a few of our favorite tweets.)

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Fallen trees are seen along a section of Central Avenue in Kent, Wash., after an ice storm, on Jan. 19. Credit: John Lok / McClatchy Tribune News Service  

 

 

What's in a name? Depends on whether you use the tilde

An article Sunday about recent missteps by a leading Mexican presidential candidate prompted a critical response from one reader.

But Jose Suarez of Los Angeles wasn’t upset by anecdotes about the candidate’s inability to name a book he’d read or to quote the price of tortillas. Suarez questioned The Times’ spelling of the candidate’s name: Enrique Pena Nieto.

“I noticed you keep calling him Pena Nieto even though his name is Peña Nieto,” Suarez wrote. “I cannot understand why a newspaper doesn't respect the spelling of a presidential candidate of a country.

“The ‘ñ’ is an official part of a major language, and word meaning changes if you don't use it. ‘Peña’ means a big rock or a place of reunion; ‘Pena’ means shame. When you report about the meteorological phenomenon of El Niño, you don’t call it El Nino. Spanish (Español) should be taken seriously.”

The reader is right. The article should have used a tilde in the spelling of Peña Nieto’s last name.

Editors had good intentions here. They were following one entry in The Times’ stylebook that says diacritical marks generally are not used in stories in the news sections -- with a couple of notable exceptions, including El Niño.

However, a separate style note states that the tilde should be used in “all proper nouns (generally, capitalized names of people and places) where it is known to be appropriate.”

Assistant Managing Editor Henry Fuhrmann, who heads The Times’ style committee, said, “The reader’s point is well taken. Our style guidelines are clear on use of the tilde, though in day-to-day practice we have tended to rely on having the subjects of our coverage tell us their preferences. Here, with a major political figure and potential future president of Mexico, it should have been easy to establish what’s appropriate. We’ll use ‘Peña’ henceforth.

“The style note makes a good further point about not making assumptions: ‘Be aware that not all Spanish-surnamed people, especially among Americans, use the tilde,’” Fuhrmann said. “With Enrique Peña Nieto, we didn’t have to assume anything.”

-- Deirdre Edgar

Photo: Enrique Peña Nieto campaigns in Mexico City in November. Credit: Marco Ugarte / Associated Press

Offsite audience drives latimes.com growth in November

A memo to the staff from Managing Editor/Online Jimmy Orr and Senior Vice President/Digital Emily Smith:

New Year’s resolution No. 1:  Send monthly note out earlier (this note is for November).  Yikes. But November was a great month.  So let’s recap it.  We continued to break new ground in real-time reporting for the benefit of our Southern California readers.  Our audience grew by 13.5% year over year, according to ComScore.  For those keeping count, this makes nine consecutive months of double-digit growth (ComScore).

Where did SoCal go for live, round-the-clock coverage of the eviction of Occupy L.A. protesters?  L.A. Now.  Through photos, livestreaming video, and reporter tweets, our dynamic, real-time coverage placed readers in the center of the action on City Hall grounds.  (Samples: @katelinthicum: “Clergy were escorted in by #LAPD and tried to talk @OccupyLA protesters into peaceful resolution. They are now watching from city hall steps.”  “They're also trying to get down 2 protesters atop a 3-story tree house built in a palm tree right outside of Mayor Villaraigosa's office.”)

Aggressive, in-the-moment news and images dominated the homepage throughout the night. No other news source offered the speed and breadth of latimes.com.

“We did so well on Occupy L.A. because we have such well-sourced reporters -- Andrew Blankstein and Kate Linthicum -- who had inside info. on the plans,” Shelby Grad told us. “Then we flooded the zone with reporters. We had a team inside the building all night and morning posting all types of content -- stories, video, pix, etc. A truly multimedia, real-time affair.”

Peter Pae and the Business staff took that same approach to the L.A. Auto Show.  Readers turned to our coverage of the annual event more than 2.2 million times.  If you missed it, here’s a good starting point:  Bryan Chan put together six cool panoramas from the showroom floor, and from there you can check out all the reporting.  To follow all of Jerry Hirsch’s continuing auto coverage, follow him here on Twitter.

Offsite reach

Speaking of Jerry, one of the things he said earlier this year bears repeating:  “I want to be my own circulation department.”

That’s great -- in other words, not relying on the homepage for promotion. Rather, actively taking our journalism to where readers congregate. We’re continuing to improve here. Since March, we’ve grown by double-digit margins month after month after month, and it’s directly related to our real-time reporting and offsite reach. Readership from Google is up by 88% year over year.  Audience growth from Facebook is up by 254%.

For example, David Willman’s story on the Obama administration’s $433-million plan to pursue an experimental smallpox drug was one of the most-read articles in November; more than 70% of our readers came from off site.  Same goes for Sergei L. Loiko’s story on the exodus of Russian citizens leaving the country: 72% came from off site. 

Our growth on Facebook and Twitter remains steady and strong; by the end of the month we had more than150,000 fans on the main Facebook page and more than 190,000 followers of @latimes on Twitter.

(The jury is still out on whether Google Plus will be able to cut into Facebook’s social media dominance, but our presence on the network is strong). 

That’s not to say our front door isn’t important. But to continue to expand our audience, all of us must be actively participating in the social space and bringing new readers to our site instead of waiting for readers to find us.

Take Deborah Netburn, for example.  In the social space, she has a great track record.  Averaging more than 1,000 Facebook shares per post, she rarely has homepage promotion but produces some of the most-read stories on our site month in and month out. 

In case you missed it

Make sure to read Ken Bensinger’s fantastic multipart series on used-car dealerships that cater to people with bad credit, no credit, or low income. While you’re there, check out the great graphics presentation by Lorena Iñiguez Elebee, Raoul Rañoa, Les Dunseith, Robert Burns, John Corrigan and Steve Eames.

Check out Kurt Streeter’s series on hospice care in a high-security penitentiary and visit the excellent photo gallery by Brian van der Brug.

Watch the video in the “Breaking the cycle of abuse” story by Irfan Khan. It is a wrenching look into a house of “doom and gloom” narrated by domestic abuse survivor Laura Cowan, who unknowingly led herself and her children into the middle of one of the most notorious abuse cases in recent California history.

Video: Following a new initiative, reporters throughout the newsroom, powered by the launch of a new video system (Brightcove), offered readers more story-related videos than ever, leading the way to our highest-trafficked month ever, with 514,650 streams.

On the road: Star Ministry of Gossip blogger Christie D’Zurilla was on the road last week to Sacramento.  She headed up to the bureau to work with our PolitiCal bloggers.  No one better to do it.  She’s increased her readership by 121% year over year.

Mobile:  In November, we continued to meet our readers on the platforms of their choosing.  We had a 24% increase in readership to our iPad app, which beat October's 18% growth. Audiences to our phone apps and mobile site each grew 19%.  Additionally, in Version 1.5 of our iPad app, which made it to the iTunes store early in the month, we were able to give our readers a much more stable app, cleaner panels, and an offline reading tool.

Welcome:  Ron Parsons has accepted a new position with LATMG.  He will be one of the leaders in our new Digital Product Management team, aiming to develop and improve our core digital products.  Ron blends editorial experience with insightful product development chops, and will help to define our product strategy.  This will involve working cross-functionally, gathering requirements, defining the vision and product goals, and leading technology, design, and user experience to drive our products from inception to launch.

Ron holds a masters in journalism and started his career as a sports reporter for the Arizona Daily Star.  Since then, he has worked for IBM, Yahoo Inc., Tribune/L.A. Times, and Buzz Media.  Ron has most recently been the senior director of product development at Tribune Interactive.  His most recent project was to launch the paywall for Baltimore and Allentown.

We’d also like to welcome Analisa Tamayo to the L.A. Times.  She will be one of our key digital product leads as we build the LATMG product management team.  Analisa comes to us from ABC News Digital, where she was most recently the senior product manager for mobile and video.  She has also worked at MTV Networks as a product manager and a QA lead and was previously at Muze Inc. as a test engineer.  Analisa was a freelance writer for New York magazine, Rolling Stone, and Spin.  She holds a B.A. degree in anthropology and a B.S. degree in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin.

Now to the tale of the tape...

Top 10 blogs

L.A. Now: 11,660,107
Framework: 5,846,334
Nation Now: 4,615,420
Travel: 4,154,844*
Ministry of Gossip: 4,191,230*
Politics Now: 3,619,574
Fabulous Forum: 3,615,799*
Technology: 3,184,943
Show Tracker: 2,021,628
Hero Complex: 1,805,052

*New record

Top 10 stories/blog posts

Canada’s new plastic $100 bill is all tricked out -- Deborah Netburn: 421,289
Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal -- David Willman: 387,923
Scientists invent lightest material on earth. What now? -- Deborah Netburn: 332,923
Shootings, pepper-spray attack mar Wal-Mart Black Friday sales -- Andrew Blankstein, Hailey Branson-Potts: 300,655
Sheriff’s Department reopens Natalie Wood case -- Richard Winton, Sam Allen, Andrew Blankstein:  268,112
Pacquiao vs. Marquez: Live coverage -- Lance Pugmire: 266,182
Customers hit by pepper spray at Wal-Mart describe scene of chaos -- Andrew Blankstein, Shan Li, Hailey Branson-Potts, Dalina Castellanos: 248,225
Frequent gamers have brain differences, study finds -- Eryn Brown: 224,742
Russians are leaving the country in droves -- Sergei Loiko: 195,242
Multiple missteps led to drone killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan -- David Cloud, David Zucchino: 166,182
 

Vanessa Bryant to get millions in divorce -- but is it a 'windfall'?

Lakers star Kobe Bryant's divorce has been big news in Los Angeles. After the initial article in Saturday's LATExtra section that reported Vanessa Bryant's court filing, an article Tuesday looked into details of a possible settlement. The couple reportedly had no prenuptial agreement, so, the article said, Vanessa Bryant is probably entitled to at least $75 million, half of her husband’s net worth.

The article characterized this as a "windfall" for Vanessa Bryant.

Reader Pam Wilson of San Diego said she found this description "blatantly sexist."

PHOTOS: Kobe and Vanessa Bryant

"The premise is that Bryant's wife, Vanessa, does not deserve half of the couple's community property," Wilson emailed. "She is getting a 'windfall,' i.e. something she does not deserve, because obviously, Kobe was the one earning the money."

The Times' dictionary of record, Webster's New World College Dictionary, 4th Edition, defines a windfall as "any unexpected acquisition, gain, or stroke of good luck." It doesn’t suggest that a windfall is something undeserved. However, the definition of surprise or luck doesn't square with the usage in the article. A community-property settlement isn't lucky -- it's the law.

Wilson also questioned where the term came from. The second paragraph of the article reads: "But legal experts said it's clear Bryant's wife will leave the marriage with a windfall."

"Which legal expert said that?" Wilson asked. "Not one is quoted in the story as the source for that sexist characterization."

In the article, attorney Dmitry Gorin says that Vanessa Bryant will probably get "more than enough for many lifetimes." But Wilson is right, no one is quoted as using the word "windfall," which makes it appear to be The Times' description.

Though many of us would consider $75 million to be a windfall, in the context of a settlement under the state’s community-property law, "windfall" wasn't the right word.

--Deirdre Edgar

Photo: Kobe and Vanessa Bryant at a benefit in 2005. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

Editorial cartoonist/columnist David Horsey to revive Top of the Ticket blog

An announcement to the newsroom by Editor Russ Stanton:

Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist David Horsey is joining the Los Angeles Times political team in January. David will be re-crafting the “Top of the Ticket” blog with his unique combination of cartoons and written commentary.

David is leaving the Seattle Post-Intelligencer after a long career that took him to political party conventions; presidential primaries; Summer and Winter Olympics; the Super Bowl; and on assignments in Europe, Japan and Mexico and to Washington, D.C., where he did two extended stints in the Hearst Newspapers Washington bureau. You can get a good feel for his thought-provoking work at www.davidhorsey.com.

He will work with 2012 campaign editor Cathy Decker and Asst. National Editor Steve Padilla as we re-launch “Top of the Ticket” for the primary season. David will jump into the fray with an early visit to South Carolina, a pivotal state that holds its primary on January 21.

Since print publication of the P-I ceased in 2009, Horsey has provided cartoons and columns for the Hearst newspapers in San Francisco, San Antonio, Houston, Albany and Connecticut, as well as for seattlepi.com.

David won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1999 and 2003 and was a finalist in 1987. In 1998, he received the National Press Foundation's Berryman Award for Cartoonist of the Year. He is a recipient of numerous other national and regional awards for both cartooning and writing, including first place in Special Topic Column Writing in the 2009 Best of the West Journalism Competition for coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign.

He received a B.A. in Communications from the University of Washington where he was editor of the student newspaper, The Daily. As a Rotary Foundation Scholar, David earned an MA in International Relations from the University of Kent at Canterbury (U.K.). In 2004, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Seattle University.

He has published seven collections of his work, most recently From Hanging Chad to Baghdad (2003) and Draw Quick, Shoot Straight (2007).