Hewitt's advice for LAT publisher

Talk radio host and conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt offers some unsolicited tips to Times publisher Jeffrey Johnson about how to attract new readers on the right. Excerpt:

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 reason 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, Jack Dunphy 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...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.

Links to all the writers and blogs mentioned above are at Hewitt's site.

Pointer from Cathy Seipp