Los Angeles Times suburban sections
The
Growth
The first zoned section was published on Sundays only for the San Gabriel Valley in April 1952 under the direction of Mike Straszer, who was in charge of all succeeding zoned editions until 1958.[3] An editorial in the Times's San Gabriel Valley section explained that
. . . the Southland has grown so rapidly it has been impossible to pay specific attention to every community in the Sunday paper. . . . Consequently the idea of "zoning" was born. This means that papers delivered to a certain area are to contain a special section devoted to the particular interest of that area. The San Gabriel Valley Section is the first of these.[4]
The next zoned editions were opened in the
By the end of April 1957, zoned editions were appearing in the
In November 1958, a copy of the Centinela-South Bay section that carried a story about the 50th anniversary of Inglewood, California, was placed in a time capsule beneath the cornerstone of the Inglewood City Hall "with the expectation it will be opened in the year 2008."[8]
The frequency of the San Fernando Valley section was expanded in April 1960 to twice a week — on Thursdays and Sundays.
. . . they publish almost no crime news, no sensational or scandalous information, . . . they concentrate on community development, club news, social news and the normal, active lives of average and above-average citizens.[3]
By 1968, the experience of the weekly zoned editions had generally been positive — but Orange County, to the south of Los Angeles was a different matter. In that year its population stood at 1.29 million and, according to Time magazine,
Times publisher Otis Chandler watched the [suburban sections] process with growing dissatisfaction, then decided that the only solution is for a newspaper to grow the way a modern city-community grows. . . . an ever-expanding circle of satellite towns, with citizens showing an increased interest in local affairs. To give them the local news they want, Chandler decided there was no substitute for being on the spot. The result appeared last week: the Orange County edition, edited, printed and partly written by a 32-man Times satellite staff operating entirely in Orange County.[10]
Under the direction of Orange County managing editor Ted Weegar, a separate editorial staff — including a reporter stationed in Sacramento, the state capital, each day took apart the editorial product prepared in Los Angeles and "Orafied" — or localized — the entire newspaper, from front page to sports, especially for Orange County readers. The result was printed in and distributed from a modern, $7 million printing plant in Costa Mesa in Orange County. The cost was estimated to be some $9.5 million a year "to give suburbanites and exurbanites the feeling that they are reading a world-minded paper with a home-town emphasis." Times publisher Chandler was quoted as saying that satellite publishing, as it was called, "seems to make sense in metropolitan markets, where papers are interested in furthering their economic base, away from the center city."[10][11]
In April 1978, the Times began a daily
A shake-up in the Times editorial department in April 1981 resulted in the transfer of H. Durant Osborne, 52, from his job as city editor of the main newspaper to "an administrative role in the Suburban Community Sections." Osborne was to work under Reece, who remained Suburban Sections editor. The move, among others, was billed as a way to "intensify coverage."[3] Journalist Leo Wolinsky recalled that Osborne
would assign these ridiculous stories. He once had someone cover the marathon and write stories about runners who would stop to defecate in the bushes. He's have you go out and put a nickel, a dime and a quarter on the sidewalk and when someone would stop and pick one up, you were supposed to interview them and write a story about what they picked up and why. I thought, "This can't be the famous L.A. Times."[13]: 51
In 1983, Robert Rawitch replaced Art Berman as Suburban Sections editor,[14] and by November 1993, William Rood was the editor of the sections.[15]
New York Times reporter Alex S. Jones reported in 1990 that there had developed a struggle between "traditionalists," who wanted all Times subscribers to receive "essentially the same newspaper," and those who sought to "Orafy" the whole paper, "in looks and local focus." In that year,
Traditionalists were opposed to expanding the existing San Fernando Valley zoned pages into a semi-independent publication with its own focus[11] and its own printing plant. That circumstance had been completed by 1989, when Jeffrey S. Hall, vice president of marketing for the Times was named to a new position of president of the San Fernando Valley edition, directing business operations there. The editorship remained with Charles Carter, who reported to Suburban Editor Robert Rawitch. The edition had a circulation of 230,827 daily and 266,373 Sundays.[17] In 1997, Julia C. Wilson was named president of both the San Fernando Valley and Ventura editions, succeeding Jeffrey S. Klein.[16]
Minorities
In a 1990 investigation of
During the 1992
"When the danger had largely subsided, most of us were unceremoniously sent back to our offices without thanks," he wrote.[19]
Afterward, Times editor
Ed Cray wrote in the American Journalism Review:
The majority of the cover stories deal with cross-community, cross-neighborhood problems: check-cashing services as a banking system for the poor; the true cost of
City Times cost $1.5 million annually and was not profitable. It had a low penetration in the central city, with many copies just given away.[15]
Decline
On November 6, 1992, the Times announced it would stop publishing its San Diego County edition and eliminate 500 jobs throughout the company through a voluntary buyout and normal attrition. A New York Times reporter called the move "the result of an advertising slump in Southern California" which accompanied "the retrenchment of the military and aerospace industries" and said
Industry analysts described the actions as drastic. . . . while other papers have scaled back zoned editions, analysts could not name another big newspaper that had closed one. . . . The Times has been unable to stop suburban newspapers from gaining market share in areas like Orange County . . . and the San Fernando Valley . . . regions The Times once presumed were part of its empire. . . . in hard economic times, advertisers cut back their zoned newspaper advertising because they view it as secondary to the coverage they can get in local papers.[1]
"Otis Chandler's dream of being a newspaper from Santa Barbara to Tijuana isn't going to happen in this economy," Phyllis Pfeiffer, the edition's general manager, said.[20]
In January 1994 the zones were downsized again when publication frequency was reduced to once a week from four times in the South Bay and from twice weekly in the San Gabriel and Southeast/Long Beach sections. "The Westside section, serving the city's most affluent areas, including
In 1995, the San Fernando Valley staff was reduced "significantly."[22]
By 1999, the suburban sections had been almost entirely supplanted by a new venture, Our Times, a Los Angeles Times subsidiary that published separate community-oriented newspapers in
Finally, in September 2001 the Times ended publication of its zoned San Gabriel Valley, South Bay and Westside sections. The cuts "signaled another blow to an ambitious effort by the Times to take on what Publisher John Puerner and Editor John Carroll described as block-by-block community news coverage," according to the trade source NewsInc. The big-city daily would thenceforth leave community coverage up to six smaller newspapers published by a subsidiary, Times Community News.[24]
In 2001, the San Fernando Valley section was replaced by "a new California section that added regional coverage and reduced the Valley emphasis," according to an investigative story about Valley newspaper coverage by David Shaw. "The change eliminated the separate Valley editorials, op-ed articles and some local features."[22]
In 2002, the newspaper was criticized for relegating coverage of the secession movement in the San Fernando Valley to the San Fernando Valley zoned edition.[25] Leo Wolinsky, Times deputy managing editor, said it was the Times' "faulty system" that "Balkanized" the newspaper's local coverage and resulted in "two journalistic bureaucracies fighting each other."[22]
The Times did continue publishing five separate, regionally focused editions for wider geographic areas — the Los Angeles metropolis, the San Fernando Valley, Orange County, Ventura County and the Inland Empire of Riverside and San Bernardino counties.[26]
In December 2005, the newspaper announced it would close its Chatsworth plant, where the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County editions had been published.[27] The Times ended printing at its Costa Mesa Orange County plant in June 2010 but kept its editorial and business operations open there.[28]
Reputation
James O'Shea, the Times editor in 2008, said that suburban section reporters were referred to as "zonies," and reporter Kathy Kristof recalled that "The editors downtown were a little snooty about taking stories from the bureaus." She said that "the zones were considered somewhat of a backwater."[13]: 51
Notable staffers
- Rick Corrales, assigned to the Southeast suburban section and then to Nuestro Tiempo[29]
- Al Martinez, whose columns in the San Fernando Valley and Westside editions made him one of the top three essay columnists named by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists in 1987[30] He later won a Pulitzer Prize.
References
- ^ a b Calvin Sims, "The Los Angeles Times in Retreat," New York Times, November 7, 1992
- ^ Thomas S. Mulligan, "Times Will Cut Some Sections," Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1995, page 1
- ^ a b c d Nick B. Williams, "The Times in Suburbia," Los Angeles Times, April 9, 1981, page C-4
- ^ "The Times Thanks All of You," Los Angeles Times, April 13, 1952, page F-1
- ^ Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1957, page J-10
- ^ George M. Straszer, "We're Glad You Like This Section," Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1957, page M-10
- ^ "2 More Zone Sections Will Start Sunday," Los Angeles Times, April 7, 1957, page B-1
- ^ "Times Article Will Be Placed in Time Capsule," Los Angeles Times, November 16, 1958, page CS-4
- ^ "Times to Start Midweek Section for the Valley April 21," Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1960, page SF-1
- ^ a b "Newspapers: Launching a Satellite," Time, March 29, 1968
- ^ a b c Alex S. Jones, "Reshaping the Los Angeles Times," New York Times, June 18, 1990
- ^ "Times San Diego County edition to Be Published," Los Angeles Times, February 22, 1978, page B-3
- ^ a b James O'Shea, The Deal From Hell, New York:Public Affairs (2011)
- ^ "New Suburban Editors Named," Los AngelesTimes, January 30, 1983, page SG-1
- ^ a b c d "Ed Cray, "A Zone of Their Own," American Journalism Review, November 1, 1993[dead link]
- ^ a b "Times Names President of Valley, Ventura Editions," Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1997, page 2
- ^ Patrick Lee, "Hall Is Named President of Times' Valley Edition," Los Angeles Times, August 18, 1989
- ^ David Shaw, "Amid L.A.'s Ethnic Mix, The Times Plays Catch-Up Media," Los Angeles Times, December 14, 1990
- ^ a b Braxton, "Adrenaline Fades; Sadness Lingers," Los Angeles Times, April 28, 2012, page 7
- ^ "Los Angeles Times Pulls Back from San Diego," New York Times, December 21, 1992. Access to this link requires a subscription to the newspaper or its website.
- ^ Calvin Sims, "Los Angeles Times Offers a 3rd Buyout," New York Times, October 20, 1993.
- ^ a b c David Shaw, "Secession Drive Coverage Was Slow, Sparse," Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2002, image 26
- ^ "Los Angeles Times Launches Inland Valley Our Times," Business Wire, September 28, 1999, cited by HighBeam Research[dead link]
- ^ a b NewsInc., September 24, 2001, cited in the BNET website
- ^ David Shaw, "The Times Faulted for Downplaying Secession," Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2002, image 1
- ^ "Los Angeles Times Launches New Inland Empire Edition," Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2003
- ^ "Los Angeles Times to Consolidate Production Operations," Los Angeles Times, December 5, 2005
- ^ " 'L.A. Times' Moves Printing, Two Press Crews from O.C. Plant to Olympic Plant," Editor & Publisher, June 24, 2010
- ^ Myrna Oliver, "Rick Corrales, 48; Ex-L.A. Times Staffer Invented 360-Degree Spinshot Camera," Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2005, image 77
- ^ "Times' Martinez Named One of Top U.S. Columnists," Los Angeles Times, May 14, 1987, page WS-3