L.A. Times to End Publication of Our Times Sections

The Los Angeles Times said Wednesday it will close its 14 Our Times community news sections to refocus news coverage on bigger regional stories and improve financial performance. Critics said the move marked a retreat from the paper’s effort to cover underserved areas.

The Times launched the sections in such communities as Brea, Santa Monica and Montebello/Pico Rivera starting two years ago in an effort to better report neighborhood issues and increase circulation.

But their neighborhood focus, while appealing to local communities, did not fit the broader coverage of the 1.1 million-circulation newspaper, The Times said. The closure of the publications, which reported everything from the police blotter to school board meetings, will take place this week and will leave 125 reporters and editors without jobs.

Additionally, The Times cut 45 jobs as part of a reorganization of its advertising department.

In making the announcement, Times Publisher John Puerner said the sections had failed “to attract the readership and advertising to make them financially successful.”

John S. Carroll, editor of The Times, said that the closure also represents a shift in Times strategy that better plays to the newspaper’s ability to cover larger regional, national and international issues.

“We will still cover the major local stories, but we’ll leave the block-by-block coverage of neighborhoods to others,” Carroll said.

Some community members questioned the wisdom of what they saw as an abandonment of local news, especially in areas such as the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles, which they contend rarely gets coverage in larger publications or broadcast media.

Lisa Talley-Moore of Inglewood’s Coalition of Drug and Violence Prevention said the Our Times edition that circulated in Inglewood gained a wide following in the city’s African American community and was well-respected.

“It will be a tremendous void. The residents of Inglewood rely on that section,” Talley-Moore said.

“People here will ask why The Times can’t continue to afford to run that section,” Talley-Moore said. “They should have stayed with it a while longer.”

“Our Times was a reflection of the people, places and things that go on in these communities that often go unnoticed,” said Michael Martinez, city editor of the Crenshaw Our Times.

Carroll said he realized the publications would be missed by some readers, but that “ultimately these intensely local newspapers would weaken The Times both in journalism and as a business because of how they drained resources.”

Both Carroll and Puerner characterized the Our Times venture as an experiment that the company had hoped would build readership and advertising, but that had failed. Now, they said, it makes more sense to redirect those resources into other endeavors, including the newspaper’s new Work Place pages published Sundays and Tech Times, a weekly personal technology section that will be launched next month. They also plan to provide more space for local news in The Times.

The new features reflect the newspaper’s long-held preference for dividing coverage by topic rather than by geography, said Loren Ghiglione, director of USC’s School of Journalism. He added that the neighborhood publications were not strong journalistically but nonetheless were important sources of information and made competing news media work harder.

The Times will continue to publish separate editions in Orange County, the San Fernando Valley, Ventura County and the Inland Empire.

“We are taking the rest of this year to plan our metro zoning and what our news plan should be,” Puerner said. “We have no intent of withdrawing from any of the geography we serve.”

Times officials declined to say how much money the reductions would save.

The cutbacks of the Our Times section and 45 layoffs in the paper’s advertising department, also announced Wednesday, reflect efforts by The Times to improve its profitability in the aftermath of the $6.8-billion acquisition of the newspaper and its parent company, Times Mirror Co., by Chicago-based Tribune Co.

In announcing the layoffs to the advertising staff, John McKeon, senior vice president of advertising, said The Times’ financial performance has significantly lagged behind its industry peer group, which includes such large newspapers as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune.

The Los Angeles Times’ operating profit in 1999 was 16%, compared with 23% for its peer group, McKeon said.

Moreover, its advertising cost-to-revenue ratio--a key measure of newspaper profitability--was 5.5% compared with 4.5% for its peer group. Each percentage point reduction in that ratio adds about $10 million to the publication’s operating profit. The Times’ annual revenue is about $1 billion.

The cuts in advertising jobs are a result of The Times folding its regional advertising division back into the main advertising department.

The former structure divided account executives by region rather than by advertising categories such as retailing. McKeon said the new organization should eliminate cases in which Times representatives fight over accounts rather than cooperate to win new accounts.

The conflicts apparently became more apparent as advertising revenue growth slowed this year to 5% from 7% in 1999.

The cutbacks should help improve profit at The Times, said Steven Barlow, an analyst with Credit Suisse First Boston in New York.

Our Times sections in the following cities were eliminated: Brea, Conejo, Crenshaw, Fullerton, Irvine, Laguna Hills, Mission Viejo, Montebello/Pico Rivera, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Clarita, Santa Monica, Sherman Oaks, Simi Valley and West Ventura.

The Times will continue to publish the San Gabriel Valley Weekly, South Bay Weekly, Westside Weekly, Costa Mesa/Newport Beach Daily Pilot, Huntington Beach Independent, Burbank Leader, Foothill Leader and the Glendale News-Press.