TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041591/0415220.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 11KB | 217 lines

                                                                                PRESS, Page 46

Hello, Sweetheart! Get Me Remake!


Fresh from its triumphant war coverage and sporting a refurbished
design, the Los Angeles Times positions itself to challenge the
reigning journals of the East

By SUSAN TIFFT -- Reported by Edwin M. Reingold/Los Angeles and
Leslie Whitaker/New York


     California may be the land of health and fitness, but
even the well-toned gods and goddesses of the Golden State are
respectful when they heft the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles
Times. Swathed in plastic or tied with string, the paper
contains an average of 444 ad- and information-packed pages, and
most weeks weighs in at more than 4 lbs. On April 7 readers
unfurled their papers to find a handsome addition: a redesigned,
up scale Sunday magazine bursting with national ads and
feature-length stories calculated to showcase the best of the
Times's 900 editors, reporters and photographers.

    The face-lift of the Sunday Los Angeles Times Magazine is
just the latest indication that the once somnolent flagship of
the Times Mirror Co. is positioning itself to challenge the
nation's most highly regarded newspapers -- the New York Times,
the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal -- for
visibility, influence and prestige. With a daily circulation of
1.2 million, the L.A. Times is already the largest metropolitan
paper in the U.S., outstripping the daily New York Times by
88,000 and the Washington Post by 416,000. Its profits for 1991
are projected to top $110 million, double that of the New York
Times. With its frequent scoops, informative graphics and
emphasis on analysis of world and national events, the Times is
a paper that is improving in dramatic ways.

    That was abundantly clear during the Persian Gulf war,
when the Times won widespread praise for running hard-hitting
stories that clashed with upbeat military assessments. The paper
was the first to reveal that most of the munitions used in the
war were not smart bombs but unguided ones that all too often
missed their target. It also disclosed possible defects in the
Bradley fighting vehicle and chronicled a Navy admiral's
stepped-up efforts to weed out lesbians. Moreover, at the peak
of the crisis, the Times had the financial muscle to put 17
correspondents in the gulf -- five more than the New York Times
and seven more than the Washington Post. "They had superlative
coverage," says Everette Dennis, executive director of the
Gannett Foundation Media Center at Columbia University. "It was
imaginative, with a great deal of depth."

    With 27 foreign and 13 domestic bureaus, the L.A. Times is
well situated to compete aggressively for international and
national news. Every Tuesday the paper produces a supplement
called World Report that attempts to make sense of foreign
affairs with sprightly analytical pieces and bright graphics.
To ensure that the Times's voice is heard in Moscow, the paper
hand delivers a digest of news and editorials to top-ranking
Soviet officials each day.


    In the U.S., however, the Times's visibility is still
largely confined to the West Coast. The paper is hard to come
by outside California, and there is no talk of a national
edition. Hence, although the paper maintains a highly respected
57-person bureau in the nation's capital, it is not yet
considered by Washington insiders to be in the same must-read
category as its three major national competitors. "It's a
presence," says Bill Monroe, editor of the Washington Journalism
Review. "But it's in the wings because it's not available at the
doorstep."

    That low profile frustrates Times Washington reporters,
who put in a longer day than their peers, owing to the
additional three hours of reporting time they gain because of
their Pacific-time deadlines. The extra effort frequently
translates into journalistic upsets. "We have more drive and
ideas than the other papers," declares Washington bureau chief
Jack Nelson, who helps promote the paper by appearing regularly
on the PBS talk show Washington Week in Review. Indeed, it was
Nelson who filed an enterprising story on Dec. 28 asserting --
presciently, as it turned out -- that President Bush would start
bombing Iraq soon after the Jan. 15, 1991, deadline for pulling
out of Kuwait.

    If the Times's new honchos have their way, the paper's
lack of recognition up and down the Northeast corridor will not
last much longer. The twin engines behind the paper's new
thrust are Times Mirror president David Laventhol, 57, who added
the title of Times publisher in 1989, and Shelby Coffey III,
45, who arrived as deputy associate editor in 1986, via the
Washington Post and the Dallas Times-Herald, and was named
editor and executive vice president in 1988. Together the West
Coast transplants have set themselves a daunting task:
transforming a respectable, gray newspaper into a journal that
appeals to readers in ethnically diverse Los Angeles and its
sprawling environs while also capturing an elite national
audience of opinion makers. "The philosophy of what we have been
doing," says Coffey, "has been to look at each element of the
paper and say, `How could we make it better? Are there new
approaches to be taken?' "

    That innovative spirit is readily apparent. To make the
paper more appealing to younger readers with television-era
attention spans, Coffey began slashing the long, unfocused
stories that were once the Times's trademark. To encourage
reporters to concentrate on the craft of writing, he breathed
new life into "Column One," a Page One spot that each day
showcases an example of what Coffey calls "literary journalism."

    Last fall, in concert with publisher Laventhol, Coffey
freshened the paper's look. The overhauled design was promoted
in ads as a "new, faster-format Los Angeles Times." Today most
pieces carry quick-scan subheads that summarize the story's main
points, and the paper's second page features an illustrated
index with bite-size nuggets that inform readers what each story
is about and guide them to the appropriate page.

    Coffey also brought the skills of a hands-on manager to a
newsroom that badly needed it. At times there had been so little
coordination among the paper's many news and feature departments
that three different reporters from three different sections
sometimes showed up to cover the same event. Coffey tightened
editorial controls and got personally involved in directing
local and national coverage. To provide incentives for better
performance, he started a program of monetary rewards for
innovative work.

    Detractors complain that the thick Calendar section, which
chronicles L.A.'s giant entertainment industry, too often
contains adoring, uncritical reporting of Tinseltown's stars and
moguls. Some staffers charge that Coffey, who is friendly with
Hollywood heavies like Disney's Michael Eisner, holds or softens
stories that might damage his connections. A story about film
executive Jerry Weintraub's financial troubles and alleged drug
use, for instance, languished in the Times's computer and ran
only after the Wall Street Journal published its own version.

    Coffey denies that his relationships color how Calendar is
edited; instead, he points to the hard-nosed pieces he has
published detailing the behind-the-scenes negotiations that went
into the Matsushita buyout of MCA and Sony's purchase of
Columbia Pictures. Coffey boosters contend that Calendar's
emphasis on profiles and reviews simply makes the section more
competitive with the highbrow arts and culture section of the
New York Times, which began circulating its national edition in
Los Angeles in 1988.

    The paper's fevered push for national and international
recognition has inevitably made local reporting something of a
stepchild. Events far from home are sometimes covered with more
energy and objectivity than those in the Times's own backyard.
Last year, for instance, the Times made headlines nationwide
when its premier profile writer, Bella Stumbo, quoted
Washington Mayor Marion Barry making disparaging remarks about
Jesse Jackson and threatening to cut off his political enemies
"at the kneecaps." Yet a year earlier the paper was slow to run
stories on Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley's questionable
financial dealings.


    The paper's editorial page has taken the same measured
approach to the recent scandal surrounding a videotaped police
beating. In the month since the incident, the paper has run as
many as six stories a day, from long "Column One" pieces on
group violence to two Times Mirror polls showing deteriorating
support for police chief Daryl Gates. It was not until Coffey
and other editors interviewed Gates and published what he said,
however, that the editorial board ran a cautious editorial
calling on the chief to resign.

    The death in 1989 of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, the
Times's major competitor, has helped boost the paper's daily
circulation to a record high. But like every newspaper in these
recessionary times, the Times sees clouds forming on its
economic horizon. For more than two decades, it has waged a
costly battle for suburban and San Diego readers, wooing them
with regional editions of the Times, each tailored to local
audiences by an on-site staff. While publisher Laventhol says
he has no intention of ceding these outposts to entrenched
regional and local newspapers, the Times has shelved ambitious
plans to extend its reach into Northern California, the
Northwest and, eventually, the Pacific Rim.

    The belt tightening also includes a tough new travel and
hiring policy and the cancellation last February of the
afternoon edition of the Times. But compared with those of many
papers, the financial constraints are modest. In the past year
the Times has opened new bureaus in Berlin, Brussels and
Budapest, and has somehow found enough cash to lure talent from
national magazines and newspapers.

    What will the aggressive, energetic upstart from the West
Coast do next? Coffey will not say, but it is clear that the
paper's plans are boundless. "I don't think there will come a
day when a voice like rolling thunder comes out of the sky and
says, `This is the best newspaper,' " he says. "Because the day
that happens is the day somebody starts gaining on you." One
thing is certain: the Los Angeles Times will not relax into its
old complacency -- at least not while Laventhol and Coffey are
at the helm.