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Editorial
L.A. Times and Steve Lopez Hit It Out of the Park
Throughout the nation, major metropolitan daily newspapers are having to rethink themselves. Circulation in that category of newspaper has declined steadily since the 1960s, forcing ongoing self examination. Problems have only increased with the presence of the web. There's a good argument to be made that these newspapers have ever-increasing readership, since 47.3 million people visited newspaper websites just in September, the most ever, but there's no denying the print product's decline. The Los Angeles Times lost almost 4% in circulation since last year, putting it about in the middle of the pack of the top 10 dailies in the nation. The Houston Chronicle dropped about 8% and USA Today was down a half a percent.
Many daily newspapers have tried desperate measures to stanch the flow, which started long before the Internet. "Total market coverage" editions, delivered unrequested to every house in targeted neighborhoods, were the rage for a while. Newspapers cut expenses to make up the losses, slicing circulation staffs, editorial staffs, length of stories, page size and any number of painful efforts.
Self examination by any newspaper, and any business, is usually a productive process, even if there are missteps along the way, and it has been so with the newspaper industry as well. In the end it turns out that the solution to declining daily newspaper readership is elegant and soul-nourishing: Tell a good story, and the readers will come.
The Los Angeles Times has been bolstered by that phenomenon several times in the past few years. Riveting the community most recently was the experiential series in which columnist Steve Lopez spent a week on Skid Row and wrote about it every day he was there. Last year the stunning investigative series exposing appalling medical conditions at King/Drew hospital caused widespread outrage, and the beginning of possible solutions to problems of King/Drew.
The outcome at King/Drew is by no means certain, but the media, led by an extraordinarily tenacious and thorough effort by the Times, made addressing the decades-long problem unavoidable. The electronic media then did what it does far too often: steal from the Times and other print media to create the content of its news, but it also helped spread the word.
People Who Care
Both series (as well as an in-depth investigation into Wal-Mart's business practices, which garnered coverage from media far beyond Los Angeles) were well thought through, insightful, informative, important to the community and compellingly written. When the series are this good, some people get up early to grab the paper off the porch. Others snap up papers from news racks. The market is people who care, those who want to understand how their world works, more than just seven seconds on the six o'clock news. Readers got solid, reliable information from well tested sources, not rumors or summaries.
The readers were drawn to these series because they were so, well, new. So local. So "us." People couldn't wait to see what was next. Those are the kinds of readers newspapers have the opportunity to garner.
Though Skid Row is only one of his ongoing subjects, Steve Lopez has been writing movingly about it for some time, telling us the story of a Juilliard-trained violinist named Nathaniel who lives on the streets, plagued by currently insurmountable internal demons. After our sensibilities were raised by Lopez's description of Nathaniel's life, we watched in horror as Hurricane Katrina split open the poverty-stricken belly of New Orleans' Ninth Ward. We witnessed what looked like people from the worst slums of the most impoverished nations climb their painful way into the camera's eye and public consciousness. It didn't take long before a sickening realization seeped into our pores: Poverty in America is much greater than most of us realized, and it exists in every big city, not just devastated New Orleans.
Then came Lopez's week on Skid Row. It was hard to find someone who hadn't read each day's piece or heard about it and intended to read it. We found no one who wasn't moved by what they read. Public officials are responding with what we hope are concrete actions. Like King/Drew, there is no easy solution, but as a result of a newspaper series, serious action is underway.
Breaking the Rules
The Los Angeles Times made some decisions that are not obvious to the casual reader, ones that put in a starring role Lopez's extraordinary writing skills, his judgment, his eye, his heart. The Times editors, led by new editor, Dean Baquet, broke some unwritten rules to give the story the play it deserved. As they did so, perhaps they forged one new way to bring readers back to major metropolitan daily newspaper readership.
Shock of all shocks, they put a personal column on the front page of one of the nation's four great newspapers. Opinion is supposed to be banned from that space. First-person accounts are never there, even when the editors adjust the format, as they do sometimes to display long-term investigative pieces such as King/Drew. Front-page space is real estate that is treated with reverence in newsrooms.
Lopez's Skid Row series was written in the first person. It was laid out "ragged right" (an uneven border on the right side of the column, signaling a personal account). A couple of times this "soft" news was placed above the fold, which is even more precious real estate, adding insult to injury for those too rigid to see the beauty and necessity of the decision. The move broke arcane and restrictive customs adhered to in almost military style by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. These papers take themselves very, very seriously, and it is virtually unheard of to mess with the front page, the altar of serious news.
The Times' editors knew the series was special, and they treated it as such, custom be damned. In a recent public discussion hosted by the organization Zócalo, Baquet said he intended the series to be a "shot across the bow" indicating important changes to come at the Times.
Baquet and his editors need to do more of the same. They need to stay out of the box previous editors had put the paper in, a box created by an historic desire to impress other journalists, usually those on the East Coast. They need to stay focused on stories that can be told about Los Angeles.
We acknowledge that this new style of major metropolitan daily newspaper is not an easy phenomenon to create. They will need the will to do it, the writers, the subjects and more. But the Lopez series and its treatment by the Times is a standard to shoot for, and that could turn around a declining print-product readership - in addition to improving the community.
We repeat: Tell a good story, and the readers will come.
page 4, 11/14/2005
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to redistribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
Many daily newspapers have tried desperate measures to stanch the flow, which started long before the Internet. "Total market coverage" editions, delivered unrequested to every house in targeted neighborhoods, were the rage for a while. Newspapers cut expenses to make up the losses, slicing circulation staffs, editorial staffs, length of stories, page size and any number of painful efforts.
Self examination by any newspaper, and any business, is usually a productive process, even if there are missteps along the way, and it has been so with the newspaper industry as well. In the end it turns out that the solution to declining daily newspaper readership is elegant and soul-nourishing: Tell a good story, and the readers will come.
The Los Angeles Times has been bolstered by that phenomenon several times in the past few years. Riveting the community most recently was the experiential series in which columnist Steve Lopez spent a week on Skid Row and wrote about it every day he was there. Last year the stunning investigative series exposing appalling medical conditions at King/Drew hospital caused widespread outrage, and the beginning of possible solutions to problems of King/Drew.
The outcome at King/Drew is by no means certain, but the media, led by an extraordinarily tenacious and thorough effort by the Times, made addressing the decades-long problem unavoidable. The electronic media then did what it does far too often: steal from the Times and other print media to create the content of its news, but it also helped spread the word.
People Who Care
Both series (as well as an in-depth investigation into Wal-Mart's business practices, which garnered coverage from media far beyond Los Angeles) were well thought through, insightful, informative, important to the community and compellingly written. When the series are this good, some people get up early to grab the paper off the porch. Others snap up papers from news racks. The market is people who care, those who want to understand how their world works, more than just seven seconds on the six o'clock news. Readers got solid, reliable information from well tested sources, not rumors or summaries.
The readers were drawn to these series because they were so, well, new. So local. So "us." People couldn't wait to see what was next. Those are the kinds of readers newspapers have the opportunity to garner.
Though Skid Row is only one of his ongoing subjects, Steve Lopez has been writing movingly about it for some time, telling us the story of a Juilliard-trained violinist named Nathaniel who lives on the streets, plagued by currently insurmountable internal demons. After our sensibilities were raised by Lopez's description of Nathaniel's life, we watched in horror as Hurricane Katrina split open the poverty-stricken belly of New Orleans' Ninth Ward. We witnessed what looked like people from the worst slums of the most impoverished nations climb their painful way into the camera's eye and public consciousness. It didn't take long before a sickening realization seeped into our pores: Poverty in America is much greater than most of us realized, and it exists in every big city, not just devastated New Orleans.
Then came Lopez's week on Skid Row. It was hard to find someone who hadn't read each day's piece or heard about it and intended to read it. We found no one who wasn't moved by what they read. Public officials are responding with what we hope are concrete actions. Like King/Drew, there is no easy solution, but as a result of a newspaper series, serious action is underway.
Breaking the Rules
The Los Angeles Times made some decisions that are not obvious to the casual reader, ones that put in a starring role Lopez's extraordinary writing skills, his judgment, his eye, his heart. The Times editors, led by new editor, Dean Baquet, broke some unwritten rules to give the story the play it deserved. As they did so, perhaps they forged one new way to bring readers back to major metropolitan daily newspaper readership.
Shock of all shocks, they put a personal column on the front page of one of the nation's four great newspapers. Opinion is supposed to be banned from that space. First-person accounts are never there, even when the editors adjust the format, as they do sometimes to display long-term investigative pieces such as King/Drew. Front-page space is real estate that is treated with reverence in newsrooms.
Lopez's Skid Row series was written in the first person. It was laid out "ragged right" (an uneven border on the right side of the column, signaling a personal account). A couple of times this "soft" news was placed above the fold, which is even more precious real estate, adding insult to injury for those too rigid to see the beauty and necessity of the decision. The move broke arcane and restrictive customs adhered to in almost military style by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. These papers take themselves very, very seriously, and it is virtually unheard of to mess with the front page, the altar of serious news.
The Times' editors knew the series was special, and they treated it as such, custom be damned. In a recent public discussion hosted by the organization Zócalo, Baquet said he intended the series to be a "shot across the bow" indicating important changes to come at the Times.
Baquet and his editors need to do more of the same. They need to stay out of the box previous editors had put the paper in, a box created by an historic desire to impress other journalists, usually those on the East Coast. They need to stay focused on stories that can be told about Los Angeles.
We acknowledge that this new style of major metropolitan daily newspaper is not an easy phenomenon to create. They will need the will to do it, the writers, the subjects and more. But the Lopez series and its treatment by the Times is a standard to shoot for, and that could turn around a declining print-product readership - in addition to improving the community.
We repeat: Tell a good story, and the readers will come.
page 4, 11/14/2005
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to redistribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
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