LA Times: The ‘Manhattan’ Report

Last fall the LA Times launched what was perhaps unfortunately called “The Manhattan Project” (after the famed A-Bomb project) to chart the future of the newspaper, which, incidentally is somewhat up for grabs right now as the parent Tribune Co. tries to sell itself.

The task force fanned out to the four corners trying to do discovery and formulate recommendations for the paper’s digital strategy. Earlier today LA Times editor James O’Shea appears to have unvelied some of the findings and recommendations of this effort. Here are some excerpts from the article about it:

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 Spring Street committee, named after the Times’ downtown address, began its work in October and produced a scathing report that has been seen by only a few of the newspapers top editors and executives. “To put it bluntly,” the seven-page report found, “as a news organization, we are not web-savvy. If anything, we are web-stupid.”

Among the impediments the group cited or implied as stalling growth at latimes.com:

• Lack of assertive leadership and adequate focus on the website, both inside The Times and at the paper’s parent, Tribune Co.
• Understaffing. Latimes.com employs about 18 “talented and dedicated” editorial employees, only a fraction of the 200 employees at the Washington Post’s website 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 at the web, contributing to delays in posting breaking news.
• “We are rarely first” to post news on the Internet, the Times committee found. The result is that the paper’s reports often are listed below those of other news organizations when users perform topic searches.
• “When the Los Angeles Unified School District named a new superintendent, news aggregators like Google and Yahoo chose the AP story over ours,” the Spring Street report says. “Ours was better but AP was first.”
• A philosophical clash between the website’s top two employees — general manager Rob Barrett and senior editor Joel Sappell — also “hampered the site’s ability to grow,” the report stated. Barrett wanted the site to focus on “hyper-local” reports, to deliver Southern California readers information about their communities. Sappell argued for building “communities of affinity” rather than geography, and focused on multimedia presentations to showcase Times projects, the committee said.
• A “Calendarlive” site, an extension of the Times Thursday Calendar Weekend print edition, will be designed as a destination for personal entertainment choices such as restaurants, movies, theater, concerts and clubs.
• The paper also plans to experiment with pilot projects on “hyper local” coverage in a few, as yet unnamed, communities. Those pages would rely heavily on content such as community calendars, crime statistics, school test scores and neighborhood discussion groups, O’Shea said in an interview.

The last two statements appear to be the most interesting, but execution will be key. Hesitation snd ambivalence could be deadly. At this point newspaper sites really need to integrate tools and content from third parties rather than try and build things in house.

Since the Times undertook this effort last fall, much has changed. Google has formed print newspaper relationships and, more ambitiously, Yahoo! and a consortium of 9 newspaper publishers have pledged to cooperate across a broad range of initiatives for mutual benefit.

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Related: Peter Krasilovsky posts about a new Gannett search initiative. And The Kelsey Group’s Mike Boland (at SEW) rounds up some thinking from various quarters about “hyper-local.”