Los Angeles Times Tribune Expands Reach Online

John T. O’ Longhlin, president
Targeted Media and SVP
Marketing, Los Angeles Times

LA Times Wants to Globalize Itself Online

By George McQuade
West Coast Bureau Chief
www.Odwyerpr.com

“Our portfolio, as we capture more of the market, puts us in a better position to market ourselves to both consumers and advertisers by augmenting our portfolio,” said John T. O’ Longhlin, president, Targeted Media and SVP, Marketing, Los Angeles Times. O’ Longhlin was the keynote speaker at a network marketing and pubic relations event at the LA Times auditorium, which included a newsroom tour every 20 minutes. The seventh annual event was sponsored by PRSA-LA, Southern California American Marketing Assn. (SoCal AMA); Direct Marketing Assn. of Southern California (DMAsc) and Women in Technology International (WITI) and held in one of the ‘great buildings of LA history.”

“How do you talk about advertisers in New York with a 120 year old newspaper?” Longhlin asked the audience of mostly marketers and public relations pros. “When we planned our website globalization projects we had to answer four questions:”

• Which Countries should we support? In which order?
• Which languages should we offer? Which should we do first?
• ‘How much content should we offer? How deep should we go?
• Should we just market ourselves on the web? Or should we sell?

“We connect with people not products and we conducted a successful experimental engagement using the LA Film Festival, Book Festival and The Envelope during the Oscars and Emmys season,” he noted.

“We really thinking about an aggregate reach by which you can dive deeper into a segment, or go across a segment in masses if that’s what you need to do, and if you are a consumer we’re going to be your definitive media choice. If you want news, politics, sports, entertainment, we got something for you, so come and send some time with us,” explained O’ Longhlin.

The next day, after the newsroom tour and event, the LA Times Media group made this announcement.

Newspaper industry Veteran Scott McKibben has been named executive vice president, chief revenue officer, for the Los Angeles Times Media Group, filling a job considered key to reviving the company's financial fortunes. The Times has been without a head of ad sales since Dave Murphy left the paper in February.

One LA Times employee, who wished not to be identified, told this writer that folks in the newsroom have been told not to push sales of the Los Angeles Times.

“I’ve heard, unofficially and speaking for me, that some higher ups have said to each other that they should ‘let circulation find its own level.’” This is according to several around here, who say they read it in memo materials that got out.”

The appointment of McKibben is the first major announcement and move by the new Times Publisher Eddy Hartenstein. McKibben, most recently was president and publisher of the Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colorado and vice president of the Central region of Freedom Communications overseeing the Gazette and four other papers. He will report directly to Hartenstein. McKibben, 55, takes over as The Times and other newspapers struggle to reverse sharp slides in ad revenue caused by a slump in the housing industry and the flight of advertisers and readers to the Internet. “We are at a juncture where we have an opportunity to transform the business,” he said in the Los Angeles Times, in reasons for taking the job.

According to The Times, advertising on newspaper websites has been growing, but so far has failed to replace the revenue lost on the print side. In August, Tribune Co., The Time’s Chicago-based parent company, reported a 15 percent drop in second quarter newspaper ad sales.

New York Times Co. said late last month that July ad sales slid 16 percent compared with July 2007. Since leading the buyout that took the company private late last year, Tribune Chief Executive Sam Zell has frequently hunted outside the newspaper industry for important hires, including Hartenstein, who took over as publisher August 18^th after a career in the satellite TV industry.

McKibben said he planed to expand or explore other revenue suources, including even sonsorsihyips, cooperative ad sales with KTLA-TV, the local Tribune-owned station and revenue-sharing opportunities with other local newspapers.

During the tour of the Los Angeles Times newsroom, this writer noticed several changes. Stacks of newspapers, media kits, dictionaries and books have been replaced by more computers, high tech gadgets, high tech monitors and electronic wizardry. But really noticeable were fewer people, almost like visiting the newsroom on a weekend night with a skeleton staff onboard.

Darrell Kunitomi, Public Relations
Representative, LA Times

“The Times right now is changing, it has for several years and it will continue to change,” said Darrell Kunitomi, public relations representative, LA Times, who led the group newsroom tours. “The Media Group will get webbier, the newspaper will change sections, fold them, create new composites; retrain still photographers and reporters to become VJs and use their video reports more and more; and the newspaper will continue to change its look.”

Kunitomi also told this writer that, “The graphics are changing as we speak, including the front page of the future. Don’t be shocked – it’s a new era of new ownership, a new publisher and new editors.”

And yes, survival is a word heard in the halls.

Personally speaking, Kunitomi told us, “I don’t think we are going to disappear, as some have predicted. We are in tectonic times. And those times seem to be changing weekly, as quickly as the earth seems to be warming. We hope we aren’t polar bears, stranded on disappearing ice. I know we have some truly smart folks at the helm. A great organization such as The Times should be one of those companies that will go on long after its original founders have passed from the scene, change its spots, adapt, and survive to prosper and grow. The movies survived the breakup of the studio system. The music business has dealt with synthesizers, vinyl to cds and now file sharing,” he said.

Here’s the best part for PR pros pitching the LA Times and still can’t figure it out. “We still take hard information, images, commentary entertainment, food and sports and fun and put it to newsprint every 24 hours. It might be a traditional, retro way of informing society, but at The Times it is what we know and what we do best. We’re changing. We know we must to survive. And really, we know that,” said Kunitomi.

The Tribune Direct/LA Times event was billed as helping PR Pros learn “what the LA Times is looking for today in news coverage and how it is dealing with current changes in print media.” However, the closest we got to any editors or writers was the distant tour of the Los Angeles Times Newsroom, which was quiet, nearly empty and almost surreal compared to even two or three years ago. For the newspaper business, it might just be the sign of the Times.