LAT

Amid new talk of layoffs, blogs are hot at the Times

A sudden flurry of high-level meetings and grim faces this week at the Los Angeles Times has people in the newsroom on edge again. There's been a long quiet period since the last big staff cuts, but the bankruptcy proceedings are moving toward an end, Tribune reorganized this week to treat the Times separately from the chain's other papers, and if a highly speculative Wall Street Journal story is to be believed, the Times is on the market. Any of that could trigger new budget cutbacks — many staffers have assumed they're coming, it was just a matter of when — and so could plain old bad financial news. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, the LAT's flakkery blog posted a memo from online editor Jimmy Orr saying that visitation to LATimes.com is up substantially and that a bunch of the paper's blogs set new traffic records last month. Thirteen blogs registered over a million page views in June. Orr credits more aggressive freshening, better packaging and improved playing to the search engines by the Times' bloggers.

The paper's most-visited blogs, according to Orr, are listed below:

L.A. Now: 7,874,283
Framework: 5,091,288
Politics Now: 3,056,614
Top of the Ticket: 3,014,139
Ministry of Gossip: 2,616,833
Technology: 2,582,105
Hero Complex: 2,309,200
Show Tracker: 2,295,343
Travel: 1,954,955
Booster Shots: 1,460,873
Lakers: 1,274,079
Fabulous Forum: 1,216,912
Pop & Hiss: 1,016,557


More by Kevin Roderick:
Gustavo Arellano, many others join LA Times staff
Power out Monday across Malibu
Put Jamal Khashoggi Square outside the Saudi consulate on Sawtelle
Here's who the LA Times has newly hired*
LA Observed Notes: Clippers hire big-time writer, unfunny Emmys, editor memo at the Times and more
Recent LAT stories on LA Observed:
Gustavo Arellano, many others join LA Times staff
Here's who the LA Times has newly hired*
New seasons of SoCal Connected, Lost LA on KCET
LA Observed Notes: Times hiring binge, LA Weekly investor sues, media tidbits
LA Observed Notes: Editor moves, NYT steps on JGold turf, jobs and more
Jonathan Gold, LA's preeminent food writer, has died at 57
New LA Times editor Pearlstine picks his deputies
LA Observed Notes: Long Beach, LAist, Soon-Shiong and much more


 

LA Observed on Twitter