Times editor Russ Stanton’s speech to staff

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Here are Russ Stanton’s remarks to the newsroom upon being named editor of The Times on Feb. 14, 2008. (Related stories: L.A. Times; Washington Post; The New York Times.)

First, I’d like to thank David for having the confidence and trust in me to lead our two newsrooms. I am very humbled to be standing before you here today.

There are dozens and dozens of people who have had a hand in my winding up at this microphone. I’d like to single out four of them: Mike Young and Bill Nottingham, who hired me into our Orange County bureau 10 years ago; and John Carroll and Dean Baquet, who chose me to be their business editor three years ago.

Before I share with you my vision for where I think we need to be going as a news organization, I want to talk about the newspaper that is the Los Angeles Times.

Like most of you, I was attracted to this great journalistic institution because of its size, reach and reputation. For nearly a half century, the Los Angeles Times has been one of the great newspapers of the world. And while the number of people in our newsroom has been reduced in recent years, I continue to be amazed at the astonishing paper that we dedicated journalists produce on a daily basis.

There is our breadth of coverage -- David Pierson writing about Chinese Americans in the San Gabriel Valley, Jordan Rau tracking the fate of the governor’s health plan in Sacramento, Peter Wallsten dissecting the results of presidential primaries from Washington, Tina Susman on the conflict in Iraq.

There’s our depth of coverage, the deep expertise on our beats -- Tom Petruno on the ever-changing financial markets, Charlie Ornstein and Tracy Weber tracking down medical malpractice, Greg Miller on national security issues, Russ Parsons on ramen.

There’s our top-drawer investigative work by people like Alan Miller and Myron Levin on U-Haul.

There’s our elegant writing - Stephanie Simon on a slice of Christianity in America, Tom Curwen recounting a horrific grizzly bear attack, Megan Stack showing us what it’s like to be a woman in the Arab world.

We have an unbeatable line-up of columnists and critics. Steve Lopez can move you to laugh, cry or write to city hall, sometimes in the same column. Plaschke and Simers also can make you cry, but for different reasons; And I absolutely love Mary McNamara, our TV critic. Did you catch her review of the reality TV show: ‘Crowned: The Mother of All Beauty Pageants?’ It was scathing AND hysterical.

There’s our spectacular photography, such as the photos Wally Skalij and the iconic image captured by Karen Tapia Anderson of the Southern California wildfires. And Pulitzer Prize-winner Carolyn Cole continues to put her life on the line to give our readers pictures they won’t find anywhere else.

We have the best design, graphics and copy desks in the business and we have a talented and dedicated corps of editors, embodied by Managing Editor John Arthur, who brings energy, excitement and a can-do attitude to the newsroom every single day.

Like all of you, I have a deep devotion to this newspaper.

Much has been written in recent weeks about the high rate of turnover in this job. As the baton has been passed from one editor to the next, there have been only three constants: a smaller newspaper to read, a smaller newsroom to soldier on, and no plan to reverse our fortunes.

I have grown tired and am now hopping mad over this seemingly endless ‘Groundhog Day’ nightmare. And that is why I decided to take this job. We in the newsroom need to figure out how to break this self-defeating cycle before it does indeed result in our defeat. Our strategy of fight-lose-shrink is not working.

It is a testament to our ambition and the will of our people that, with a staff that today is one-third smaller, we are still trying to cover the same broad spectrum of topics and geography that we did five years ago. But in many areas, we are straining to do that.

We need to preserve that ambition, and focus our field of vision. There are issues and stories we need to own - and don’t freak out if I don’t name your beat -local news, immigration, education, health care, the environment, entertainment in its many forms, real estate, national security, the presidential campaign, Iraq, Latin America, Asia and, of course, Dodger baseball. And there are areas that we need to walk away from.

One of the keys to reversing our fortunes is improving our coverage of Southern California, and our website and our readers will take a big role in helping us accomplish that. David Lauter and his crew are off to a great start reorganizing the local report, and you can see their progress in each day’s paper and on the website. As we reexamine what we do across the paper, we need to retain some of the hallmarks of our coverage, such as our foreign and national reports.

In print, we must address our most nagging and long-term problem: in canceling the paper, our former readers continue to tell us -- week in and week out, year in and year out -- that they don’t have time to read everything we give them each day. The two Spring Street reports and last year’s Reinvent report produced many good ideas about how to make the paper more accessible and immediate to our readers.

Online, we must continue to find innovative ways to display the great storytelling produced by our staffs. Look at the tremendous progress you all have made on the website under the direction of Meredith, Sean and crew.

Our traffic is soaring and the site is taking our journalism to the farthest reaches of the Earth -- to places the paper has never been before. We must continue to supplement the stories, photos and graphics produced by the print staff with material that is produced by the Web staff, and our readers. Speaking of readers, we will to continue to enlist them to expand our ability to deliver information all the way down to the neighborhood level. Along the way, we must understand, embrace and uphold the journalistic values of the Los Angeles Times.

We made great progress last year, but we still have a lot of work to do. First and foremost, our two newsrooms need to - and will -- become one. And the people in them need to better understand and work with each other. We must be smart about how we carry out this merger of operations, recognizing the unique traits of each medium. We also must expand and improve the education and training of both staffs, and plans are in the works to do just that.

Obviously, we cannot reverse our fortunes in a vacuum. We need the help and cooperation of other departments, particularly advertising, to find creative but journalistically sound ways to boost revenue on the print side. The Image section and The Guide are prime examples of that.

We’ve shown we can change in other ways, too. The Sports section has become the best at alternative forms of storytelling and maximizing the use of its space. The Business section has greatly expanded its focus on consumer news, including a new and exciting Sunday section. And as I’ve already mentioned, the California section is changing before our eyes.

We have a bunch of exciting things on the runway this year, in both mediums. A new and expanded automotive section is on the drawing boards; Mary MacVean is working on a greatly expanded education section for the website. And there are several terrific investigative projects underway: one on the wildfires by Bettina Boxall and Julie Cart, one from T. Christian Miller that’s related to Iraq, and David Willman has another gem in the offing, this one about bioterrorism.

Yesterday, we rolled out the first of our breaking news blogs, in Metro, L.A. Now, which is led by blogger extraordinaire Veronique de Turenne. And the first of our neighborhood pages will debut this spring. We have several cases of new video gear in the building, an entire video staff, and we’re about to hire a full-time instructor to teach those who are interested how to shoot and edit video for their stories.

We were one of the very few papers in the country to report a gain in circulation in the most recent six-month reporting period. Online, our traffic continues to grow more than 20% annually and at a greater rate than the rest of our industry.

We also face some formidable challenges. Our revenue continues to wane, and I am particularly concerned about the dark clouds on the horizon of the California economy. The economy is beyond our control, but putting out a great newspaper and website is well within it. And we have in our arsenal 920 journalists, producers and other web specialists who are the best in the business at what they do.

All around you, colleagues of various ages, backgrounds and disciplines are adapting to the new environment we find ourselves in. Last month, Kenny Turan was blogging live, at midnight no less, from the Sundance Film Festival. Jill Leovy has won national acclaim with her innovative blog that tried to note every homicide committed in Los Angeles County last year. Ron Lin, using Google mapping software, created a state-of-the-art map of the fire-damaged areas of Southern California. And Andrew Malcolm and Don Frederick are setting traffic records almost daily with their witty and insightful Top of the Ticket blog on the presidential campaign.

These are exciting signs of progress, and we’re just getting warmed up. One person cannot reverse years of market-changing trends. I need your help and your support. Beginning right now, we need to close our ranks and move forward together. The Times has long been a trusted and valued presence in the homes of Southern Californians. We inform, enlighten and entertain and we will carry on this tradition of excellence because our readers expect nothing less.