Changes in The Times

We’ve made several changes to the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times.

Beginning today, you’ll find the contents of Book Review in the new Arts & Books section in Calendar, where there’s a terrific package on books about China in advance of this week’s Olympic Games. The thought-provoking Sunday Opinion pages have moved to the back of Section A, where they appear the other six days of the week. Today’s feature: one woman’s battle against red tape to become a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. And we’ve moved coverage of Southern California’s never-dull real estate market to the expanded Business section, which this week takes a look at whether now, with home prices off their historical highs, is a good time to buy. (For details about other changes we’ve made during the week, see Page A27.)

The paper that you hold in your hands today has fewer sections than last Sunday’s edition. Because of declining revenue, we’ve had to tighten our belts a bit and make changes that reflect these economic realities. Our No. 1 goal, now and always, is to maintain our high standards for you, our readers.

We remain deeply committed to bringing you each day a broad, comprehensive package of news, features and analysis. And we will continue our tradition of investigative, explanatory and narrative journalism. This past week, for example, we broke the news of the death of the prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax case, which riveted the nation after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. On today’s front page, you’ll find the final installment of our stellar five-part series on the enormous cost of fighting wildfires in California and the West. There’s also a moving first-person piece by Beijing correspondent Ching-Ching Ni, who recounts her family history and her ties to China’s sports program on the eve of the Olympics.

The Times has more journalists in more places in Southern California, the state, the nation and the world than any other news organization in the West. In addition to having one of the largest local reporting staffs in the country, last week alone we published stories from Sacramento, San Francisco and Yosemite National Park; Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Seattle and Washington, D.C.; Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri and New York; Cambodia, China, Cuba, Egypt, El Salvador, England, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Macao, Mexico, Pakistan and Serbia.

So though today’s paper has fewer sections, at more than 800 pages it remains the largest Sunday edition of any newspaper in America west of the Mississippi.

And we retain our passion and commitment to providing you with breaking news, enterprise reporting and engaging analysis that you can’t get anywhere else.