Hector Tobar begins weekly column

California Editor David Lauter announces that Hector Tobar will begin writing a weekly column beginning in tomorrow's California section:

Those of you who read the tag line at the end of Friday's terrific Column One already know this news. But for the rest of you: I'm delighted to announce that Hector Tobar will begin writing a weekly California section column, the first of which will begin Tuesday.

Launching this column fulfills a major goal that we've had -- to add to our existing mix a columnist whose frame of reference includes the experience and culture of Southern California's Latino population. Hector's skill as a writer and his breadth of experience as a reporter make him the ideal person for this role.

New duties for Sports editors Mike Hiserman, Debbie Goffa

Sports Editor Randy Harvey's announcement to Times staff:

When Steve Clow came to Sports about this time a year ago as a deputy, we thought we had loaned him to Metro for a couple of years. Turns out, as you might have seen in this morning’s announcement from David Lauter, Metro was just loaning him to us.

In the wake of that announcement, we have a couple of our own to make.

Mike Hiserman, who had been senior assistant sports editor, will become a deputy editor. Debbie Goffa, who had been an assistant sports editor, will become senior assistant.

Mike has been the assignment editor for several of our most important beats, including USC, UCLA, national colleges, the NFL and high schools, which keeps him too busy in the fall and winter. So to lighten his work load a bit, we are also giving him the Dodgers, Angels and Major League Baseball. (We will give him a break on the NFL and high schools.)

Debbie also gives up a couple of beats, but she gets no break as the primary administrator and editor of our blogs. The Fabulous Forum alone is a 24-7 undertaking. (Maybe just 18-7.) She also will continue as assignment editor for the Olympics, sports media and business.

We congratulate Steve and thank him for his efforts in Sports, while remaining perplexed over how he could give up the Manny Ramirez watch.

Steve Clow returns to editing staff on California desk

California Editor David Lauter makes the announcement in a memo to Times staff:

Steve Clow, a gifted and careful editor, has moved back to Metro and will have broad responsibilities for helping me with oversight of this large and complicated department. He's among the people I will turn to for running the place when I'm away and for advice and counsel on a wide variety of Metro stories, projects and personnel issues. He'll be someone I turn to regularly for editing of major stories as they develop. And, not least, he will handle a group of reporters -- he's already taken on several.

Steve has worked in National, Metro, Features and, most recently, Sports. He has moved back and forth among the departments several times for good reason: His is one of the first names that always comes up when department heads search for excellent, experienced editing. In each of his assignments, he has improved the work of his reporters, shepherded many a story onto Page 1 and developed a well-deserved reputation as among the most congenial of colleagues.

Please join me in welcoming Steve back aboard.

Tom Curwen named writer-editor in California

Managing Editor Davan Maharaj and California Editor David Lauter make the announcement in this memo to Times staff:

Over the last few years, Tom Curwen has become one of The Times’ most admired writers -– quite a feat considering that he was a full-time editor in Features all the while. Tom reported and wrote memorable narratives such his “Grizzly Bear” series, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, largely on his own time.

We're pleased to announce that Tom will now be writing for the paper much more frequently, and on company time. Tom is taking on a new assignment as a writer-editor in Metro. He will find and tell compelling narratives of his own. In addition, he will work with a group of Metro’s writers, helping conceive and shape long-form narratives, coordinating their work and editing some of it. To borrow a sports term, he will be a player-coach.

Hybrid assignments like this one can be tough to pull off, but we’re confident Tom will be able to strike the right balance. Having Tom more fully engaged in our most ambitious stories, as a writer on some and an editor on others, can only benefit the paper and its readers.

Tom's first newsroom assignment was as deputy editor of the Book Review, starting in 1997. He was the editor of the Outdoors section from 2004 to 2005. His writing has been honored by Los Angeles Press Club, the American Assn. of Sunday and Features Editors and the California Newspaper Publishers Assn. In 2002 he was a recipient of a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism. He attended the UC Berkeley, and has a master’s degree in creative writing from the USC, where he was honored by the Academy of American Poets.

Please join us in congratulating Tom on his new assignment.

Health and Science teams to be combined

Editor Russ Stanton announces the combined newsgathering operation in this memo to Times staff:

Colleagues:

As part of the ongoing restructuring of our newsgathering operation, today we are combining the Health and Science reporting groups, which will be led by Tami Dennis, health & science editor, and Rosie Mestel, deputy health & science editor.

The goal is to build better, more unified reporting teams around topics rather than sections. Doing this, we hope to leverage the skills of our talented staff and improve communication between people covering similar subjects by breaking down the walls between various departments, including news and features.

The combined talents of Health section reporters Shari Roan, Melissa Healy  and Jeannine Stein and Science team writers Tom Maugh, Karen Kaplan and Mary Engel will allow us to produce an even more robust Health and Science report, both in print and online, for A1 and the home page, and for news sections as well as features. As part of this move, the Science group will be joining the Health team on the second floor. Tami will continue to report to Assistant Managing Editor Alice Short. (Science writer John Johnson, whose beat includes NASA, JPL and other space-related topics, will continue to report to Ashley Dunn, who was recently named deputy editor in National.)

Web report: November saw record number of local visitors

The performance of latimes.com, and recent developments there, are covered in this memo to staff from Executive Editor for Interactive Meredith Artley.

Colleagues: The first half of November was very newsy, with the elections and the fires. The second half was much less so and we had the Thanksgiving holiday. That adds up to readership being roughly flat compared to the previous month – we had about 24 million unique users and 138 million page views for November. That unique user figure represents a more than 125% growth year over year. Page views are up almost 70% from this time last year.

Statistical highlights of November include setting a new record for the number of local visitors – 15% of site traffic according to internal reports, and nearly double the number of local visitors we had this time last year. One goal going into 2009 is to keep growing that number. We also set a new record for average daily page views.

But enough stats -- let’s talk about the content. As you have likely heard, a new look to the Mexico Under Siege project launched Monday at latimes.com/drugwar. It’s one of the strongest, most unique multimedia packages ever published on our site. Check out the in-depth map of the death toll, the unique video Q & A with editor Geoff Mohan and reporters, the wonderful multimedia presentation, and see how the articles in the series can be sorted and searched. This site and series will continue to grow and change as more stories are added, more video is recorded, and more readers come and interact.

Coming up, watch for design improvements to the Business, Sports, National and World sections. The talented database gang is at work on a crime database and improvements to the schools database. Another talented team is working on “Best of the Web” pages to pilot in certain targeted topics – the idea is to do more aggregating of great content not just on our site but the Web at large. Watch for more of this in 2009. And small design changes are coming to the homepage and the rest of the site so we can do a better job of highlighting our columnists.

Tony Pierce is working with folks to make some of our more popular blogs even more comprehensive and dynamic by combining them with other blogs. For example, Web Scout has moved into the Technology blog, and the Bottleneck and Homeroom blogs will soon move into L.A. Now. We previously merged the two music blogs to create Pop & Hiss, now appearing in the top ten list below. Also, a new design for L.A. Now is in the works. The Homicide Report, which took a brief hiatus, will be picking back up soon.

"Mexico Under Siege" online: model for future projects, editors say

The Times has redesigned its Web page for the "Mexico Under Siege" series to add new multimedia elements to the archive of about 60 stories. The site now includes interactive maps, an enhanced photo gallery, profiles of key figures and a video Q&A. Managing Editor Davan Maharaj and Executive Editor for Interactive Meredith Artley said in a memo to Times staff that it "will be a model for projects we do in the future." That memo follows: