With the Times launching a new travel website to go with Sunday's redesigned Travel section, newsroom staffers were encouraged Friday to contribute their own experiences so the cupboard doesn't look quite so bare on opening day. From a newsroom memo by Innovation Editor Russ Stanton:

One of the keys to the site's success will be our ability to entice readers to share their travel experiences, and there's no better place to start than with Times employees. Please take a minute today or tomorrow or Saturday and visit http://travel.latimes.com, and weigh in with your travel knowledge to help us build up the user database. Rate a hotel or restaurant you've visited, wax about your favorite beach, post a favorite photo. The more material on the site come its debut on Sunday, the better.

The travel site includes a new blog, Daily Deal, by travel journalist Jen Leo.

Also: Look at the numbers the Times appends to the end of press releases these days — readership instead of circulation, which had sunk to 775,000 in the last count.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times is the largest metropolitan daily newspaper in the country, with a daily readership of nearly 2.2 million and about 3.3 million on Sunday. The Los Angeles Times and its media businesses and affiliates -- including latimes.com, TheEnvelope.com, Times Community Newspapers, Recycler Classifieds, Hoy, and California Community News -- are read by approximately 8.1 million or 62% of all adults in the Southern California marketplace every week.