News Flash: Some Things Are Going Well at LA Times
Yes, believe it or not, some things are doing well at the embattled LA Times, and as expected, it is the online side. Some traffic numbers, from the company itself, in the form of a memo from interactive exec ed Meredith Artley on its clunkily-named Reader’s Representative Journal blog. Of course these are from the company itself, so take it for what it’s worth…and that traffic growth does not mean revenue growth, necessarily. Still, it can do with all the hope it can muster.
“Latimes.com set an all-time record of 127 million page views for July, cruising past the previous record of 120 million set in May. That’s 66% growth from this time last year. More than 19 million unique users visited in July, another all-timer…We were on track to break that May record by a few million page views, and then the earthquake happened, pushing us even further ahead.” Translation: Quakes rock.
Then, some other traffic-friendly launches: last month it launched “Hero Complex”, a new sci-fi and beyond blog, about, well, all things geek entertainment. While an odd fit, very page view friendly. Case in point: “Schwarzenegger underwhelmed by early ‘Terminator Salvation’ footage”. Then this new database of “Popular Dog names and breeds in Los Angeles County”, where I learned something very revealing: The most common dogs in LA are Chihuahua, and there are exactly 1,262 registered Chihuahuas named Princess. Now you know…

Comments (4)
Aug 7, 2008 9:26 AM
Zell should just hedge his losses and shutter the print edition, its costs, sell its physical assets and migrate online. If a customer wants a print edition, charge them some ridiculous environmentally induced price of $2/day and have them printed out custom.
Aug 7, 2008 1:00 PM
Ever look at Salon’s 10-Qs during the time they instituted the Ultramercial Site Pass? From 2002 to 2004, almost half ad revenue came from the model, subscriptions over doubled and unique visitors grew a million. LA Times and every other paper need to STOP giving away content for free online and put in an honest value-exchange ad model to access content - OR - make people pay.
The Critical Advertiser
Aug 7, 2008 6:11 PM
“Meredith (NYSE: MDP) Artley”
Ummm, why is an unrelated company’s stock symbol inserted next to the name of a person who just happens to share the name with that unrelated company?
There are limits to using bots to assemble content.
Aug 7, 2008 6:17 PM
Hah..good point..we have a workaround to this which we forgot to add this time. thanks for pointing our