California section to end in reconfigured print edition; job cuts expected*

A memo to Times staff from Publisher Eddy Hartenstein announces changes to the sections in the print edition, with California news going to Section A, and the expected loss of as many as 300 jobs throughout The Times. It's followed by a note to the newsroom from Editor Russ Stanton:

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.

The memo from Russ Stanton:

Colleagues:

As you saw from Eddy's note, the tough economy is causing the company to implement another round of job cuts, including in the newsroom. In the coming weeks, the number of jobs across Editorial will be reduced by 70 positions, or 11%. As part of this move, we will be putting into place the final pieces of the newsroom reorganization that we began last year. This includes reclassifying jobs, reconfiguring desks, revamping our workflow and exploring new topic teams. The goal remains to operate a 24/7 newsgathering operation that delivers information to Southern California residents in any medium they consume it.   

Other departments at The Times will be undertaking similar cost-saving measures, some more painful than the ones we will experience. We are all too familiar with this process, but over the past year in particular, we have come through each of these downsizings and continued to produce some of the highest-quality journalism in our industry. We simply don't know how to do otherwise.
John, Davan, Meredith and I, as well as your section editors and department heads, are available to answer your questions. We remain commited to providing our readers with an excellent general-interest newspaper and website with top-notch local, national, foreign, business, sports, feature and entertainment reporting.

*Update: The Times published a news story about the layoffs and section changes in the Jan. 31 editions.

Comments

[socal dude]

The times recent staff cuts are not in recognition of economic realities as the current publisher like to say. Instead, it is the result of a greedy man, a deal from hell, and a management team that must have gotten their business background in soviet Russia.

The Times current actions are a betrayal to its tradition and its readers

[socal dude]

this is terrible. get rid of sam zell.

[Jamie Dimmel]

So let me get this straight: you remove most of the small newstands where you can buy your paper, then you raise the price 50%, then you remove the dedicated local section. And you expect to retain readers? Without in-depth local coverage I can get the rest from any paper. Tribune management must have went to school with the guys at Bear Stearns & GM.

[Barry Engelberg]

I have held off writing my comments about the slow death of the Times. Frankly, I don't know where to begin. So let me get this straight: here you have a newspaper that has no book review, has no opinion section, no real estate section, and soon to have no local/regional section, but for whatever reason, gives us the Image section. The obvious non-rhetorical question is, why? Was the Times a great paper, no, but it was good enough for me, at least, to consider it one of my primary sources of news.

[brian]

i live in new brunswick canada and throughly enjoyed the la times as an important and diverse point of view for my daily news so i had it bookmarked. after these further cuts i m not sure if i will contine to bookmark it. what s the point.

[a subscriber]

For Hartenstein and Stanton to continue to blame a bad economy for their ongoing dismantling of a once-great newspaper is disingenous at best and dishonest at the core. The economic woes of the Times, while exacerbated by the bad economy, are primarily due to the $13 billion dollar debt that Sam Zell and Tribune executives amassed. The greed and outright contempt of Zell in particular is breathtaking. Watching them take the paper apart piece by piece has been a painful experience to watch. It is akin to destroying the village in order to save it. For them to continue to promote this fantasy that it is only due to the bad economic times is dishonest and unworthy of a news organization.

[larry]

While I no longer live within the circulation area of the Times, I subscribed for so long that I still care about the paper. The recent moves are designed to reduce the value of the paper. I don't know what financial game Sam Zell is playing, but it's sad to see journalists who once represented quality now willingly slash the quality out of the paper. The only thing the Times can provide the internet can't is in depth local coverage. No more. Et tu, Russ?

[McCready]

Well, this is horrible. But where are the journalists at the Times? The Times still makes a hefty profit and produces a big slab of revenue for Tribune Co. So why aren't Times journalists--instead of just sitting on their thumbs as wave after wave of their colleagues are shown the door--using that profit and the leverage it provides to stand up and say no, we're not going to take this anymore?
.
Specifically, why aren't they staging wildcat strikes, shutting down the paper for a day or so at a time so management and Sam Zell get the message--the message being that Times journalists are no longer going to stand by while Zell continues to trash a perfectly profitable and viable product. Let the creditors take the hit. Let Zell take the hit. But Times journalists had no voice in this "deal from hell" and now refuse to suffer the consequences.
.
Look, you guys have Dean Baquet as an outstanding example of someone willing to sacrifice his job to stand for principle--and not only that but also common sense. Every layoff there is a vote of no confidence in a product that people still want and advertisers are still supporting. But how long can that last when the so-called owners give every indication that they are bound and determined to transform the Times into a daily load of pulpy crap?
.
Stop them! For the sake of us readers, many of whom are also facing layoffs through no fault of our own, stand up and be counted and bring a halt to this travesty. Shut it down for a day at a time, state your reasons to us, and we'll promise to be loyal and keep our subscriptions going even though you miss a few days of publication. Organize this over the Internet. Suddenly, on a given day, not one of you shows up for work. No stories, no pictures, no columns, no ads, no revenue, no profit for that day. Show Zell and creditors who's the real boss.
.
Or, alternatively, continue to sit on your thumbs and hunker down in your cubicles.

[M A Andrews]

It's the far left wing editorial policy that has sickened
your traditional readers and driven them to other
sources for non biased news.
Sam Zell will only lose money,Los Angeles lost it's
Best newspaper years ago!

[Thomas K Nagano]

Noted in Privileged Son, Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty, published 2001 by Dennis McDougal: (recomended reading)

"TimesLink [LATimes.com]..a website so popular that by election day 1996 it was recording 1.6 million hits a day...A the same time Time Mirror cut the staff in half to save on overhead: one more symptom of the pecuniary schizophrenia that compelled the company to bankrupt its future by saving a few dollars today."

From Saturday 1/31/09 LA Times...a metaphor for our times?

"Obituaries...will move to Business." The Los Angeles Times has almost become the Los Angeles Herald Examiner...Its not dead yet.

Thomas K Nagano

[Sonny Montgomery]

This idea of bringing in peiople who nothing about broadcasting or print, the team from Clear Channel to run Tribune, a Sat guy running a paper, a civil engineer running TV operations is merely the jewel in the crown of the overleveraged deal from Zell which took all the profits into paying off debt. Not paying for staff, not paying for equipment...

Paying off Zell's debt

As a result America is seeing the demise of time-proven journalism greatly accellerated.

Unbelilevable.

[James Curtis]

Every time I think the Times can't get any worse, can't degrade itself any further, can't make itself less worth the money than it is already, along comes another bone-headed move on the part of management to yet again alienate the core readership that still prefers newsprint to laptop, solid content to trivia. As far as I can see, there's no visionary leadership in print journalism--none at all. Nobody is seriously looking at the problem of how to IMPROVE the paper and make it a more desirable product. Rather, the publisher seems to be constantly daring me not to cancel my subscription. This is death by a thousand cuts, and it wouldn't annoy me so much if this weren't essentially a one-paper market. Editorially, the Times has always had serious problems, but the current pamphlet that passes for a newspaper makes all those past incarnations look like the New York Times in comparison. Why not just put this pathetic beast out of its misery and pull the plug? We all know where this is headed. Let's get it over with and start to build something from the wreckage. In its present form, the Times is unsalvagable.

[jeff prescott]

While this latest announcement hurts, friends, you have to look at the big picture.
If you put this move in an evolutionary time line, extinction just might be a little further up the road.
The day of big cities (LA) with 5, 6 or 7 competing newspapers is long gone. This year, we will have gone 20-years without the Herald-Examiner, at one time the largest evening circulation in America. One newspaper towns, shortly, in just about every city (except NY).
I get 6-newspapers delivered to my home each morning, I hear I'm the only person in the U.S. to do so!

[JE Logan]

In California a suicidal person can be held involuntarily for 72 hours for observation and assessment. I suggest the Times is long overdue for such intervention.

Seriously, do Eddy and Russ not see the insanity of this decision? Why would they practically BEG the Times' readers to cancel their subscriptions in disgust?

Well, guys, no need to beg. How does it feel to kill a once-great paper? Good luck sleeping at night.

[keith]

Gosh of all sections to fiddle with, the California section. Why not do away with other lackluster sections to save money? For instance, Image, blah. Or, Business section, its just a place to hang ads & biz story rewrites. Or that Sunday magazine thing that comes out every full moon.

[Andrew]

I blame the Chicago Tribune. The Los Angeles Times has been going downhill ever since the Chandler family sold it.

[TK]

Gawd,

There is something terribly wrong about how the Times can not make money in a county with 10,000,000 people. In a region with 25,000,000. It's not like there's a whole lot of competition, either.

It's just tragic. How can a civic democracy function without a vibrant newspaper? I guess we are going to find out, but I have feeling it will be a return to corrupt government and wild west corporate malfeasance.

-TK

[TK]

"...while continuing to allow us to deliver a high-quality product to our readers and advertisers." Please stop. You haven't delivered in a long time. You are a newspaper...at least honor the truth.

[Charles FRench]

I live well outside of your delivery area and have for years longed to read my hometown paper.

Over the summer when it became available in the Kindle format I subscribed immediately and the California section was one of my mains reasons for doing so. Now you do this?

Get rid of Zell.

[roger carter]

---------i am seventy four. i have read the times since i was eleven,- turning on the oven in the kitchen & reading it on top of the stove which had a fold down top. cutting out the CALIFORNIA section & combining it in the first section will cut circulation along with your 75 cent newstand price. the CALIFORNIA section is part of a concept. i can't believe you still have 600 + reporters. for what ?? a combined first & second section ?? your dumber than dumb management will surely kill the paper which is on its death bed now. goodbye - because why would i spend 75 cents for less of a paper than it was a month ago ????????????????

[Brian Deagon]

I love newspapers. I'll have one placed in my coffin.
This report of moving California to A section displeases me in a big way. Surely you must have better ideas to cut costs than this.

[Mary Dickinson]

Why can't you simply put out a newspaper? What the heck is the problem? The editorial /opinion section used to be the best..Paul Conrad..then Mike Ramarez. We don''t even have our own cartoonist any more! Book Review...NOT!

I hate this! I really , really hate this. My beloved Times is nothing more than a rag to wrap garbage!

I 'll just listen to KNX and resuscribe the the NY Times!

[Cindy Olnick]

This is literally an outrage. What more can the public do to protest this unbelievably bad decision?

[Brenda Miller]

Like many people, I am truly dismayed at the latest cuts to the paper. One of the main reasons I subscribe to the LA Times is the local coverage, and now I find it will be lumped in with Section A. First the book review, then the opinion section, now this. Cut after cut. I wonder how much actual newspaper will be left. How does the Times expect to retain readers if it cuts all the sections that gives a paper substance? Come on!

[Jan Connell]

Do not fold the California section of the Los Angeles Times into Section A. You are destroying a once proud and reputable Los Angeles institution. Please stop.
I follow the Los Angeles Times from my home in Toledo, Ohio. What you do in California affects the entire country.