LA Daily News closing bureaus

[rpmmutant]

The downsizing at the Los Angeles Daily News continues. The bureaus, if you can call them that, are closing in some of the suburban areas the paper covers. Once the newsroom is consolidated, layoffs are expected. Lean Dean working his magic again.

 

[Left_Coast]

Gotta love old Lean Dean. They way he keeps cutting, he's more like Microscopic Dean.

 

[Claws for Concern]

The downsizing at the Los Angeles Daily News continues. The bureaus, if you can call them that, are closing in some of the suburban areas the paper covers. Once the newsroom is consolidated, layoffs are expected. Lean Dean working his magic again.

Is this on their Web site? I don't doubt that it's happening, but would like to see some kind of proof just to be sure.

 

[Left_Coast]

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2007/07/dark_day_at_daily_news.php

 

[rpmmutant]

It was announced during the afternoon editorial meeting Tuesday that two bureaus would be closing and the paper would try to absorb the positions and offer buyouts. If not enough people take the buyouts, layoffs would be next. It's mostly newsside positions and photo. But it sounds like the cuts might trickle down to other areas of the paper, namely copy editors and photo desk positions. Less work leads to fewer positions. Not that we aren't stretched as it is.

 

[Left_Coast]

Any more word outside of L.A. Observed that the LADN building has been sold to Hearst?

 

[rpmmutant]

The building has been up for sale for a few months. I heard that it has been sold, but not to whom. We have been told that we will be moving elsewhere within the year. Van Nuys, North Hollywood, San Gabriel, Santa Clarita have all been floated as possibilities, but there have been no concrete details given to us.

 

[Left_Coast]

Well, that'd be one way to reopen the soon-to-be-shuttered Santa Clarita bureau: Move the whole operation there!
My money will be on San Gabriel. Consolidate into one building with the SGV Tribune, then in time, put all of LANG's properties into one building. At this point, they're all being passed off as basically the same thing.

 

[SoCalDude]

Great, run the Long Beach and Torrance papers from San Gabriel. That always works.
At least at San Gabriel, there's an In 'N' Out across the street, Artie's Pizza a few blocks down the way and King Taco (which has an armed guard) a short distance the other ways.

 

[fishwrapper]

Any more word outside of L.A. Observed that the LADN building has been sold to Hearst?

An honest question...
What could Hearst's interest be in the building? It's in a commericial area and would be far more valuable to a retailer. If I'm thinking of the same property.

 

[MileHigh]

Don't know, but MediaNews and Hearst have partenered up in the Bay Area, but I don't know of anything they're doing together in SoCal.

 

[Birdscribe]

Forgive me if I'm D_Bing here, but I've talked to two members of the Singleton Gulag in the last five days and they've both said the sports desk work is now going through San Gabriel. Agate, copy, slot, they're putting out the IV Daily Bulletin and San Bernardino Sun sports sections in West Covina.

One said it's the first step toward a universal desk and relegating those papers to bureau/vassal status.

 

[MileHigh]

Wow, I haven't heard that. I know the Daily Bulletin and the Sun have been being put out together the past couple of years in San Bernardino but I have not heard them moving that production to West Covina.
Again: WOW.

 

[Editude]

The feature section (a daily tab) already is a collective project called LA.com. Folks in Yucaipa can't wait to read about goings on at the Getty.

 

[MileHigh]

The feature section (a daily tab) already is a collective project called LA.com. Folks in Yucaipa can't wait to read about goings on at the Getty.

So then you have to wonder how the folks in Colton like it.

 

[poindexter]

The feature section (a daily tab) already is a collective project called LA.com. Folks in Yucaipa can't wait to read about goings on at the Getty.

So then you have to wonder how the folks in Colton like it.

My wife in Long Beach area says the same exact thing. She says she gets the Long Beach Press-Telegram to find out what's going on in *Long Beach*.

Whoever thought up LA.com for all the suburbs is completely and utterly clueless.

 

[poindexter]

Oh by the way, the LA Daily News had the Tony Villar - marriage break-up months ago, but the editors quashed it, so the news ended up being broke on a BLOG!
http://www.laobserved.com/

When Luke Ford blogged (accurately) in January that Mayor Villaraigosa had stopped wearing his wedding ring and hadn't been seen with his wife in months, the information came from Daily News writer Tony Castro. The reporter had reported and written a story on the mayoral marriage that couldn't get in the paper, so he mentioned it to Ford, according to Brad Greenberg — who sat near Castro in the Daily News city room at the time. Greenberg writes in this week's Jewish Journal cover story [apparently taken back offline until tomorrow's official publication date]:

Back in January, Tony Castro had a sexy story to sell: Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had stopped wearing his wedding ring and hadn't been seen with his wife in months. Castro, a reporter for the L.A. Daily News, knew he'd hit gold. He dug deeper, verified what he'd heard and pitched it for page one. Only, his editors -- who at the time also were my editors -- weren't buying it. They didn't think the story qualified as much more than glorified gossip, even if it was about Los Angeles' most focal family man. The story appeared destined for a journalistic coma.

But on Jan. 29, while interviewing Ford for the Daily News' series on porn in the Valley, Castro mentioned the mayor's marital troubles. He knew Ford would get the story out. Before the phone conservation was over, Ford had posted this headline at LukeFord.net: "Antonio Villaraigosa's Marriage Kaput."

Management really seems clueless.

 

[MileHigh]

With the consolidation of the sports desks of five papers into one, the Daily News building being sold, the Long Beach Press Telegram having already moved out of its longtime building, the merging of features sections into one for all of LANG, it seems pretty clear where this is going, that LANG will put out one paper (change the name too?) and just make each region where there are established newspapers (San Bernardino, Ontario, the Valley, San Gabriel, Long Beach, Pasadena, Whittier, etc.) zoned editions.

And with that it appears will come one universal desk to do it all (one sports desk now doing five papers is maddening), probably in one location (San Gabriel since it's centrally located?). I'm sure the Long Beach-Torrance-Woodland Hills sports desks are going to get merged if this trend continues, probably into what's already in place in West Covina.

The problem with that is, especially from a sports standpoint when LANG is (purportedly) hyper local-local that you'll need Daily News folks to be up to speed on high schools and stuff going on in the Inland Empire and San Bernardino/Ontario folks to know about schools in the Santa Clarita Valley, etc.

It's maddening.

 

[rpmmutant]

It's true the universal desk is coming. Sports is already putting together universal pages, LA.COM is in a number of LANG papers and there is a push to start producing universal news pages, wire and such. I believe the master plan is to have a majority of pages universally produced, and have a select number of regional or zoned pages. In the meantime the staff is getting smaller and jobs are becoming more scarce.
And Hearst has bought the DN building in Woodland Hills. The story I hear is that Hearst is holding it for Singleton, who is apparently cash-strapped a bit after acquiring the Daily Breeze, and needed to liquidate some assets. The Long Beach building and the DN building are two of those assets. What Hearst plans on doing with the building is anyone's guess. But there are a number of vacant buildings on the block and the theory is that Hearst or a developer will buy the properties and, well, develop them.