Los Angeles Times: Give US a Reason to READ

Hugh Hewitt this morning asks the L.A. Times to give us a reason to read and subscribe to the paper and offers suggestions, Memo for Los Angeles Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson.

OK, Kinsley’s on the way out as is Carroll. Baquet’s much admired around the newsroom, and the guys in Chicago will give you a year, maybe 18 months. It isn’t clear that advertisers are that generous, and they appear to be figuring out the dramatic drop in your touch-rate. People are subscribing for sports, comics and the Calender section, and maybe Outdoors. Much of the rest of the paper is unread. Why buys ads in pages nobody touches? That’s the problem. And word is getting out.

You can’t rebuild in a day, but you can start with the obvious stuff.

Give conservatives a rason to read the paper every day. How hard can this be for your team to understand? Get Mark Steyn, Michael Barone, Dennis Prager, Cathy Seipp and keep Max Boot and run one of them on a specific day of the week, every week. Presto! I and millions of others have a reason to check the online edition editorial page every day. Do the same thing for the left, although they can already count on that.

Then line up some regular Southern California commentators for regional issues, again from both sides of the aisle. Have you ever bothered to read Patterico and Carol Platt Leibau? They are excellent writers. RogerLSimon can turn a phrase. In fact, he writes excellent novels and scripts and a great blog. Try Baldilocks. In fact, see if The Green Side’s Lt. Col Bellon or Smash are up for regular contributions. There are hundreds of thousands of active duty, reservist and retired military in Southern California, plus their families. Do you think they’d appreciate a bit of regulalry scheduled space for their worldview? There are other similar underserved or never served communties. Serve them. This isn’t hard.

A good suggestion, Hugh.

There has to be a way to merge the NEW Media and the traditional newspaper both newsprint and online editions.

Also, glad to see you mention my Bear Flag League brothers and sisters.

Here’s my last suggestion for the day: Talk to the people who hate your paper but who love news. I read the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and the New York Times. I don’t bother with your paper. There are thousands and thousands like me. We don’t need the relentless agenda journalism and cloistered opinions.

Good luck. California deserves a first class newspaper, not a newsletter to the left beloved by the Pulitzer voters but not by the people it is supposed to be selling to.

Indeed we do and Flap would like to subscribe again….. but only to the online edition with a new media component.