A recent survey of online journalists found that most of the respondents worked for websites of what they termed ‗legacy outlets‘ (what I call parentage) or are working for former legacy journalists who started independent online ventures of their own. According to the survey: ‗They are grounded in the more organized, traditional news model and have carried that foundation to the Web‘ (Project for Excellence in Journalism 2009). Although this statement is broad and vague, one of the definitive organisational models that have been carried into the Web environment of parentage (or legacy) websites is the physical layout of the newsroom.
The Los Angeles Times building in downtown Los Angeles is quite formidable. Upon entering the building, it becomes apparent that it is quite difficult to navigate around the various office areas. Many employees expressed that even they have a hard time finding their way around. The original building, which sits on the corner of 1st Street and Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles, was erected in 1935; but what remains intact today, is a hodge podge of smaller buildings put together to create one large structure encompassing an entire city block.
The edifice itself is steeped in history. The 1st Street lobby, called the Globe lobby, is not just a waiting room but also a shrine to the history of the Times and its building. There is memorabilia, famous stories, profiles of key owners (most
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notably the Chandler family), and even ten foot high murals by artist Hugo Ballin. The public can tour the lobby and you will find it noted in Los Angeles guide books. You are instantly aware that this brand means something both in the realm of journalism and to the history of Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Times, as with most other large news gathering US
organisations, has other bureaus around the United States and world. It has a presence in Sacramento (the capital of California), New York City, Washington DC and a few other key US cities. It also has reporters in twenty countries around the world. However, this changed in the five months of my study as cutbacks lead to the decision by management to cut back on these national and international reporters and newsgathering operations. The cutbacks in
international and national newsgathering, not just within the Los Angeles Times but across the country, have been a focal point for many journalists and
researchers who lament the changing nature of journalism (Reider 2009).
At the beginning of June 2008, news operations existed on many different floors of the building. There are seven floors in total, but at the time three of them were dedicated to editorial content. The second floor is home to the multimedia
department, which handles the video content for the site. This team of around ten to twelve people is tucked into a small cavernous area in the middle of the floor. The area includes offices and several edit bays but was quite isolated from everything else. The floor also contained a lot of the design desks, which work primarily toward the newspaper‘s end product. The second floor is also home to most of the Feature departments (Calendar, Travel, Real Estate etc.).
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The third floor is essentially the ‗news‘ room. It is where the majority of the news gathering operation and the different news divisions exist. The floor also contains the offices of the head of editorial content, Russ Stanton, as well as his page one editors, managing editors and all of the section heads. He sits in the one of the centrally built offices (which house other section heads or managing editors) in the middle of a large open area. The entire floor is a mishmash of the buildings that were strewn together and so there is no cohesiveness to its layout.
The large open main ‗news‘ area is divided into sections (based on newspaper headings) that include Metro, Foreign, National, Business etc… These divisions are not based on actual dividing walls but are only apparent by hanging signs above different sections of desks. These are similar to what Tuchman (1978) describes in her portrait of various newspaper organisations. Walking through the large open area, you will notice large flatscreen televisions on the walls displaying the homepage of latimes.com. There are also televisions on almost all of the desks.
The Sports section occupies a large separate area on the third floor that is not directly connected with the rest of these sections. The Visuals department, which mainly focuses on photography, is also on the 3rd floor. The department, which runs itself separately from the rest of the news gathering operation, consists of about eighty staff members. Their office is in a separate space from the main hub of news.
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The fifth floor of the building housed the Web team at the beginning of observation. An expansive rectangular room in the middle of the building was where they were stationed. There were offices along the sides of the room and cubicles in rows in the middle of the floor. It did not have the buzz of the floors below and contained what appeared to be quiet people sitting in front of
computers going about their work. The desks were formed in rows divided by grey three foot high partitions.
The majority of the floor worked on different sections of the website in order to keep it updated constantly, particularly ‗The Guide‘ and ‗Calendar‘ sections, along with Travel. The key ‗news‘ section was closer to the back of the room near the small interactive team which was off to the right in its own area. The head of the whole operation, latimes.com executive editor, Meredith Artley sat in her own office at the back of the room. The ‗homepage team‘, which at any given time consists of about three to four homepage producers was situated directly in front of her office. The blog editor was in a nearby office as well as the head of operations for the Web, the section development manager for the Web and the breaking news manager for the Web. This changed immediately after my first visit as the breaking news manager was laid off along with two hundred other editorial employees. A few months later, seventy five more editorial employees would be laid off.
The layoffs changed the newsroom immensely over the five months I was observing the operation. First, after the two hundred editorial layoffs in July of 2008, the third floor main ‗news‘ room had a surplus of open desks. The fifth floor lost some key journalists as well, but to a much lesser extent so it did not
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feel empty comparatively. The editor in chief gave an interview right after the layoffs were announced saying the next big step for the Los Angeles Times would be bringing everyone together in the same newsroom.
We got to a pretty good start last year, but even in my previous job I felt we weren't moving fast enough and we didn't go deep enough in the integration, so that's going to be a huge part of what I want to accomplish in the first year on this job. We have some physical limitations [in terms of the building structure]… and we've got to do a fairly substantial remodel to pull that off. But the plan is, when we finish that off, to have a fully integrated newsroom on one floor (Hirschman 2008).
However, the move would not occur in September but rather at the beginning of October. The move was followed by another round of layoffs after one less than three months earlier. Many of those who were forced to leave their work space were also asked a week or two later to leave permanently.
The move would eliminate most of the need for the fifth floor. The free weekly entertainment paper that the Los Angeles Times produced, Metro Mix, remained on the floor. However, the interactive team moved down to the second floor to be near the graphic designers, layout team and the multimedia people. The homepage team took over the area that had once been home to the National Desk. The National Desk was moved into the opposite corner in between the Foreign and Business Desks. The reason for this was the downsizing of the National desk after the second round of layoffs. Although most of these people were not transferred or let go until after the election, the National section was hit hard by the downsizing. The Tribune Company decided to consolidate all of their Washington news bureaus into one Tribune bureau, thus eliminating the presence of the Los Angeles Times in Washington. This decision also saw a lot
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of journalists working on the National desk in Los Angeles, either move sections or leave for good.
Trying to figure out who is in charge and how everything gets done in this maze of a building takes a bit of time. Most of the employees I spent time with agreed that the building and the layout of the different newsrooms didn‘t help news production in any way, shape or form. However, they all also wanted me to be impressed by this historic building I was entering, which made for an interesting dilemma.
Clearly, the Los Angeles Times building is steeped in history. However, due to the speed at which news is produced and the new technology that is used to produce it, there is no way that this building and its layout helps to do that very efficiently. This small issue as you will see, is in fact indicative of a larger problem the Los Angeles Times (and in fact most American newspapers) faces. The problem lies in reconciling who they were with what is actually being demanded by online journalism.