Russ Stanton, editor of the LA Times, sent email following up on questions I had confirming the much-discussed report below that its web revenue is now sufficient to meet its entire editorial payroll. “Given where we were five years ago,” he email, “I don’t think anyone thought that would ever happen. But that day is here.”
Can I hear an amen?
Stanton does some bragging about the Times’ web life and given this milestone, let’s grant him the moment as Neilsen Net Ratings says it passed USA Today and the Washington Post in uniques with, according to internal numbers, 138 million page views in November, up more than 70% in a year, and 24 million uniques, up 125%.
Secret sauce?
There are two primary reasons for these sharp increases: We have added some outstanding web talent over the past two years, including latimes.com editor Meredith Artley, blogging guru Tony Pierce and database specialist Ben Welsh, who is part of a new 10-person team of interactive and data experts supplementing our print report with terrific online material (more on that in a minute). And our printside reporting and editing staffs have embraced the future like never before.
Nice to see a shoutout for longtime blogging comrade Pierce and for blogging itself:
One of the most visible measures of our success is our blog network. When I became innovation editor in January 2007, only four of our 49 blogs were produced by our staff, and those blogs accounted for only 2% of our site’s total monthly traffic. Today, we have more than 40 blogs, all but six of which are produced by our staff, led by Top of the Ticket, our presidential campaign/politics effort started by Andrew Malcolm and Don Frederick. Technorati now ranks Ticket in the top 60 blogs on the internet. At last count, about half our newsgathering staff — more than 300 professionals — are contributing to our blogs. In several of our traditional print sections (California, Sports, Books, Health, Travel), the entire staff is participating in that section’s main blog. That, in turn, has been acknowledged and valued by our readers. Today, our blogs account for 16% of our total monthly page views.
The paper set up a AM copy desk to start putting content online at 7am (those folks used to waltz in after lunch); many papers have such continuous news desks. Like other papers, the Times is also training lensemen in video.
And here’s my favorite part: education.
With some help from our HR folks, we’ve set up a 40-class curriculum on how to expand the skills our staff needs in these key areas. The most popular classes so far are learning the software program for posting to the web, headline writing to improve SEO, how to shoot and edit video, and 360-degree storytelling, taught by Aaron Curtiss, our innovation editor.
“those folks used to waltz in after lunch.” why the unnecessary and misleading dig? if anybody on the copy desk “waltzed in after lunch” it was no doubt because they were working until midnight. i mean, really.
It wasn’t the entire editorial payroll Stanton was referring to, but just the Web site’s editorial payroll. That’s how the quote reads literally to me, although it is ambiguous.
If I’m wrong, I’d be delighted for the future of journalism, but please check with Stanton on this.
@Bradley – Here’s a direct quote from Russ Stanton, from an email he sent me earlier this morning, in response to many requests from around the social media realm for clarification about his revenue comment at USC last week.
“Our digital revenue this year [for the Los Angeles Times] will be equal to our newsroom payroll (web and print) and that is salaries only.”
Those are actual numbers for 2008. Our business folks are projecting that digital revenue will exceed total newsroom payroll in 2009.
Russ adds, “We’re still years away from able to even consider shutting down our presses, and the ink-stained wretch in me hopes we can figure out a way to sustain this centuries-old medium for several more centuries.”
Hope that helps clarify. Let’s keep talking.
- Andrew, @LATimesNystrom on Twitter
social media guy in the LA Times / LATimes.com newsroom
[...] on the short list of those expected to fail in the next year or so. Today, according to a report on Buzzmachine, it’s web revenue covers the entire editorial [...]
Amy,
Jeesh. Copy editors never could take a joke.
That is excellent news, Andrew, and thank you for responding with it. Maybe journalism isn’t doomed after all!
The web site of one of my clients reaches 1 million unique monthly visitors and earns 6-figures/year. And he’s writing about rock and heavy metal music. ONE GUY. The newsroom of the future is definitely on its way. I would simply encourage the big boys to hire compelling voices. Granted, I am referring here to a blogger but it wouldn’t take much time to groom more journalists out of the mess that is new media these days.
Just want to add a hail huzzah for my friends Tony Pierce and Meredith Artley for getting the public recognition they deserve from Mr. Stanton.
I was a copy editor for five years, and I never “waltzed in right after lunch.” More like “frantically edited and designed until deadline.”
[...] via [buzzmachine.com] [...]
Great step in the right direction. I love that the blog network is a key component of this. Covering the editorial side is a pretty big deal, but it’s still a long way to go. Congrats, LATimes.
[...] LA Times followup LAT did 138 million pageviews in November. (tags: latimes metrics newspaper new.media buzzmachine jeff.jarvis) [...]
[...] which has some of them earnestly working to reinvent themselves (the LA Times, for instance, announced that digital revenues now cover newsroom payroll!). The survivors will be much, much stronger and [...]
This strikes me as very strange. We’ve been hearing forever that online advertising pays pennies to the paper dollar and now, suddenly, with no explanation — beyond something very vague about a data expert’s secret sauce — it looks as if everything’s going to be okay.
Honestly, I would like to see the LA Times’ books because this sounds like something Bernie Madoff would cook up.
It also reminds me a bit of when you used to sing About.com’s praises, which I notice hasn’t happened recently. You described them as the only bright spot on the NYT’s P and L statement. Despite my lack of enthusiasm for About.com, that seemed to me to be a good thing. After all, if a mediocre content producer like About.com could be more profitable than the NYT, just figure out its business model and presto, problem over
When I looked into it a little further, I came to the conclusion that About.com’s profitability was largely due to its spammy, sploggy pages, which far outnumber its “content”pages. As a business strategy, that’s unsustainable, which is probably why we’re now hearing less about About.com’s successes.
Anyway, colour me deeply sceptical about this LA Times news. I’d like to believe it but it just doesn’t seem to add up.
I’m w/Ann B.
If the LA Times is making these public boasts it should release the relevant numbers so people can independently evaluate them. I’m skeptical of this “good news.,” and suspect like everything out ot Tribune lately it’s more smoke and mirrors.
Tribune is a financial disaster of epic proportions. All the kings blogs and all the king’s “secret sauce” can’t put Zell’s kingdom back together again.
LA Times aside, how can their success be attempted in other markets, especially at papers where editors are essentially Luddites and have limited RSS feeds, no Twitter accounts, and zero desire to blog?
45% are missing
45% =100 – 15-50
15% payroll of the on-line and print redaction
50% printing cost
It’s not sustainable.
You can’t consider living on ads without marketing and sales-person + expenses ..
LA Times have been very adamant to be national not a local. Being both and East and West Coast paper. The result is encouraging but far from reaching the scale it needed. Last result are quite bad. http://trends.google.com/websites?q=www.latimes.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Nothing to compare with NYT (in bad position) http://trends.google.com/websites?q=www.nytimes.com,www.latimes.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
[...] This is being widely noted (most links go to this Recovering Journalist post), and Jeff Jarvis has some followup with [...]
[...] of recent news, that the LA Times has been able to generate fairly substantial online revenue. In LA Times followup, Jarvis posts comments from editor Russ Stanton regarding the secrets to their success, including [...]
[...] Wie sie das dort geschafft haben, verrät er dem Medienprofessor Jeff Jarvis: Unter anderem mit professioneller Fortbildung in neuen Medien bei den Redakteuren (CMS-Benutzung, SEO, Videos einbinden und editieren etc.), aber auch der Einbindung von Blogs. Letztere werden mit wenigen Ausnahmen von den Redakteuren betrieben und verhelfen dem Online-Auftritt der Zeitung inzwischen zu 16% ihrer Pageviews (weiteres siehe hier). [...]
[...] Times recently claiming that their online revenue is sufficient to meet their editorial payroll [buzzmachine], this option isn’t entirely impossible. Ditching print certainly wouldn’t be ideal, [...]
[...] the LA Times? — Has Carr forgotten about how the LA Times online revenues are now enough to cover its entire editorial operations? Whoops. We don’t need an iTunes for news to keep [...]
[...] Web has won. And bonus: we can still make money there! The Web is becoming another apendange for most people, particularly those in my generation. To have [...]
[...] post was the above chart. For a while, I have been hanging my hopes on the LA Times, where online revenues are now enough to fund all of editorial. If a massive organization like the Times can fund its content-production with online ads alone, [...]
[...] Geld wie die gesamte (Print- und Online-)Redaktion kostet. Daraufhin war vor ein paar Wochen die Diskussion entbrannt, ob die LA-Times nicht einfach ihre Druckerpressen abschalten sollte (Antwort: Natürlich [...]
[...] realities: Advertising dollars are still needed – so I’m glad that the LA Times has reached a new level of sustainability. Spot.Us and “community funded reporting” cannot sustain an entire newsroom or an [...]
Many a times, those, who do not actually do not work until midnight and only pretend so, are also found “waltz”ing in after lunch.