Written By Sepideh Saremi | March 25, 2008 | Share This |

los angeles times blogs tony pierce

Tony Pierce oversees the nearly three dozen blogs at the Los Angeles Times. Before working at the LAT, Pierce edited LAist, a blog that covers local L.A. culture and events. He has also worked at Buzznet and the E! channel, and he runs a popular personal blog from which he’s created two books, aka blooks.

Searchviews asked Pierce to share his insights on blogging and media convergence: what it takes to successfully integrate blogs in a news organization, how best to leverage social media sites to meet page view goals, and where video and mobile fit at the LA Times. Here’s what he had to say.

Searchviews: The traditional journalism world has misunderstood or been suspicious of blogs in the past. While many journalists have come around to blogging and other forms of social media (like Twitter and Facebook) in the last couple of years, relatively few newspapers have demonstrated that they really understand where these media fit in their business or how best to utilize them. What role do blogs play at the LA Times, both when it comes to using them as a tool and platform for journalism, and also when it comes to bringing more readers (and ad revenue) to the LA Times site? How do you hope to evolve blogging at the LAT? And what role do you play in teaching old-school journalists about new-school tools, like blogs?

Tony Pierce: Blogs play an extremely important role at the LA Times. Part of the responsibilities and goals of a news organization is to inform, enlighten, and enrich its readers in a timely manner. Not only can blogs do that, but at the Times we accomplish that daily. Be it liveblogging the NCAA tournament, hosting live video chats after Presidential debates, or getting deeper into stories than the actual newspaper has the physical room to do - blogging is the perfect complement to what most people have come to expect from traditional newspapers. For example, one of our newest blogs, L.A. Now, posts about a dozen or so blog entries a day. Only online could you have a post at 9 am talking about a local story in print, a comment or ten from the readers in that post, a rebuttal from a columnist in that same blog by noon, and a column in the paper the following day because of that exchange. Journalism, the market as a conversation, and the dialogue between writers and readers is changing very quickly, and the Times has woken up and is taking a leadership role in that change.

Will taking that leadership role attract more readers and revenue? Probably. Who knows. The more important thing is that as long as the Times continues to adjust for the inevitable, it will remain one of the centerpoints of conversations about current events related to LA and the rest of the world.

I hope to continue to be a part of blogging at the LAT as it evolves with journalism, and as journalism evolves with blogging. This evolution isn’t always an easy task. However, blogging has survived the original demonization of its critics, while at the same time the mainstream media has found ways to incorporate digital journalism into its offerings. Likewise, I have found myself being asked by a variety of veteran journalists at the Times for more and more help in regard to learning about the intricacies of blogging, its subtleties, and how it can be used best at the Times. So this belief of “traditional journalism” being suspicious of blogging is about to die off, along with the Mark Cubans and those who believe that the Earth is flat.

In many ways, blogging is simply a means with which to convey ideas, a delivery method, and a new tool for writers to express themselves. Nothing at all to fear, unless for some reason you have something you are afraid might get exposed.

SV: Tony, part of your job at the LA Times is launching new blogs; for example, you recently brought Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on board and he’s done some interesting stuff with video and written about everything from jazz to politics. What new blogs are you planning now, and what ideas make for viable blogs? In other words, what should newspapers or other media companies consider when they’re planning new blogs and hiring bloggers?

TP: We are planning a wide spectrum of new blogs that I am not at liberty to reveal at this time, but they will leap from and be based within every section of the paper that you could imagine - from the front page to the back page.

Kareem has been quite a blessing. I don’t think anyone anywhere has a Hall of Famer writing for them, from their heart, every day, about sensitive and interesting topics. And as you said, he does it with video, audio, and the written word. His Rolodex is endless, so one day you might see him doing an interview with will.i.am and the next day he’s exchanging emails with Senator Barack Obama. The day after the Super Bowl, Kareem reminisced about hanging with the Manning brothers, and the day after the Grammys, there was a picture of him with Herbie Hancock. Last week he was on the Colbert Report, and when the Lakers return you will see him inches away from the court with the Lake Show. And he writes about all of it. He is a totally fascinating man with an amazing and unreal life, and we are so lucky to have him writing about it daily.

When newspapers are planning new blogs they should consider what jewels they have in their backyards. It might not be ESPN’s Collegiate Athlete of the Century, like Kareem, but odds are they have more than a few precious gems on their radar. My advice is to reach out to those people and let them do what we’re doing with #33: let them write about whatever they want, using whatever format they feel most comfortable with. Not everyone wants to write about what made them famous, not everyone wants to type away at a keyboard. Most people are complicated. So let them tell you a wide-ranging assortment of things in a variety of ways. The blogging medium is dynamic and limitless, so don’t let your own boundaries limit your bloggers. Let them go, let them experiment, encourage them, and be there when they need you.

SV: Your past projects have included a really popular personal blog, a stint at buzznet.com, and a position as editor-in-chief at LAist, which is part of the Gothamist network of city blogs. At LAist, you were particularly savvy at and strategic about using Digg to break page view records each month. How are you using social media tools like Digg at the LAT now? How do you approach building an audience and traffic differently at the LAT as opposed to at your previous gigs?

TP: I’m not saying that Digg wasn’t part of our later success at LAist, but we doubled and tripled our readership before we ever got a following on Digg. In fact, at Buzznet I helped attract over 13 million pageviews in 8 months without even one click from Digg. There are 120 million blogs out there, countless websites, and more than a few newspapers, search engines, and email addresses. Simultaneously, there are people out there who want to see what you’ve got.

Social media tools like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Facebook, MySpace, and del.icio.us are all fine for certain stories - very few of which we write about at the Times. I love Digg, I am on it several times a day, and I don’t mean this disrespectfully in the slightest, but in many ways it’s lowest common denominator, college freshman lulz. I love Digg because in my heart, that’s who I am. But that’s not what the LA Times is, and that’s not even what the majority of what LAist is or was.

In order to get people to link to you, you simply have to find out what blogs, web pages, or media outlets are interested in your story and you have to tell them that your story exists. That might mean sending an email to an editor, or linking to a blog in one of your stories, or calling someone, or building a relationship with a so-called competitor. Eventually, when you see something being written, you will know exactly who you are going to tell. Likewise when people link you, you should write down who they were and what they linked you for. That way, when something else comes down the line, you can let them know that you have something new for them.

In November of last year, Andy Malcolm and Don Frederick were getting about a quarter million hits on their political blog Top of the Ticket. Last month, they got something like 1.6 million because they got in the practice of emailing the right political blogs about their posts. Yes, sometimes they’d get snotty emails back saying the blogs weren’t interested in such and such, but for the most part, bloggers are grateful when you make their jobs easier for them - especially if you have done your homework and have fed them a story that fits in with what they blog about. By the way, Top of the Ticket has been on Digg a few times, but I don’t think they were on it at all last month.

SV: The LAT very recently introduced video to the site. How long before we see a video-only blog from the paper? How about seeing more video on the other blogs?

TP: The Times is very dedicated to all sorts of multimedia in our blogs, and video is one of the most spectacular aspects of that. [LAT Multimedia Director] Barbara Morrow and her team have remodeled a portion of the 2nd floor that now looks like a TV station with online video editing bays, camera packages, and stuff I hadn’t seen since my days at the E! channel.

People will be pleasantly surprised when some of these video packages start finding their way onto the website, because the production values are so good that they will say, “Wait, this is the LA Times?” The concepts of what we are going to cover with video are things that you wouldn’t even be able to predict, but I have seen the future and you will love it and you will say, “Why didn’t someone do this earlier!”

That said, I doubt you will see video-only blogging for several reasons. First, Google is your friend and Google has a very hard time knowing what’s in your video unless you have some text around it. And second, we have a staff of some of the best writers in town - the writing complements the video, and the video complements the writing.

Meanwhile, we have had lots of video in our blogs that many have enjoyed: video of some pilgrims from Costa Mesa on the Hajj; when Dan Neil covered the Detroit Auto Show he took lots and lots of video, and when yours truly went to South by Southwest, we were one of the first outlets that had video evidence of Lou Reed singing with Moby.

You will definitely see more video in lots of other LA Times blogs; stay tuned.

SV: The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently reported that the cell phone is the one tool most Americans would have the hardest time giving up. How should newspapers respond to this increased dependence on mobile technology? What is the LAT doing about it?

TP: The LA Times is currently in the process of upgrading its mobile site in a way that anyone with a Blackberry, iPhone, or mobile device will appreciate. I can’t imagine having to go without my iPhone, and I scorn PEW for even floating that possibility out there. How dare they!

Topics: Blogging, Interviews, Publishing, Social Media |