Times’ Outdoors Section Set for Tuesday Launch

From a Times Staff Writer

The Los Angeles Times on Tuesday will launch Outdoors, a new weekly section about nature, outdoor recreation and the environment in Southern California and the West.

Each week, Outdoors will offer a mix of stories, essays and service information on a wide range of topics of interest to a diverse community of outdoors enthusiasts.

In the first few issues, readers will plummet down Sierra creeks with young kayakers, discover whether wildfires have fried their favorite campsites, learn about the slickest board bottoms and track wild condors with writer George Plimpton.

“Through compelling stories written with an insider’s authority, we want to draw together the spectrum of people who relish the outdoors and care about the environment,” said Outdoors Editor Bob Sipchen, an 18-year Times veteran who shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.

“The section,” he added, “will exult in a Southern California truism: Here it is possible, on a single day, to ski fresh powder in the morning, surf big waves as the sun sets and -- to expand the idea -- pause along the way to mountain-bike a technical single track and nymph for scrappy trout in a wilderness stream.”

The introduction of Outdoors is part of a broader effort by The Times to overhaul its features sections. In 2002, the newspaper began a two-year program to revitalize the daily, weekend and Sunday Calendar sections, as well as the Food and Health sections. In April, The Times introduced the Home section.

The launch of a new section on fashion and beauty has been rescheduled for 2004.

The Times, owned by Tribune Co., has the largest circulation of any metropolitan daily in the country. The newspaper publishes five regional editions covering the Los Angeles metropolitan area, Orange and Ventura counties, the San Fernando Valley and the Inland Empire. It also publishes a national edition.