Newspapers

We would never accuse the Los Angeles Times of being early adopters.

LA Biz Journal reports:

"Integrity is our most important commodity: Avoid writing or posting anything that would embarrass The Times or compromise your ability to do your job," the committee stated.

Most interesting, the committee stated that employees should "assume that your professional life and your personal life will merge online regardless of your care in separating them." Privacy tools that determine who can see and read what you post, the committee stated, have little meaning when publishing on a public Web site.

So this memo is preempting a reporter flashing his boobs on Facebook while holding up a copy of the Turner Diaries or something? The advent of MySpace was seven years ago...way to keep up.

Anyone think this is in the wake of those horrible Katie Couric photos?

Via I Want Media

We asked LA Weekly's new editor Drex Heikes what was true in the Neon Tommy profile. Are they going to be hiring more reporters? What is the future of the paper?

"The kid who wrote it was first rate. I wish it had been more about the paper and less about yours truly. I asked him several times to focus on the paper because I could tell he was going all messiah, which is utterly misguided," Heikes tells FBLA.

Noting, "The websites advisors are both former Weekly employees. I wonder what happened in the editing."

But tellingly Heikes asks for patience, "I wish that crowd would calm down and give us a year."

Noted.

Previously on FBLA: LA Weekly Gets Defensive About Neon Tommy Report

Last Friday, in response to an article by student-run Neon Tommy, the LA Weekly ran a post on its daily blog harshly critical of the paper prior to its acquisition in 2006 by the owners of the New Times chain (now Village Voice Media). The author of the post, Dennis Romero, all but declared that a new golden era has arrived at the paper, rescuing readers from what they gladly picked up for nearly three decades. It's a strangely schizophrenic and defensive piece of propaganda, and probably not even worth addressing - but here I go.

Romero argues that "what's seen as a reduction of the editorial department is also a changing of the guard." That the new owners reduced the staff of the editorial department by more than half is not a perception - it's a fact. Romero should note all the empty cubicles around him in the Weekly office. Furthermore, the freelance budget has been slashed and the paper's page count has shrunk. But Romero would have you believe that getting smaller is a good thing:

While the Weekly of yesteryear was a place for old white guys to pontificate -- in 10,000 words or less -- about the state of the nation, the new Weekly is, ironically, more like a daily newspaper, where reporters and journalists are employed to report, dig and do research before putting it on paper in fewer, tighter, fact-driven words.

continued...

One of your hard-working FBLA editors made the opinion section of the OC Register.

Full story is here.

The above screen grab is from today's front page of latimes.com. We understand Sarah Palin put her name on a book someone else wrote and was on Oprah this week. But does that warrant three out of four featured opinion pieces?

It's not like she's Britney Spears or Paris Hilton or New Moon. Have some dignity.

Psst. Psst. Word is over at college newspaper Neon Tommy, LA Weekly is looking to flesh out its staff. Hire reporters. That's right. Hire. Reporters. That's means journalists to you technically inclined.

Mike Lacey, the self-proclaimed "asshole in charge," said he has authorized Heikes to double the size of its editorial staff in the next six months.

In an interview at the Weekly's offices in Culver City, Heikes said he did not sign on to preside over an organization in decline. At the top of his agenda: reclaiming the Weekly's legacy of pioneering investigative journalism and its street-level awareness of L.A.'s music and art scenes. He's already overseeing heavy investment in the Web as a primary delivery vehicle for the Weekly's goods.

The new editor echoed past voices from the Weekly in describing his editorial approach: "I see it from the ground up, not top down. I don't want us covering [Los Angeles Mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa like a rock star like the Times did for a few years until they got tired of him. What's going on in the streets? Let's work up from that."

The whole piece by Kevin Douglas Grant can be found here.

Pictured Dex Heikes and FBLA editor Tina Dupuy.

Previously on FBLA: LA Weekly Throws Party For Incoming Editor

The LAT has folded real estate blog L.A. Land into the paper's business and finance blog, Money & Company. Kevin Roderick at LA Observed notes that the blog "never seemed to quite recover its mojo from last year's departure of originator Peter Viles. When real estate reporter Peter Hong left the paper last month on a buyout, the blog became less necessary."

The Tribune Company indicated in court papers filed last Friday that it might emerge from bankruptcy by May 31 of next year. The company is filing for a four month extension "to craft a plan to exit Chapter 11 without interference from other parties." Bankruptcy is very confusing. More from the LA Times:

The Chicago-based media company, whose holdings include the Los Angeles Times and KTLA-TV Channel 5, is trying to avoid a lengthy and costly legal battle with some creditors, who are likely to recoup little of their investment in the company given the distressed values of its newspaper and television assets.

A dissident bondholder group has accused Tribune and its senior lenders of hiding "millions of dollars" worth of fees from the court and is conducting an investigation of the $8.2-billion leveraged buyout that gave real estate mogul Sam Zell control of the company.

Romenesko has the Tribune Co. memo.

Bloomberg.com says that the Wall Street Journal may be adding local metro coverage of the Los Angeles area, according to "two people familiar with the company's thinking." The paper is also considering similar coverage of Chicago. From Bloomberg:

Les Hinton, chief executive officer of Dow Jones & Co., told employees in a meeting yesterday that the newspaper was contemplating additional coverage in the California and Illinois cities, according to the people.

The newspaper, bought as part of New York-based News Corp.'s acquisition of Dow Jones in December 2007, debuted a once-weekly San Francisco Bay-area edition last week.

Hinton didn't discuss further details of the possible sections, said the people.

In response to the heated debate over the paywalls and the future of newspapers, our sister blog BayNewser created a poll to crowdsource the answer. Results have been tallied:

Baynewser reflects on the results:

While the poll may seem unscientific, it was relying on the principle articulated in James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. The principle says that "a diverse collection of independently-deciding individuals is likely to make certain types of decisions and predictions better than individuals or even experts." (Cribbed from Wikipedia.)

So what conclusions can we draw? The fact that a self-selected group of people who are interested in the future of newspapers are overwhelmingly pessimistic about paywalls doesn't seem to bode well for the idea.

There you have it. Mob Rule + Newspapers = No Paywalls

Previously on FBLA:
Will Paywalls Rescue Newspapers?