Los Angeles Times to Unveil Eye-catching Redesign

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 20, 2006 – To draw readers deeper into its extensive news and entertainment coverage and better serve the diverse Southern California marketplace, the Los Angeles Times has redesigned its two most widely read sections, with an enhanced main news section launching Sunday, Oct. 22, and Sunday Calendar on Oct. 29.

The A section of The Times will sport an arresting new format beginning Oct. 22 aimed at providing a compelling snapshot of the day’s most interesting stories via skybox spotlights and a bolder index on the front page, as well as expanding the use of larger headlines, photographs, color, and information graphics, such as sidebars, back story boxes, maps and diagrams. It also will include the Opinion pages, Monday through Saturday.

Rolling out the following week, a new look and content expansion of Sunday Calendar reflects The Times’ dedication to intensifying coverage of Southern California’s unique entertainment heartbeat, ranging from society events and fashion trends to pop culture and Web discoveries and the rich arts scene.

Sunday Calendar’s two sections – newly renamed “Movies - TV - Style” and “Arts & Music” – will strengthen the focus of The Times’ distinct film and television reporting and arts, books, music and personality coverage, while retaining the editorial excellence that has made it one of the newspaper’s most widely read sections.

Main News Section

“A key goal of the new design is to highlight stories and information,” said Joseph Hutchinson, Los Angeles Times creative director. “We have more tools in the design to differentiate the wide range of stories in the A section. Plus, information-rich display elements provide more entry points to stories and ways to disseminate information quickly so that readers can easily find things of interest to them.”

• Skyboxes – Appearing in the weekend and Sunday editions immediately below the Los Angeles Times flag, skyboxes – a collection of up to three photos, illustrations or custom artwork – will spotlight for readers some of the day’s most interesting stories and features located deeper inside the newspaper.
• Front Page Lead Story and Column One Feature – Special headline treatment, including bolded and capitalized text, will help point readers to the day’s top news story, which appears on the upper right-hand side of the front page. The daily Column One, which showcases a wide variety of unconventional stories, also will feature special treatment, including a color logo, italicized headline, more artwork and photographs.
• Opinion Pages – Because the newspaper’s Opinion pages address a variety of local, state, national and international news, they have been moved to the last two pages of the main news section, Monday through Saturday. They had appeared inside B Section (“California”).

Sunday Calendar Section

“The Sunday Calendar redesign builds on our coverage strengths and allows us to offer readers more robust content that addresses their immediate interests and needs,” said John Montorio, Los Angeles Times associate editor. “It’s part of an evolution – not a revolution – in how we make the paper more useful and accessible to our readers.”

To make navigating the two-part Sunday Calendar section easier for readers, each part will have its own table of contents, and story jumps will be contained within each particular section.

“Movies - TV - Style” will include several new features:

• “The Performance” – This short profile spotlights a film or television character, role, cameo or guest appearance that deserves to be noticed.
• “On The Set” – The action and interactions behind the camera.
• “The Monitor” – This weekly feature will keep up with television the way people really watch it.

Expanded coverage includes:

• “The Smart List” – A highly selective guide to pop culture in the coming week – at the movies, on television and DVD.
• entertainment on the Web – Trends, discoveries and personalities in the online entertainment universe.
• “The Party Page” – A photo-driven full page of Hollywood revelry and the social and philanthropic whirl of Southern California. This replaces “Social Climes.”
• Expanded coverage of just-released DVDs and home entertainment by Times critics and top-tier contributors.

Arts & Music

New arts and music features will include:

• “Heard on the Blogs” – A selective offering of chat and debates about the arts.
• “Drive By” – A through-the-car-window look at the region’s urban landscape, including its out-of-the-ordinary buildings and architectural works in progress.
• “In the Blink of an Eye” – An occasional feature showing a still from a movie or television series containing a notable work of art.
• “In Sight” – An image-driven art and architecture feature showcasing works or installations off the traditional museum and gallery circuit.

About the Los Angeles Times

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times is the largest metropolitan daily newspaper in the country, with a daily readership of nearly 2.2 million and about 3.3 million on Sunday. With its media businesses and affiliates – including latimes.com, TheEnvelope.com, Times Community Newspapers, Recycler Classifieds, Hoy, and California Community News – the Los Angeles Times reaches approximately 7.6 million or 58 percent of all adults in the Southern California marketplace every week.

The Los Angeles Times, which this year marks its 125th anniversary covering Southern California, is part of Tribune Company (NYSE: TRB), one of the country’s leading media companies with businesses in publishing, the Internet and broadcasting. Additional information about the Los Angeles Times is available at www.latimes.com/mediacenter.

Contact:
David Garcia
213-237-4715
david.garcia@latimes.com