Message From Sam Zell
Progressive Changes

Partners,

I’m sure by now, you’ve all seen the Orlando Sentinel redesign. Its debut received great coverage from Chicago Tribune, as well as from Wall Street Journal. The Orlando team did a terrific job in launching its new product, and we’re getting great feedback from readers (especially the younger demographic) and advertisers.

The Sentinel’s redesign is one of the more visible changes being made throughout our company, but there are many more you may not know about. So, going forward, I’ll be highlighting success stories from across business units – whether it’s an idea someone brought to fruition, a way someone found to bridge the gap between business units, or a team initiative put into action. We’ll also start posting these kinds of stories on the AFDI page in Triblink (http://triblink.trb/intranet/site/afdi).

Here are a number of ways that your colleagues are advancing our company today:

Top of the Ticket, LA Times’ political blog, is now the 129 top-ranked blog in the world, and the third highest-ranked newspaper politics blog in the country, behind only The New York Time’s Caucus and Washington Post's Trail, both of which are in the top 100. Top of the Ticket received 2.63 million page views in May alone. Even better, the LA Times ad team is now successfully selling ads tied to the Ticket as a worldwide Top 150 blog. Key Players: Andrew Malcolm, Don Frederick, Tony Pierce, Meredith Artley, Juliana Jaoudi

Tribune Interactive just finished rolling out an iPhone compatible template for the newspapers.com. We’re seeing traffic on these iPhone pages, and expect this very specific market will provide unique advertising opportunities as it grows.Key Players: Cyril Jones, Barb Healy, Jeremy Hill, Joe Kelly, Chris Weilemann and Nick Melville

Circling back to Orlando, Karen Pistone initiated the launch of a racing fan guide website (to cover events like NASCAR). Karen did her homework and pitched the idea to the interactive team. The website is up, featured in the travel section, in time for the July ‘08 race in Daytona. (You can see it at orlandosentinel.com/fifthturn.) As a result, our ad sales team now has a new relationship with Miami Speedway. Further, there are plans to incorporate the racing fan guide content into EverythingOrlando.com, a new hyper-local site the team is developing. Key Players: Karen Pistone, Linda Schaible, Rick Tribou, Roger Simmons

Finally, David Martinez at KTLA-TV suggested we compile all of our licensed celebrity video -- hundreds of hours of video from press junket interviews, red carpet premieres, celebrity benefits, celebrity parties, as well as exclusive film trailers and clips, and in-studio interviews – into a website. The LA Times has already been developing solid celebrity websites (Envelope.com, HollywoodBacklot.com), but David’s outreach has brought them together, making the whole stronger than the sum of its parts.

I encourage you all to send in more success stories that reflect how we are going to make Tribune the industry leader on all fronts.

So, I ask you, what have you and your team changed lately?

Sam

talktoSam@tribune.com 

posted by Ed Padgett | ¶ 2:21 PM