»
The Los Angeles Times is once again at the center of a heated debate about the future of newsrooms and their products. The New York Times reported this morning that the L.A. Times has made plans to transfer control of its monthly magazine to its business operations, effectively wresting control of the product out of the hands of its editors.
In fact, the magazine’s entire editorial staff will be replaced, and a new editor has been appointed. Future issues have been planned and mock-up covers have been created, all without the knowledge of anyone in the newsroom, including editor Russ Stanton, according to executives at the paper.
The arrangement flies in the face of newspaper tradition, which has long held that business operations such as advertising and circulation remain entirely separate from the editorial department.
The first issue of the new monthly magazine is expected to be published in August or September.
The Sunday magazine has been without an editor recently. It was losing money as a weekly, but since going monthly last year, it has improved ad sales and is now profitable. The new editor, according to the sources, will be Annie Gilbar, a former editor of InStyle magazine and host of a program on the Home Shopping Network.
No newspaper has struggled as publicly with the challenges facing the newspaper industry as the Los Angeles Times. The paper has undergone changes in its publisher and new ownership for its parent company, and has also seen several top editors flee or be ousted following public refusals to make newsroom cuts.
The issue of the separation of the editorial side of the business from the publishing side is a sensitive one at all newspapers, but especially at the Los Angeles Times, where, in 1999, the paper published a special magazine section which shared profits with the subject of the section, the Staples Center sports arena. After editors and reporters rebelled about the arrangement, executives publicly apologized.
The L.A. Observed blog calls the management change-up at the magazine a “sloppy end to the Los Angeles Times Magazine as a newsroom product.”
Radio stations in the U.K. reacted with outrage when they learned of a report by researchers from the University of the West of England which accused them of promoting excessive drinking.
The study looked at 1,200 hours of radio output,…
General Motors posted sales of 308,817 vehicles in August. That’s a drop of 20 percent from August of last year - but 31 percent better than July.
In order to boost sales as much as possible during a time when…
A new digital out-of-home network to reach golfers is launching to 100 retail locations in the next two months. The network will be available in Dunham’s Sporting Goods, Golf Etc., Golf USA, Pro Golf, and ParMasters, among others.
Fox says that viewers’ attention to commercials is higher when fewer commercials are aired. The revelation comes as a result of testing the network has done for its freshman thriller, Fringe, which will premiere Sept. 9 with limited commercials and shorter…
Worldwide sales of mobile phones will reach 1.28 billion units in 2008 - up from 1.15 billion units in 2007 - an 11 percent increase from last year, according to Gartner, Inc - (via MarketingCharts).
While the mobile phone market is poised for…
Consumers in all income segments are cutting back spending, and doing so to a greater extent recently than at the beginning of the second quarter, according to a comScore study examining changes in consumer attitudes and perceptions about the U.S. economy…
