eye_on_pr 41 Winning Ink with the LA Times

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Nationally recognized and award-winning writer George McQuade reports on the PR industry. We also feature guest writers. If you'd like to share your media experience please let us know, or feel free to comment.

April 1, 2003

By George S. Mc Quade III

Winning Ink in the Los Angeles Times


From (l-R) Steve Padilla, dep. Ed., Metro, Keith Harman, B-M, SF,Rick Whartzman, Ed.,Business Sec., Roger Smith,Editor, column one, Los Angeles Times at PRSA-LA Media workshop..

The Los Angeles Times was "like a box of chocolates," says new Business Editor Rick Whartzman

"We have been trying to change the focus of the section to more coverage of the local business community and looking at the whole trillion dollar plus California economy as a territory we need to own," said Rick Whartzman, editor, Business Section of the Los Angeles Time, who came to the paper last September. Whartzman spoke at the OnTheScene Productions/PRSA-LA sponsored at breakfast with the media panel (March 18th, 2003) at Burson-Marsteller, Century City, CA. The former Wall Street Journal reporter said before he got to the paper you never knew what you got on any given day. "It was like Forest Gump's box of chocolates. You never knew what you were going to get. Some days there was a good local story. Some days the focus was on International markets, another G.E. or G.M. story. So what I make sure we do is to pick out fights better, and try and win those fights."

Bus. Ed. Rick Whartzman

Whartzman says he has reorganized the Business section into five teams of reporters

The whole goal Whartzman says is to tell the "wonderful story we have in our own back yard. We have a Hollywood group to start. Entertainment and Media there is a consistent presence on that page every day. We have a technology group, which includes reporters in the Silicon Valley as well as down here in LA. There is a markets group, because obviously what happens on Wall Street affects everything. Even locally we try to fix our blends. For example: Reporter Scott Record (scott.record@latimes.com) for instance is now focused on California State banking. Reporter Josh Freeman (josh.freeman@latimes.com) has been given a brand new beat of covering private equity in L.A. A lot of deals in this town get done under the radar and out of the public markets and we want to try and capture that story."

"We have a small team of enterprise reporters, which is a mandate from our managing editor to do some investigative reporting. And last, there is the newly constituted California Team, which I pulled together and expanded so we can cover the engines that drive the state's economy," explained Whartzman. "We've added an apparel manufacturing reporter, a section that wasn't covered before. I have a gas and oil reporter."

Rick Whartzman

LA Times closes its Detroit bureau to focus on cars from California perspective," says Whartzman

"We closed up our Detroit Bureau so we can really devote our attention to really covering cars and autos, which are enormously important in this market, but we want to really do it from a California perspective. So we'll be focused on auto design and fuel economy and issues of safety that are of paramount importance here. More generally, we've beefed up our coverage of a large number of companies; we're putting the final touches on some of the hot companies list. We went through a list of companies the Los Angeles Times had not written about in an awfully long time, and it shocking the number of multibillion-dollar companies we hadn't covered for awhile. So we have made sure those large companies do not fall through the cracks anymore."

Rick Whartzman

The LA Times adds a new column called "The Golden State," says Whartzman

Whartzman noted that on the flip side of things since California is so driven by "so many entrepreneurs, and Los Angeles is not a fortune 500 town anymore. It's tough to get your arms around some places, because the Golden State is so driven by small and medium-sized businesses that it makes it tough to cover. Whartzman says the LA Times has added Mike Hilsig's (Mike.Hiltzik@LATimes.com) column 'The Golden State,' which has a broad mandate and it is really Mike's canvas to do what he wants, but one of his duties will be to dig into the entrepreneurial culture and nooks and cranny of the state economy, particularly Southern California." Whartzman concluded that the LA Times, along with the change in focus editors has really tried to put an emphasis on the quality of writing and story telling. The Business section is now being more rigorously being edited than every before. At the end of the day Whartzman's goal is to have a business section that is vibrant, interesting and is all about California.

"We don't want to look like a New York Times wannabe in the business section or a Wall Street Journal junior. We have our own great story and unique story right here to tell and that's our goal. Some days I fell like were hitting the mark, too," said Whartzman.

"Our lives are governed by the words what if," said Deputy Metro Editor Steve Padilla, LA Times

"I work with a whole flock of general assignment reporters, who work out of six bureaus we have sprinkled throughout Los Angeles County and they cover everything and anything," said Steve Padilla, deputy editor, Metro Section of the Los Angeles Times. "It might be the murder of a fashion jeweler to a column one story." A former staff reporter (1987), Padilla was named deputy editor, Metro, Los Angeles Times in 2001. He was also assistant national political editor and managing editor of the Valley Edition in the late 1990's. He was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for "Spot News," on coverage of a deadly Bank of America robbery and shootout.

Steve Padilla

"Tips, events, observations and government," is where we get our stories from says Editor Padilla

Padilla explained the process of how stories end up in his section of the paper. "Reporters get tips from people who write, the phone or send email. We cover events. You know no one suddenly throws a Rose Parade. And the opposite of events are emergencies. That's why reporters are always ready. I always encourage what I call fire clothes in the car, because you never know when you're going to have to cover a brush fire in L.A. I don't know if anyone saw me changed clothes in a Valencia parking lot, but I spent three hours covering a brush fire on my day off. That's why photographers don't listen to music when they're in the car. They listen to the scanner. Our lives are governed by the words what if. What if the plane crashes, which is why we can't give you a straight answer sometimes, because we don't know what's going to happen. So emergencies, events, tips and the government is where we get our stories. Government is in the broadest sense. The Congress, the school board, the court system, police. We talk to those people, we read their agendas, we sleep to their meetings and we communicate."

Steve Padilla, Deputy Editor, California Sec.

Some reporters write stories about "observations returning from another story," says Padilla

Padilla says the last way they get stories are by observations. "I give a few assignments, but most good reporters tell me what's going on. I'm not out there, and they come up with 95 percent of their stories. I hire reporters who I knew walked down the street saw a sign and said 'hey that gives me an idea.' Or they hear something at dinner and it gets them to think about something. I've gotten stories out of the phonebook for God sake. What I really like is when a reporter gets a story while driving back from reporting another story. They get a news release, but don't want to do a story on that, but they tuck it away and eventually something else connects to that, then it connects, and connects and then they (reporters) come up with stories. So that's how they do it. They're not just waiting for the tips. They're literally just absorbing information. Those are the ones I hire."

Roger Smith, Col.1 Ed.

Former Los Angeles Times "management couldn't find their way out of a paper bag,"
says Column One Editor Roger Smith

"The L.A. Times is coming back to where we were in 1977, where people want to come to work," said Roger Smith, one of three column one editors, who has been at the L.A. Times for 25 years. "It was a big moment when we got Rick Whartzman from the Wall Street Journal. Just last week we just hired Doug Kranstein, a top investigative editor at the New York Times, who left the L.A. Times in 1994. We've hired people from the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington Post. It's an exciting place primarily because John Carrol, our editor for the last three years and Managing Editor Dean McKay, both incredibly dynamic journalists, who are pumping up the moral and quality at the L.A. Times. Five or six years ago it was still a good paper, but we had some difficulties. We were under management then that quite frankly couldn't find their way out of a paper bag. We were a paper that was profitable, but now we are a paper on the move."

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