Convergence Surgery

The last 2 weeks of my fellowship have been hectic and different as I got my first byline since arriving to the United States in Los Angeles Times.

As a result of my cooperation with the international desk in LA Times I wrote 2 posts in Babylon and Beyond blog on the newspaper’s website, this was a good chance for me to practice writing and aggregating information with links that can be useful to the reader.

Writing for LA Times readers about Egypt made me understand to a great extent the role of a foreign correspondent and how to write about issues that his readers may know about it for the first times even if these issues are so common where he is reporting.

Another useful discussion I had this week was during a personal meeting with Russ Stanton the editor in chief of LA Times who was the head of the innovation department in his newspaper before being promoted to his current job.

Stanton explained to me his vision about converting LA Times from a print only newsroom into a modern converged news center feeding both print and online editions of the paper.

The first step done by Stanton was to move the responsibility of web pages on latimes.com from the web team into the newspaper departments.

Every department is responsible for feeding their page online while the web team responsibility is to manage the content and organize the home page and spend more time on improving the website user’s experience.

For the first time in 25 years LA Times made a list of responsibilities of journalists working for it, the list included providing the website with news.

As a result of these steps taken by the editor in chief the LA Times laid off about 400 journalists and hired new 75 young ones, the main reason of this turnover was bringing fresh blood and people who are more familiar with technology and getting rid of those who refused to be part of the future by not learning the new required skills.

One other point explained to me by Stanton that change in newspapers requires the highest authority in the media organization to require this change and this simply means that new editors in chief should fully understand the requirements of the age of the web to be able to lead their newspapers into big change.

One of the other lessons I learned during the last 2 weeks was inside the photo desk in LA Times by working with Steve Straud the photo editor.

Picking photo for the newspaper from the wires feed or from the local photographers collections is a process that requires alot of time and scanning every single photo.

At the end of my first day i was able to understand values that make a good photo better than another and how big papers choose photos to publish in their first page.

Can big newspapers survive the ice age?

Since I arrived to USA I have noticed so many negative signs in the journalism industry because of the internet boom and new ways young people are used to get news and information.

Circulation of printed newspapers declines while the number of people who read news through the internet or cell phones or even using e-readers as ipad and kindle increased significantly.

The new developments in the journalism industry was the reason I made my decision to join the web department in Los Angeles Times where I spend the second part of my fellowship.

For 2 weeks I was able to be part of the daily operations in the home page of www.latimes.com, this enabled me to notice so many important steps done every day by the editorial team to keep the website of California’s largest newspaper in terms of circulation updated and in a good shape.
I learned that the web department has a number of journalists who works only for the website, the main task of the web team is to be involved in the operations of the print newspapers in order to make sure that the website is updated and has the latest details on different beats.

The web team representative attends the print edition’s meetings and make some requests from every department which is usually sending updates on every story that is developing during the day.

The web team faces some difficulties because in a big organization like Los Angeles Times not all people are ready to adapt to the new system and accept new tasks to send briefs to the website, especially if those people worked for all their lives in the print age.

Los Angeles Times stated its development plan taking the web into consideration about 3 years ago by starting innovation department.

The innovation department in the beginning used to have an office out of the news room in what looked like a laboratory for new products and services to develop.

The web department that includes a blogging team and all user generated content or interactivity or engaging readers services are now working under supervision from a web managing editor who is responsible to work with journalists on daily basis to make sure the newspaper is powerful online the same way it is in the print edition.

The online managing editor holds a weekly meeting with representatives from all departments involved in the web operations to discuss editorial projects that needs web designing and interactive ways of storytelling.

The most important lesson I learn during my stay in Los Angeles Times is how a big organization with a long history of traditional print media adapts to the internet age.

Los Angeles Times paid the price of the crisis facing the whole industry by laying off many people from their staff as this was the only solution to save the organization financially.

This situation will be repeated in Egypt in the next 2 years when the internet and mobile boom reaches its peak.

Usually in these conditions the big organizations suffer the most as they can’t limit their expenses with a huge number of people working for them while small size organizations survive as they can make drastic changes easier.

The revolutionary road we are into nowadays is similar to the impact of Ice Age on dinosaurs; all small creatures survived it after different form of adaptations while the huge reptiles failed.