'LAT' Editor: Web Will Be 'Primary Vehicle' for News Delivery

'LAT' EDITOR: WEB WILL BE 'PRIMARY VEHICLE' FOR NEWS DELIVERY
[SOURCE: Editor&Publisher]
Los Angeles Times editor James O'Shea outlined a bold plan to increase traffic to and revenue from LATimes.com in the face of an increasingly difficult economic climate for newspaper publishers, and urged journalists to think of the Web site as the newspaper's primary vehicle for news. "We can't hide from the fact that smart competitors such as Google and Craigslist are stealing readers and advertisers from us through innovative strategies that are undermining the business model we've relied on for decades," said O'Shea, whose remarks were published in their entirety on the paper's Web site. He said today that the Times will fully integrate its print and online newsrooms, and named business editor Russ Stanton to the new position of Special Editor for Innovation. "Currently we have a newspaper staff and an LATimes.com staff," he said. "No more. From now on, there are no two staffs, there is just one. And we will function as one. One of Russ's first jobs will be to help set up that newsroom." O'Shea also said that there would be changes in the way the content in the print edition would be viewed. Where Web stories and blogs allow journalists an endless amount of space to give readers in-depth accounts, he said he wanted the physical paper to become "an even stronger vehicle for tightly-written context, analysis, interpretation and expertise."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003536826

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