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LA-Times

Can the Kindle Save the L.A. Times?

October 23, 2008 by Kirk Biglione

I’ve developed something of a love like/hate relationship with the Los Angeles Times (LAT) over the past decade. I love like the LAT as a news source, but I hate the LAT as a physical product.

It’s been a long downhill slide for the physical edition of the Times since they scrapped the tabloid format Calendar section, then split that section into multiple parts. That change worked out so well they decided to make the same mistake with the Comics. If you’ve ever spent a Sunday afternoon searching for the Business section buried deep in the bowels of the auto classifieds, then you know just how bad the LAT reading experience can be. It’s like a fracking scavenger hunt.

Apparently the LAT unveiled a new design earlier this week. To which I can only say, so what? Each iteration of the paper’s physical design seems to make the news reading experience just a bit worse. Even if this new version of the Times is a huge improvement, it’s still too little too late. The days when I’ll buy a print edition of the LAT are long gone.

Walking out to the curb to pick up a soggy bundle of yesterday’s news seems like an antiquated concept. And yet, that’s exactly what I had been doing until very recently. The sad truth is that my LAT subscription remained active until just a few months ago.

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Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: Amazon, ebooks, Kindle, LA-Times, Newspapers

The LAT Wakes Up, Realizes It Missed A Decade

July 7, 2008 by Kassia Krozser

To wit:

“We’re great about putting out a paper; we’re getting a lot better at putting up a Web site,” [Russ Stanton, editor of the Los Angeles Times] said. “We’re not very good on TV or radio, and we don’t do mobile at all. We need to do all of those things going forward.”

I don’t know about you, but if you’re the editor of a major metropolitan newspaper in mid-2008 and you’re saying any that you’re “getting a lot better an putting up a web site”, then, wow, can we look forward to a 2018 quote to the effect of hey, lookee here, it’s the Facebook!

Newspapers have known for a long time now that the audience is changing. Fifteen years at least; that’s a good amount of notice. Fifteen years ago should have been the start of “what are we going to do next?” conversation. Ten years ago, a time of great experimentation (this period, we recall, was dominated by pointless registration tactics). Five years ago, the online team should have been seamlessly integrated into the editorial team and strong forays into blending the social web with solid news begun.
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Filed Under: Mediacratic, Publishing Tagged With: LA-Times, Newspapers

Why I Hate The Sunday Paper

May 14, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

It’s Sunday morning in Pasadena and my newspaper is sitting on the front lawn, untouched, while I write this story. The sprinklers went off this morning and I’m certain the paper is completely soaked. The delivery person (they don’t make ‘paper boys’ anymore) usually wraps the Times in plastic for just this reason. However, my experience has been that the bags leak just enough that my paper will have turned into a wet mass of newsprint dipped in black ink by the time I get to it.

It’s time for me to proclaimed something that I’ve been feeling for years: I hate the Sunday paper!!! And it’s not just because of the sprinkler thing.

For years now the Times editors have been tinkering with the format of their newspaper, hoping to attract more readers while simultaneously offering advertisers new formats. The result? The Sunday LA Times has turned into a fracking scavenger hunt!

[Read more…] about Why I Hate The Sunday Paper

Filed Under: Mediacratic, Publishing Tagged With: LA-Times, Newspapers

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Previously on Medialoper

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  • Certain Songs #2544: Sugar – “Changes”
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