Los Angeles Times Pressmens 20 Year Club: January 2007

Los Angeles Times Pressmens 20 Year Club

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

The Eagle Has Landed!

From: McClearyLaFrance, Kim
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 1:27 PM
To: zzAll LATimes Employees
Subject: The Eagle Has Landed

The Eagle Has Landed!

Where's the Times beloved eagle?

Has it headed south to Long Beach for the L.A. Times Travel and Adventure Show?

Or, has it departed for warmer, more exotic destinations on the Mexican Riviera?

For the first time since 1935, this Times icon has temporarily left the Globe Lobby and is perched at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Gardens in San Marino. The eagle and selected Times artifacts are on loan to The Huntington and will be part of a new exhibit entitled "First Freedoms: The Los Angeles Times and the Right to a Free Press: 1881-2006" which will be open to the public from February 10 - June 3, 2007.

Times employees may see the exhibit with a special 2-for-1 adult admission offered by The Huntington during regular business hours. Just show your identification badge at the ticket window and enjoy.

Kim McCleary La France
Public Affairs

For general information and driving instructions, please visit www.huntington.org.

Chandler Buyout Offer Expires Today UPDATE

The Chandler Trusts, which own a 20% stake in Tribune, are still in “ongoing talks” with the special committee reviewing offers for Tribune, a person familiar with the Chandlers’ thinking said. No new deadline has been set, this person said.

Chicago Business

Labels: Chandlers, Chicago, Tribune Company

National Labor Relations Board Hearing

January 31, 2007

NLRB Hearing Update

The NLRB hearing to determine if a rerun election is necessary will be held starting Thursday, February 15. This date was mutually agreed upon between the union, company and NLRB.

As always, we will keep you fully informed of all developments.

Mark

Chandler Buyout Offer Expires Today

The Chandler family buyout offer for the Tribune Company is set to expire today at 5:00 p.m., with acceptance unlikely. The Chandler family is interested in purchasing the Tribune’s eleven newspapers, and taking them private. The twenty-three television stations would be spun off, under the family deal.

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch has joined the Chandler family, so office functions of the New York Post could be merged with Newsday, but the offer appears to be doomed, as 80 percent of shareholder votes are needed to complete the sale. The number two investor, McCormick Tribune Foundation isn’t likely to approve the Chandler offer.

Los Angeles Times Blogs Today

Here's a sampling of the blogs from the Los Angeles Times, take the jump and see what the online edition has to offer. And leave a comment or two with your reactions.

Items of local interest Opinion LA

Rootkits Be Gone Bit Player

Talking With: Ned Colletti, Part II Blue Notes

Learning more about the Expo Line Bottleneck Blog

Ears Wide Open: Sky Parade and the Minor Canon Buzz Bands

One less rose on KTLA's parade float Channel Island

Midterm grades are in Cliptomaniac

Finally! Grab Oscar by the throat! (You know you want to) Gold Derby

"Pan" Dolce The Kinseygram

KCAL Feed Game Thread - Lakers vs. Knicks Lakers Blog

A Gambling Budget for Mr. Celine Dion The Moveable Buffet

shopping in a small world Notes from the Front Line

All-Star Weekend Groupie Contest Overtime

Beware The Flying Men Political Muscle

Let them eat ... bread! Postcards From Paris

They came...to vent. School Me

Andre Leon Talley: Big Man on Carpet Styles and Scenes

Labels: Blogosphere, Blogs, Los Angeles Times, Online

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Quote from a CEO

"I've not seen an effective manager or leader who can't spend some fraction of time down in the trenches. If they don't do that, they get out of touch with reality, and their whole thought and management process becomes abstract and disconnected."

--Jess Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com

ONLINE NEWSPAPER BLOG TRAFFIC GROWS 210 PERCENT

According to Nielsen NetRatings, online newspaper blog traffic has increased 210% from a year ago. So it comes as no surprise most online newspapers are devoting more resources to blogs, the readers love the interaction with the writers. Not sure the writers really want to hear from the readers, but reader comments can be left for everyone to read.

Labels: Blogs, Los Angeles Times, Nielsen NetRatings, Online

Peninsula Press Club: Chron's sfgate.com losing ground

www.latimespressmen.com

Don't let the name fool you, this site was created for and is open to everyone. Drop by for a visit, help us make this site a success.

LATimes Travel and Adventure Show

Find life-altering vacation ideas at the Los Angeles Times Travel & Adventure Show, February 10th and 11th at the Long Beach Convention Center. From exotic safaris to scuba diving to exploring America, this one-of-a-kind event is where you’ll find thousands of amazing destinations and resorts.

Attend expert travel seminars featuring Rick Steves and Huell Howser, win trip giveaways, enjoy cultural entertainment…

Source LA Times Web Manage

Tuesday Chuckle

The only cow in a small town in Arkansas stopped giving milk. The people did some research and found they could buy a cow up in Antigo, Wisconsin, for $200.00.

They bought the cow from Wisconsin and the cow was wonderful. It produced lots of milk all of the time, and the people were pleased and very happy.

They decided to acquire a bull to mate with the cow and produce more cows like it. They would never have to worry about their milk supply again.

They bought a bull and put it in the pasture with their beloved cow. However, whenever the bull came close to the cow, the cow would move away. No matter what approach the bull tried, the cow would move away from the bull and he could not succeed in his quest.

The people were very upset and decided to ask the Vet, who was very wise, what to do. They told the Vet what was happening.

"Whenever the bull approaches our cow, she moves away. If he approaches from the back, she moves forward. When he approaches her from the front, she backs off.
An approach from the side and she walks away to the other side."

The Vet thinks about this for a minute and asked, "Did you buy this cow in Wisconsin ?"

The people were dumbfounded, since they had never mentioned where they bought the cow.

"You are truly a wise Vet," they said.

"How did you know we got the cow in Wisconsin ?"

The vet replied with a distant look in his eyes.

"My wife is from Wisconsin!"

LAT answers with a memo of its own

Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, bucks up the troops with a go-get-em memo.

Read the memo at LAObserved

Labels: Doyle McManus, LAObserved, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times Blogs

Eight additional Los Angeles Times blogs have been added to our list of Times Blogs, I’m certain one if not most of the blogs will have something of interest for everyone.

The blogs links can be viewed by clicking here, or scroll down and you can access all the Times blogs from here.

Labels: Blogs, Los Angeles Times

Dean Baquet Hired by New York Times

Former Los Angeles Times editor, Dean Baquet, is returning to the New York Times as chief of its Washington bureau. He was forced out after clashing with the newspaper's parent company, Tribune Co., over job cuts.

Labels: Dean Baquet, Los Angeles Times, New York Times

Message From Robertson Barrett

Folks,

As David discussed in his note earlier today, we have a number of new online products coming down the pike over the next several months as part of The Times’ new multimedia push. The first of these, My LATimes, is available today.

My LATimes (MyLATimes) is a new section of latimes.com designed to offer a faster, easier and more flexible way to view LA Times stories and content from a select group of online news sites recommended by Times editors -- all on one Web page, using a fast-growing technology called Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

The idea for My LATimes came from a gap we saw in the RSS reader market. While companies like Yahoo, AOL and Google have offered RSS readers for some time, we felt that these products were designed for the tech crowd. There isn’t much out there to let the larger audience -- including Times readers -- pick and choose their sources to create their own news Web page. Other major newspapers have recently developed RSS readers, but these tend to offer a poor user experience (e.g., slow to load, confusing to use, etc.). We also felt that other newspapers were too hesitant to suggest other sources on the Web in addition to their own content. But we think our editors have great knowledge of additional sources of information that complement our own content, so why not also be guides to our readers?

To support the launch of My LATimes, we’ll let online users subscribe to The Times content from any article page on latimes.com, and we’ll be implementing an improved site registration process to make it easier to sign up. Going forward, we’ll incorporate suggestions from Web users and the newsroom to improve and streamline My LATimes. At least as important, we’ll showcase the more frequent story feeds coming from the newsroom as we beef up our breaking news operation across the paper.

Please join me in congratulating the team that built My LATimes on a job well done: Inger Lund, Steven Lee, Dari Yerushalmi, Clint Stephenson, Mike Castelvecchi, Mike Niedermeier, Rey Castillo, Mae Tuck, Tim Bruesehoff, Joel Sappell and Jason Oberfest. They put together the coolest news feed service on the Web and have taken us one step further toward our goal of making The Times a multimedia company for the current and next generations of news and information consumers.

All best,

Rob Barrett

Robertson Barrett
VP/GM, Interactive

Labels: Los Angeles Times, MyLATimes, Robertson Barrett

Left in the Dark at Work

If your wondering why I post messages from the movers and shakers at the Los Angeles Times and Tribune Company, its for the benefit of my fellow employees that do not have access to company emails.

Last week I reported a concern for the safety of the Olympic Facility, the plant could have been taken offline by a disgruntled person, and the lapse in security was closed almost immediately by Greg Malcolm, yet I’m not trusted with company email.

What is so secret with the company email system that long term employees, like myself, can not be trusted having access to important messages?

When the Times had a contest for Dodgers tickets, the majority of Operations Employees had no way of entering their names for the free tickets, how does this make the employees feel, left out.

The Spring Street Project requested input from Los Angeles Times Employees, yet, if you did not have an internal email address, you could not submit your ideas. We were given an email address to submit our ideas three days before the project ended, but by that time, the workers in the pressroom knew our input was not wanted.

If you run a search of the Tribune directory for myself (Edward Padgett) you will note I have no email address. I have attempted to edit using my personal email address without success.

Many of my co-workers have no clue whom David Hiller, James O’Shea, or Dennis FitzSimons could be, and I’m not mad at them. I have no clue whom the quarterbacks are for this Sunday’s Football game.

Navigating the Times Online Edition

Last week I was grumbling about how difficult I found navigating the Los Angeles Times homepage was, an alert reader pointed out the Times site map, and was I pleased to find everything I needed in one location.

Odd how things right in front of me are so hard to see.

Labels: LATimes.com, Los Angeles Times, Navigating

James O'Shea's address to Times staff

Following is the text of prepared remarks by Los Angeles Editor James E. O'Shea to Times staff

Link to address on latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-ex-textoshea24jan25,1,7397635.story

With our industry in turmoil, our company for sale and our futures uncertain, it's easy to forget that journalism is a great calling. Sure we all face daunting challenges but we still have interesting jobs.

We meet fascinating people and publish a newspaper every day that tells people stories, informs, entertains and enlightens.

We anger people, make them laugh and keep a watchful eye on the institutions created to serve them. Could it get any better? Yes. And it is about to.

Today I am going to outline how the Los Angeles Times is going to transform itself from being a great newspaper to becoming an awesome, relentless, powerful story-telling machine online and in print.

The genesis for this, of course, is the Spring Street project launched by my predecessor and friend, Dean Baquet.

Over the last several months, a group of your colleagues, editors and reporters from this newsroom, fanned out across the country and the world to interview some of the world's best minds and organizations trying to figure out how newspapers should adapt to thrive in this brave new universe.

The project's initial goal was to assess how we can build readership both online and in the newspaper.

But the group soon decided that the Los Angeles Times needed to focus urgently on our online efforts and then deal with newspaper issues by building on the substantial body of information we already possess on newspaper readership.

The Spring Street group's conclusion about our progress online is brutally honest and it doesn't paint a pretty picture. We're woefully behind.

I know that our natural inclination as journalists is to ask why. Who is responsible, whose fault is it, who is to blame?

And the answer to that question is: It's everyone's fault.

Every editor, reporter, photographer, artist, everyone who works here everyone who is in this room and everyone who is not here.

Everyone who has ever come up with an excuse as to why we can't do something new and different, it is your fault just as much as anyone's.

I am new to this newsroom.

As I said in my initial remarks last November, I came here because I thought I could help. And the best way for me to help is to tell you the truth.

This is an excellent newsroom teeming with talent, integrity and ambition. It is a paragon of journalistic excellence. We have good strong ethics and solid standards.

But the newsroom can also be a cold, defensive, insular and conservative place, plagued by a bunker mentality that hides behind tradition and treats change as a threat.

I know there are reasons for this caution. The Willes era; the Staples Center; a determination to maintain the legacy of Otis Chandler. But we can't -- and I won't -- let those motives become roadblocks to overcoming our problems, and we have some.

We've all heard about our readership troubles and the dangers they pose to our future so I won't belabor that. But let me take a few moments to share some alarming data on our finances.

As an organization and a business, we are in a fight to recoup threatened revenue that finances our newsgathering.

Ad revenue across the board is under challenge but let me share just one category to demonstrate how fast our world is changing and the dimensions of this changing financial dynamic.

In 2004, automotive print advertising at the Los Angeles Times totaled $102 million. And what will it be this year? $55 million.

That is $47 million gone, unavailable to pay salaries and expenses. We made some of that up online. Online auto classified in 2004 totaled only $7 million. But by 2007, it climbed to $31 million, or $24 million up. But notice what is happening here – we lost $47 million in print and only recovered $24 million online. For every $2 we lost, we are recouping only about $1.

The story is similar in other areas. Some categories, such as real estate, are doing well but it is just a matter of time that it too will go south unless we can build online readership faster while keeping print readers. We have to get better.

At this rate, those double-digit profit margins everyone cites will be single digits and then be gone.

Now the truth is there are all kinds of reasons for that decline. Delving into them would be a great MBA thesis at the Harvard Business School.

But we can't hide from the fact that smart competitors such as Google and Craigslist are stealing readers and advertisers from us through innovative strategies that are undermining the business model we've relied on for decades.

As many in this room have painfully discovered in their 401K statements, these developments are threatening the value of our stock portfolios. Equally significant, they are threatening the durability of crucial circulation and advertising revenues that enable us to effectively provide the news to a large and diverse audience.

Thanks to those revenues, we provide to citizens of this city, state, nation and world a vibrant great newspaper at a cost almost anyone can afford, 50 cents. Name me anything you can buy today for 50 cents.

If we don't help reverse these revenue trends, we will not be able to cost-effectively provide the news -- the daily bread of democracy. The stakes are high.

So what are we going to do about it?

Number One: By working with our online colleagues, we are going to integrate our online and print newsrooms to become the best news gathering organization in the world, giving readers who live in Southern California the best source of locally-edited news they can get anywhere.

During my initial weeks as editor, I had lunch with all of my direct reports and asked them about their futures and their aspirations.

One of them, Joel Sappell, a great editor who has done path-breaking work at latimes.com during a period of immense challenge, told me he would like to return to the editing of projects.

We all know that Joel is hands-down one of the best projects editors in the country. He built the substantial body of work that is now the foundation for latimes.com upon which we can build a journalistic fortress.

He is going to return to a projects role in the newsroom where he can capitalize on his expertise to create and edit projects for the paper and enhance them for the web, a job he is uniquely positioned to do.

Since you really can't replace a talent like Joel, I am creating a new job, one, by the way, that was recommended by the Spring Street Group, the Special Editor for Innovation and I am naming Russ Stanton to that job.

As we all know, Russ, who currently runs our business coverage, is an extremely talented editor and leader, a journalist of impeccable standards and consummate skill.

He will report directly to the editor of the newspaper and he will create and lead the integrated newsroom into the brave new world we want to chart.

Russ has my complete and total support. Helping him is helping me; helping Russ is helping yourself.

I can guarantee you that Russ is not going to ask you to do anything that will diminish the integrity of this newspaper or this newsroom.

Our values, our dedication to high-quality, locally edited journalism is our greatest asset. It is the thing that distinguishes us from the prattle and rabble on the Internet and Russ will protect our integrity zealously.

But he will also challenge you. By virtue of its lightning speed and undisciplined nature, the Internet poses unique challenges to the way we practice journalism. Change is coming; it has to.

One of Russ's first assignments is to set up a training regimen for everyone in the newsroom to develop an expertise on the Internet and become savvy multi-media journalists.

A whole new world in out there -- video, photo galleries, chat rooms, landing pages. And to disprove the adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, I am going to be one of his first students. This training is mandatory for everyone.

Currently we have a newspaper staff and an latimes.com staff. No more. From now on, there are no two staffs, there is just one. And we will function as one. One of Russ's first jobs will be to help set up that newsroom. Leo Wolinsky is already working on a plan and details will be coming soon.

Latimes.com will become our primary vehicle for breaking news 24 hours a day. Reporters now enter the newsroom and tell editors what kind of a story they will write for the newspaper the next day.

Then -- we tend to think what can we do for the Internet, as if it were some kind of journalistic orphan.

That kind of thinking must change if we want to remain competitive.

We need to enter the newsroom and think about how we are going to break news on the Internet.

And then what we are going to do that will be different for the newspaper, which will become an even stronger vehicle for tightly-written context, analysis, interpretation and expertise. There is no better example of that than this morning front page story by John Horn and Gina Piccalo's piece on the Oscar's, a sohpisticaed analysis of the international forces driving the decisions of the judges.

By its inclusive nature, the Internet is massive. Through latimes.com, we can give readers our story, our databases, access to our sources -- when appropriate, access to our reporters, our editors, our thinking. It is our journalistic reservoir.

The newspaper is the edited medium, the place where we make choices about what is crucial to a story and what is not, where we use our sources and expertise to make editorial decisions that save our readers time, that capitalize on our journalistic experience and expertise to help people negotiate a tricky and confusing world, where we focus on the personalities behind the news and where we exercise literary and journalistic discipline to tell people what we think they need to know and not necessarily everything that we as journalists know about a subject.

Just as a blog is not a God-given right to inflict ignorance on an unsuspecting public, there's no journalistic birthright for print reporters to write an 80 inch story when 30 inches will do.

The newspaper is the medium in which we must use editing and journalistic discipline to channel that online reservoir and funnel it into a pipeline that leads to our reader's doorsteps.

Although I have the highest confidence in Russ, I am not going to overburden him with the task of doing all of this alone. Online journalism poses huge issues for the newsroom.

The standards for online news are different from the newspaper; the placement of ads is different, too. What is unacceptable in one medium is standard practice in another.

The newsroom must weigh in on these issues. To help Russ I am going to set up a working group of journalists from the newsroom to grapple with these issues and recommend ways to move forward without compromising our journalistic integrity but also in ways that recognize the brave new world we face.

We need new standards for what we will publish online that preserves our greatest asset – the integrity of our newspaper.

I am going to establish a second working group from the newsroom to help me with another major challenge we face, redesigning the print newspaper to make it an effective backbone for latimes.com.

Sometime this fall, the Los Angeles Times, like every other major paper including the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and others, will adapt a 48-inch press web that will create a newspaper that will be slightly narrower than the one we currently publish.

There is no stopping this conversion. The entire industry is moving that way. Even if we were not going to make any newsroom changes, the new press web width would probably require a redesign.

This time, though, we are going to do a real redesign, one that questions and challenges every section of the newspaper, a redesign that relates individual sections to the newspaper as a whole.

This effort will come from within the newsroom. We will lead it, but we will also include in our working group some thoughtful colleagues from outside the newsroom, people who have expertise and experience in areas unfamiliar to journalists.

Ideally I would like to take a year to rethink everything we do. But we don't have the luxury of that much time. Innovation is something we have to do in the newspaper every day. It is an ongoing process.

So we probably will do a phased redesign that will play out over the next year. The redesign working group will work this out.

I know this all sounds pretty scary. We have to think about doing things differently and in ways that involve some journalistic risk that should make us all a little uncomfortable.

But there's nothing wrong with facing challenges that make us uncomfortable. That's healthy. Being uncomfortable but being in the game is a lot better than sitting on the sidelines, comfortable but out of the game.

So I urge everyone to venture outside our comfort zones but also to think about the opportunities the online world presents for new and powerful means of storytelling.

Some of the techniques we must perfect already are available on latimes.com. Look at the intriguing storytelling Joel did with the Altered Oceans and Lifeline series.

In the features area, we are about to unveil a new Travel section that was developed in conjunction with the travel site on latimes.com. The new Travel package focuses on familiar destinations that are popular with readers in Southern California, such as London, but it also places more emphasis on destinations closer to home, such as San Diego or Las Vegas.

It takes advantage of the superior writing, editing, photography and graphics we have in the print newspaper.

But it also features many of the strengths available from the Internet, such as the ability to interact with readers, helping them book trips to the places they are reading about.

This mixture of print, online and commerce has never been done here.

There's also the new interactive web feature MyLAtimes, a free, custom news feed service that gives readers a faster, easier more flexible way to get content that is important to them.

And we've just hired Mary Kay Schilling to be the editor of both a print and online CalanderLive designed to become the go to destination for local personal entertainment.

Those steps are tiny compared to where we can go, though.

We've all heard the armchair editors on Wall Street talk about how foreign news is a commodity. Well the foreign reporting in the Los Angeles Times is not a commodity.

It is locally edited enterprise news that goes AS far beyond what editors can get from wires AS Beijing is from Beirut. We in the newsroom have just done a poor job of tooting our horn.

So I asked members of the Spring Street project to go to work on this and come up with something that shows the unique nature of our foreign report.

The result was a foreign Landing Page for latimes.com where a reader can go to learn about the world we cover and the amazing, brave and dedicated people who bring the news to our readers.

I've always felt if we could include readers in the incredible efforts we undertake to get the news, they would be so much more responsive to us. Now the Internet provides us with an opportunity to bring readers into the process as never before.

I emphasize that the page I just put up is a rough draft; we will do a lot better. But just look at the possibilities here.

We can take readers to the scene of our stories in ways we simply can't do in print.

Dispatches from Times correspondents can vividly answer questions about what its like to walk through the Green Zone in Baghdad or negotiate your way through an Israeli checkpoint, things that correspondents do every day to bring the news to Southern California.

Live chats can let readers communicate directly with our people in the field. Pictures, video, graphics and words all enhance a readers experience and help build interest in the edited stories in the newspaper each day.

We've all heard about the importance of local news, and this is an area where we must excel. But just look at this prototype of community news landing page.

Again, rough drafts, not finished pages. But look at all of the things we can do by providing local resources without flooding the zone with reporters. We will need to divert some resources to this effort at a time when no one is going to give us any more resources. If anything we might be looking at less.

But changing fortunes can't be an excuse to do nothing. Our mission is to cover the news in compelling ways that drives traffic to the web and by extension to the newspaper, giving us a plausible argument for more resources, not less.

The potential becomes really mind-boggling when you look at what we can do with our expertise, our columnists, our beat reporters, our experts, our investigative reporting.

Here's a prototype of a landing page for autos, which would capitalize our car coverage in this the wheels capital of the world. And we didn't even get into what we could do with a talent like Dan Neil.

As anyone can see, the road on which we are going to embark is rough. This will not be easy and we are all going to work harder than we've probably ever had to work in our lives.

In my limited time here, I've heard a lot of talk about why we can't do things, the lack of resources, the lack of people, so-and-so used to do that but he took a buy out. Many of these observations are valid.

But focusing on past wrongs won't make anything right. We must focus on the future, for the future is ours. Our fight is journalism's fight. We all know this is a great newspaper, capable of even greater things. The future is in our hands as great storytellers, the one constant in our ever-changing universe.

We have a good story to tell so let's start telling it and telling it well. Let's make our great journalism available to an even wider audience; let's show the world that newspapers and the journalists that create them are not dead. We are alive, well and fighting back.

Thank you, and now I will take some questions.

Labels: James O'Shea, Los Angeles Times, MyLATimes

Monday, January 29, 2007

A Simple, Yet Powerful Thought

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."

--Helen Keller

Consider the source! STAY POSITIVE!!

Quote of the Week

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy; neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

- John W. Gardner.

The Ice House Gang

On Saturday night last weekend a group of us attended the Ice House show with Jeff Garcia and Bruce Jingles.

The group party was the idea of Jimmy Hathaway, and everyone had a great time.

Below is a short video of Bruce Jingles, a very funny man indeed.

Labels: Bruce Jingles, Comedy, Ice House, Jeff Garcia

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Beauty is Soul Deep

Abraham Lincoln loved to tell stories on himself. One of his favorites concerned itself with physical appearance.

In the days when Lincoln used to be on the circuit (traveling on horseback from one county court to another), he was once approached by a stranger who said, "Excuse me, sir, but I have an article which belongs to you."

"How is that?" Lincoln asked in astonishment.

The stranger took a jack-knife from his pocket. "This knife," he said "was placed in my hand some years ago, with the injunction that I was to keep it until I found a man homelier-looking than I am myself. I have carried that knife for many years. Now I pass it on to you."

Lincoln added wryly, "I've carried that knife ever since."

One of Lincoln's greatest assets was his ability to laugh at himself. And he frequently laughed at his physical appearance. But history does not remember him as an "ugly" individual -- in fact, often just the opposite. His outer appearance was clothed in magnificently beautiful garments: character, honesty, humor and courage. But there are other clothes he wore equally well -- such as humility and forgiveness.

We say that beauty is skin deep. But it isn't really. It has very little to do with the skin. True beauty is soul deep. It is a fabric that is woven in the soul and worn in plain view.

The Bible speaks of something similar. It teaches us to clothe ourselves with "compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience." Then "over all of these put on love, which binds them in perfect unity." Regardless of how good looking we may otherwise be, it is these clothes that will determine our actual beauty.

This was taught to me by a woman who used to think that if she were granted only one wish, it would be to be beautiful. She saw her wheel-chair dependent body as unsightly and, therefore, she missed her more attractive assets. But when she was finally convinced of some of her beautiful personality traits by her friends, she came to a different point of view. Today she says, "Now I know I AM beautiful. Very beautiful."

Beauty is soul deep. Learn that and you may realize that you are far more attractive than you ever imagined!

~ Steve Goodier ~

Tribune working on a deal with private-equity firms

Tribune management is talking with private-equity companies about crafting a new deal to restructure the company, reports Michael Oneal. He hears that the committee overseeing Tribune's auction has decided that the Chandler and Broad-Burkle offers don't value Tribune's assets highly enough and that's opened the door for a management-led solution.

Chicago Tribune Must register to read entire article

Labels: Auction, Chicago Tribune, Tribune Company

Peninsula Press Club: Group tells ABC to leave Spocko alone

Our Lineage in Photos

We receive many links to pages users feel we may enjoy and share with all of our visitors to the blog, some of the links grab our attention and some are ignored. My good friend Lowell, from MySpace, sent us Our Lineage in Photos, and it is worthy of posting for everyone to view.

Lance Scurvin put the photographs together and it is worth the two to three minutes the page takes to load. The background music, A Change is Gonna Come by the late Sam Cooke, plays in a loop, but is mellow enough not to distract the viewer.

Labels: Lance Scurvin, Our Lineage in Photos, Sam Cooke

vBulletin Created for our Blog

Jesse has been spending many hours working on our newest feature, a message board. It will be a nice addition to the blog, but the topic's will not disappear as the posts on the blog do.

Take a look by following the link here.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Anti-War Rally in Los Angeles Today

I’m giving you fair warning, if you plan to visit downtown Los Angeles today, there will be many closed streets, and plenty of traffic. Starting at noon this afternoon an anti-war march will begin at 9th and Figueroa Streets, and there will be thousands in attendance.

The march will head east on 9th Street, then proceed north on Main Street to 1st Street, where the marchers will then walk east to the Federal Building at 300 north Los Angeles Street.

Information regarding parking, transportation, and other details can be found here.

Labels: Anti War, Iraq, Los Angeles Times, March

Union Election Challenged

January 25, 2007

We were advised today that a hearing will be conducted on four of the five objections the Company filed with respect to the Union election. If any of the objections are sustained a second (“re-run”) election will be held. The hearing is likely to be held the week of February 5 and we cannot estimate how soon thereafter the Regional Director will issue her opinion. Either party may appeal the Regional Director’s decision to the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C.

As always, we will keep you fully informed of all developments.

Mark

Labels: Los Angeles Times, Mark Kurtich, NLRB, union free

LAFD News & Information: What type of Smoke Alarm is in your Home?

Whats Wrong with our Cigarettes?

I had planned to sleep in till noon this morning, but here I sit blogging instead, oh to sleep in as my grandchildren can.

Thursday I sat with the other printers smoking our cigarettes, Don Reese asked, "Are you having trouble keeping your cigarette burning?". And we all answered yes.

Wondering what is happening to our cigarettes, I sent a message to Philip Morris this morning, and will post their answer, when it arrives.

As I scanned the cigarette makers web page, I see they have links to giving smoking up, something I have been considering for months now.

Labels: Cigarettes, Philip Morris, Smoking

Friday, January 26, 2007

D'Militant at the Pasadena Ice House

After work last night Larry Washington and myself dropped by the Pasadena Ice House for That Thursday Thang. The show is hosted by D'Militant (Darryl Littleton) and he eases the stress of everyday life

, through comedy. His new book is avaible now, and D'Militant will sign your book in two weeks when he returns to the Ice House. Below is a piece I taped last night, hope you enjoy it.

Labels: Comedy, D'Militant, Ice House

MyLATimes Has the Net Buzzing

This morning as I starting my morning routine, waking the children for school, brewing a pot of coffee, feeding my furry friends (we have two cats), and booting up my computer, I just didn’t have the time to sit down at my desk till after nine this morning.

I work the swing shift at the newspaper, so this means I need to take care of personal business in the morning, before heading to the Los Angeles Times at noon.

Seems the overall reaction from the blogosphere is positive, regarding the new feature at LA Times online, MyLATimes. The only person unhappy is Ken Reich, but he dislikes anything David Hiller (publisher) or Jim O’Shea (editor) have implemented at the newspaper, and that’s Ken’s right to voice his own opinion. Ken and I can agree to disagree on this matter.

David Hiller and Jim O’Shea may or may not stay with the Los Angeles Times, if the newspaper is sold in the near future, but they will leave their legacy with us, through the changes underway with the online edition of the newspaper for years to come.

Additional comments can be read by following the links listed below.

A Spring Street in their steps Opinion LA

LATimes.com is 'Web-stupid' LA Biz Observed

A Load Of Crap From James O'Shea Take Back the Times

Times retools on web — again LAObserved

LAFD Bloggers Applaud New LA Times Website LA Fire Department Blog

A Matter of Trust: LATimes.com Replates - Again LA Voice

Just a few moments ago I logged onto MyLATimes using a DSL connection, the LA Times uses a T-1 connection (extremely fast) and it took over ninety seconds before I was connected. Tells me MyLATimes is attracting a very large audience of users. I would be interested in seeing how many users (hits) the page received today, I'm sure its in the hundred thousand range.

Labels: Los Angeles Times, MyLATimes, Online

Raquel Alvarez Cendejas Passing

Our friend and co-worker Raquel Cendejas has left us, and the pressroom employees will miss her. The information regarding her funeral arrived yesterday, but I did not log onto the Internet till now.

Services

Friday, January 26, 2007 at 9:30 AM
(Please plan to arrive a few minutes early.)
Service: Funeral Mass
Location: St. Dominic Savio
9720 Foster Road
Bellflower 90706

Concludes:
Concludes At Interment Site
Interment : Sycamore Lake
Shoreline Lawn
Lot : 1754
Grave: 1

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Super Bowl Laughs

A man had box seat tickets for the Super Bowl. As he sits down, a man comes down and asks if anyone is sitting in the seat next to him."No," he says. "The seat is empty."

"This is incredible," said the man. "Who in their right mind would have a seat like this for the Super Bowl, the biggest sporting event in the world, and not use it?

"The first man says, 'Well, actually, the seat belongs to me. I was supposed to come with my wife, but she passed away. This is the first Super Bowl we haven't been to together since we got married."

"Oh .. I'm sorry to hear that. That's terrible. But couldn't you find someone else, like a friend or relative, or even a neighbor to take the seat?

"The man shakes his head. "No. They're all at the funeral.

Submitted by Dana Smith

Morning Media News

Rupert Murdoch not convinced the Chandlers can do it
Chicago Tribune

Murdoch's company has talked with the Chandlers about contributing more than $200 million in equity to the family's $31.70-a-share bid for the Chicago media conglomerate, which owns the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, WGN-Ch. 9 and other media and entertainment properties. But the Murdoch camp suspects the offer by Tribune Co.'s top shareholder may face too many hurdles to succeed. As of Wednesday, News Corp. had yet to finalize its commitment in writing.

LAT to Meld online edition with printed edition
Los Angeles Times

O'Shea employed dire statistics on declining print advertising revenue to urge The Times' 940 journalists to throw off a "bunker mentality" and view latimes.com as the paper's primary vehicle for delivering news.In his first significant action since becoming editor in mid-November, O'Shea said he would create the position of editor for innovation and launch a crash course for journalists to push ahead the melding of the newspaper and its website.

Chandlers' 20% stake in Tribune is more than enough
The Wall Street Journal

In a sign that Tribune Co. isn't enthusiastic about the three proposals it received last week, the company's advisers have gone back to firms that did due diligence but didn't bid, to see if they would be willing to make an offer, according to people familiar with the matter. Among the groups approached again was a consortium including private-equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners, long considered a favorite in the process. But the consortium -- which also comprises Providence Equity Partners Inc. and Apollo Advisors LP -- still isn't interested in bidding, these people said.

Inquirer layoffs sparking dispute
The Philadelphia Tribune

The president of the Newspapers Guild of Greater Philadelphia told The Philadelphia Tribune yesterday he is outraged at Philadelphia Inquirer President and CEO Brian Tierney for putting the blame on the Guild in regards to the seniority system surrounding the recent layoffs at the paper – specifically the significant cuts made to Black reporters working there.

MySpace, Oops I Mean MyLATimes

Last night as I struggled to find the Bottleneck Blog, I noted something new on the Los Angeles Times homepage, MyLATimes, but didn’t have the time or energy to look any further last night.

After taking the children to school this morning, having myself pampered at the local barbershop, and consuming three cups of coffee, I decided to have a look at this new feature the Times has created. And I was pleased to see an uncluttered page, with no popup advertising.

My Internet provider, Earthlink, allows users to setup their homepage on Earthlink to display what content is important to each user. The local news can be placed at the top or the bottom of each page, and things like sports, stock tables, etc., can be expanded or completely removed by the user.

The new MyLATimes page is very similar; the user can modify their page to suit the users wants and needs and disregard the rest, great move in my opinion. Users have many options on the new page from Generalist , SoCal , Entertainment , Lifestyle , Business , and Sports .

Take a look and see what you think?

MyLATimes

Labels: Los Angeles Times, MyLATimes, Newspapers, Online

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

How Do Users Find the Times Blogs?

I read with great interest David Hiller’s letter regarding the changes occurring at the newspapers online edition, its about time, is all I can say about the much needed changes about to take place.

The Times blogs were brought to my attention by Matt Welch, and I’m elated I was able to see the blogs before the changes were made. And as a direct result of the Times blogs, I made a $250 purchase from one of the advertisers, that’s really the bottom-line, generating sales though the blogs.

I’m far from an expert when it comes to navigating the Internet, but when I cannot locate the Bottleneck Blog, written by Steve Lopez, how many others are missing this blog as well. The only blog listed on the Times homepage is Opinion LA, and I’m sure most if not all the Times blogs are listed here.

One indicator of the popularity of a blog post are the trackbacks to other blogs, yet the blog post “Have you finally had it?” has no trackbacks whatsoever. But there are 525 comments, this tells me this was a very popular subject to the readers, and some online users have been able to locate Steve’s blog through all the information overkill on the homepage.

I have linked as many Los Angeles Times Blogs as I could locate, and I’m certain some have been missed. If you know of any Times Blogs missing from here, drop me a line and I will add it to the LA Times Blog links.

Let’s hope the online version of the Los Angeles Times becomes much more user friendly in the near future.

Labels: bottleneck blog, Los Angeles Times, Steve Lopez

'Philosophical clash' at LATimes.com

By Kevin Roderick

James Rainey's staff story on today's shakeup at the Times website reveals some behind-the-scenes details on the internal tension over how best to move the LAT toward a higher and smarter web presence. He quotes from the report of last year's so-called Spring Street Project — first known, mostly sneeringly, as the Manhattan Project — and discloses a disagreement between the website's top two executives. Editor James O'Shea also has harsh words for the Times' work on the web and announces a crash training effort to get reporters and editors attuned to the faster news cycles of online journalism.

Continue reading more from James Rainey and remarks by Los Angeles Times Editor James E. O'Shea to Times staff here.

Labels: James Rainey, Jim O'Shea, Kevin Roderick, LAObserved, Los Angeles Times, Shakeup

David Hiller Taking the Times Where it Belongs

From: Hiller, David
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 11:13 AM
Subject: New Integrated Approach to Content and News Gathering

Folks,

We're announcing organizational changes today that will help move us toward our vision of a true multimedia enterprise - delivering news and information across channels, all through the day, to meet the evolving needs of readers, users, and advertisers. We report on the changing media world everyday, and we need to change what and how we do what we do accordingly, and dramatically. Our colleagues on the Spring Street Project have underscored many of these needs, and their recommendations, together with the work of our colleagues at latimes.com, are the foundation of the moves we are making today.
Key points:

Accelerate our growth on the Web by allocating more resources, and speeding product development, to improve the site and grow our online audience.
Re-orient/re-tool the whole company to think and operate across multiple media.
Develop online, but also change the print newspaper to better meet the changing needs of print users.
In all media - focus, focus, focus on growing local audience.

To help drive these changes, we're making the following organizational moves:

Russ Stanton, Business Editor, has been named to the newly created position of Innovation Editor, reporting directly to Jim O'Shea. Russ's mission, working with editors and reporters across news and features, is nothing less than the transformation of our newsroom into a 24/7 operation that breaks news all the time online (and mobile, etc.) and publishes in print with the analysis, personality, and utility that only great writers and editors can provide.

Joel Sappell, Assistant Managing Editor for Multimedia and Editor of latimes.com, is going to return to editing some of our very important project work. Joel has been a pioneer in our online editorial efforts and contributed much to the growth we have seen at latimes.com in the last two years. We will now split Joel's responsibilities between Russ, as Innovation Editor, and a separate position of Editor of latimes.com. A search to fill this position is currently underway.

Rob Barrett, General Manager of latimes.com, has also been named a Vice President of the Los Angeles Times Media Group. Rob has been a key leader in the development of latimes.com and our related web businesses, and his new position reflects the importance of his company-wide role in transforming our business for the next generation of users and readers.

Russ and Rob will work closely together in guiding and integrating our efforts across print and online. The two will also lead a company-wide team to assess and recommend changes across all departments to ensure that we are, in fact, re-tooling our whole enterprise for the web and print.

Over the next several months, we will debut several new products under this new multimedia approach to content development, beginning this week with the launch of MyLatimes.com, and followed by the launch of new, integrated print and online products for Travel in February, Image/Fashion in March, and CalendarLive/CalendarWeekend in late spring.

We will be sharing more developments in the coming weeks, but at the core, we will need everyone's commitment to aggressively help shape the Los Angeles Times Media Group to become a truly multimedia company for the next generation. Please join me in congratulating and supporting Russ and Rob in their new roles.

David