LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles Times Editor James E. O'Shea unveiled a major initiative Wednesday morning designed to expand the audience and revenue generated by the newspaper's Web site, saying the newspaper was in "a fight to recoup threatened revenue that finances our news-gathering."
O'Shea employed dire statistics on declining advertising to urge the Times' roughly 940 journalists to throw off a "bunker mentality" and begin viewing latimes.com as the paper's primary vehicle for delivering news.
In his first major action since becoming editor in mid-November, O'Shea said he would create the new position of editor for innovation and launch a crash course for journalists to push ahead the melding of the newspaper and its Web site.
O'Shea named Business Editor Russ Stanton to the innovation post and said the "Internet 101" course would teach reporters, editors and photographers how to post content on latimes.com. He emphasized the need for speed in reforming an operation that he called "woefully behind" the competition.
The 63-year-old editor made the announcement before an audience of hundreds of the paper's journalists. He said some may have maintained a false sense of security about their industry because of the paper's continuing high profits, estimated for 2006 to be nearly $240 million, before taxes.
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"At this rate, those double-digit profit margins everyone cites will be in single digits and then be gone," O'Shea said, adding later: "If we don't help reverse these revenue trends, we will not be able to cost-effectively provide the news — the daily bread of democracy. The stakes are high."
The announcement by the Times editor follows an industry trend in which newspapers large and small are shifting resources and energy to the Web, where revenues are growing, and away from print editions, where ad dollars are shrinking.
For a blog about changes in the newspaper industry, visit http://mediafade.blogspot.com on the Web.
Driving the changes was a report by a committee of journalists appointed by O'Shea's predecessor, Dean Baquet, near the end of his long-running feud with the paper's corporate parent over reductions in the Times' news staff.
Among the impediments the group cited or implied as stalling growth at latimes.com:
* Lack of assertive leadership and adequate focus on the Web site, both inside the Times and at the paper's parent, Tribune Co.
* Understaffing. Latimes.com employs about 18 editorial employees, a fraction of the 200 employees at The Washington Post's Web site and the 50 employed by The New York Times' site.
* "Creaky" technology that has made it impossible for latimes.com to host live chats between readers and journalists and to let readers customize stock tables or weather reports.
* Failure to integrate the newspaper's large news staff into operations on the Web, contributing to delays in posting breaking news.
The report called on Times management to make Internet improvements an urgent priority. With 5.1 million unique visitors a month and 73 million total page views, latimes.com's traffic tops most other newspaper Web sites. But usage trends are in the wrong direction.
At the time of the report late last year, latimes.com was the 766th most active Web site in the world — not in the top 100 in the United States — according to tracking service Alexa Internet. That compared with nytimes.com ranking 95th in the world and 21st in the United States and washingtonpost.com ranking 264th in the world and 54th in America.
O'Shea said he was determined to improve the performance at latimes.com and related sites the Times plans to open. In mid-February, the paper plans to roll out a new travel Web site that will focus on Southern California and allow users to book trips — the sort of e-commerce that other newspaper sites rolled out years ago.
A "Calendarlive" site will be designed as a destination for local entertainment choices such as restaurants, movies, theater, concerts and clubs.
"We will need to divert some resources to this effort at a time when no one is going to give us any more resources," O'Shea said. "If anything, we might be looking at less."
He noted that the revamping of the newspaper would not end with its Web site. The paper plans in the fall to go to a smaller, 48-inch-wide format. An attendant "phased" redesign will be rolled out through 2007 and will "question and challenge every section of the newspaper."
O'Shea acknowledged that the changes might be "scary" to some of the paper's journalists. But he ended his remarks by attempting to rally the employees to the urgency of the matter.
"Let's use great journalism to let the world know that newspapers and the journalists that create them are not dead," the editor said. "We are alive, well and fighting back."
