No Clear Path Forward for LA Times Seen By OFSers
By Bob Rawitch
Not surprisingly, OFS members discussing how to “fix” the L.A. Times came up with no silver bullet.
At a Sept. 25 Zoom meeting, participants discussed Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s plan to sell up to $75 million in public shares in the company. They also considered other possible options, such as converting the paper to a non-profit entity. (See link below to a video of the Zoom session.)
The one thing about which there was consensus is that to save the paper going forward it needs a vision and a workable business model, both of which would likely require radical changes.
Former business writer Alex Auerbach raised the potential for the paper to be converted to a subscription-based curation service that would draw information from a wide range of high-quality sources.
Fellow former business writer Pat Benson agreed, citing the success of the New York Times product Wirecutter, which provides independent, rigorous and unbiased product reviews.
All agreed that, like the rest of the newspaper industry, The Times was slow to understand, let alone embrace, the Internet, or to recognize the ways the Web would change how its readers would access news and information.
Both former photographer Bob Carey and copy/news editor Saul Daniel’s recalled unsuccessfully pushing the paper to join the digital revolution. Carey emphasized that whatever the Times does going forward, it has to be compatible with cell phones, the ubiquitous tool in particularly young people’s lives.
Bill Drummond, a former Times Metro and Foreign staffer who also worked at NPR and for more than 40 years has been a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, noted the talent and enthusiasm for journalism among his students, and reviewed several local news experiments in the Bay Area.
Regardless of the platform, he said, his students are excited about entering the field, including at the non-profit LocalNewsMatters.org, which was formed from the Bay City News Service in combination with multiple small outlets in Northern California.
The discussion came just prior to the release of a Gallup Poll indicating that only 28% of all Americans trust newspapers, broadcast and radio outlets. Among Republicans, just 8% say they trust the media. In 1976, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the figure was 76%.
Link to a video of the Zoom session: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/OVQ0kO0jbHZOjdT69OgsSOsg42HGVKjR8UrlKIfH8Uiqobd1WxlMHaVznB1hSfHX.kkFrSVcYqlpcv6Fb
Passcode: OFSLA_924