Decisiveness Would Serve L.A.Times in Wired World

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The announcement last week that the Los Angeles Times will reduce its newsroom staff by as many as 150 people came with Publisher David Hiller’s grim acknowledgment that the cuts “reflect the fundamental and ongoing changes occurring” in the newspaper business.


He continued stating that “the fact is, we have to take actions to keep staffing in line with the revenue picture, which currently is falling in the core print business.” Indeed, given the continued declines in circulation, these cuts won’t be the last. But some experts say that if the Times must “right-size” itself, why not do it all at once instead of this gradual process of handwringing and gloom?


The Times leadership might recall the Industry Standard, the self-proclaimed “Newsmagazine of the Internet Economy” that launched in 1998. By 2000, it was the biggest magazine in the nation. In one year it sold 7,558 pages of advertising, an all-time record. At its height, it was bigger than People, Fortune or Vanity Fair and produced annual revenues of $140 million.


And then it was gone. When the dot-com bubble popped, Standard’s board shut down operations and fired the 180 staffers. After a quick Chapter 11 bankruptcy, they sold off the magazine’s assets for a mere $1.4 million. The Standard’s board understood the tech market and knew that the bubble burst wasn’t a blip. They moved quickly to safeguard money made during the Net’s heyday.


Of course, the Times won’t shut down. There are profound differences between a magazine that captures lightning in a bottle and a newspaper that is more than a century old, is part of huge media conglomerate and is a critical part of a major city’s cultural fabric.


The parallel is that the Times, like the Standard, finds intself in sector undergoing a primarily negative sea change. Faced with imminent disaster, the Standard leadership took decisive action. To survive, some suggest, the Times must re-define itself for a wired media world and the sooner the better. Despite the newspaper industry’s change-resistant culture, it faces the same kind of transformation that railroads did with the appearance of the automobile, radio versus television, and banks with the advent of money market accounts.


Many business in that situation choose to change quickly and completely not incrementally.


“There is no better time to re-engineer the company for the revolutionary changes to come,” said Jeff Zucker, chief executive of the NBC Universal Television Group, when he announced 700 lay-offs last year. “We have to recognize that the changes of the next five years will dwarf the changes of the last 50.”



FHM Goes Ape


FHM Online, the Web site left standing after the demise of the racy men’s magazine FHM, has signed an advertising representation deal with L.A.-based Gorilla Nation. The site reaches more than 1 million unique visitors per month and will become a key component in Gorilla Nation’s male lifestyle vertical market offering with more than 20 million unique male visitors per month.


FHM (For Him Magazine), owned by Emap Metro LLC in Britain, suspended publication of its U.S. print edition in early 2006. It continues to sell in Britain and about 30 other countries. According to Gorilla Nation, “the evolution of the world’s largest men’s lifestyle magazine into an all-digital brand in the U.S. underscores the significance of the Web as today’s primary source of entertainment for young men in the 18- to 34-year-old category.”


As a print vehicle, FHM often went too far for U.S. tastes, forcing newsstands to cover the explicit cover photos. The site provides similar fare, with such popular features as “Girl of the Day,” “Beer of the Day” and “Hombre,” a section about cars, electronics and fitness.


“FHM Online is a huge win for us,” added Brian Fitzgerald, president of Gorilla Nation. “We’ll be able to leverage their audience in the context of a larger aggregated vertical market and get them out in front of key agency decision makers. ”



Mercury Media Merger


Santa Monica-based Mercury Media is merging with Advanced Results Marketing in Massachusetts to create a direct response TV production house with $350 million in annual billings. A new holding company called Mercury Media Holdings will own the assets of both companies.


Mercury Media produces extended infomercials, while Advanced Results specializes in regular-length direct response commercials. At first glance the merger appears an apples-plus-oranges deal, but new Chief Executive Officer Steve Nober believes synergies exist.


“With our direct response roots and traditional media research and capabilities, we will be able to introduce traditional advertisers to the benefits of direct response advertising,” said Nober.



Staff reporter Joel Russell can be reached at

[email protected]

, or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 237.

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