The LA Times: When Investors Should Stop Trying to Run Businesses

I wrote about the LA Times Magazine story on my blog about words and writing. However, it turned into a business rant, so I thought a link here might be worthwhile.

New York Times and Reinventing the Newspaper

There's a reason that the New York Times has been spectacularly successful online compared to other newspapers - they're not trying trying to do what in web marketing used to be called brochureware. Reading a book on television is not compelling programming. Showing movie stills in a magazine is boring. Writing for the stage is different from writing for the page. Every outlet has its own structure, form, and demands.

Too many newspapers, magazines, and other publishers are just trying to take what they have and somehow do that "web thing." And while the TimesSelect premium online service isn't perfect, it's a lot smarter than most of its competitors. I just got a mailing from them that highlighted its video site (where you can find all those clips that they are trying, not with complete success, to integrate with their print stories online). What are they offering that's new? L'Eau Life, "a short animated film created for TimesSelect by artist Jeff Scher." That is the online counterpart - not translation or relocation - for that perennial favorite section, the comics. Now that's reinvention.