Los Angeles Times Changes Coming Monday

Los Angeles - The Los Angeles Times print edition will shrink again Monday, victim of a severe recession and changing readership habits.

The paper is consolidating its printing operations at its plant on Ninth Street in the Los Angeles produce district, and is laying off 80 press operators after shuttering its Orange County satellite printing plant in Costa Mesa, the paper announced earlier this month.

The most-obvious change to readers will be the reduction in width of the printed page. The double-page paper stock will be trimmed from 48 inches to 44 inches, meaning a two-inch haircut for each printed page.

For the first time in decades, Monday's Times will be printed without a stand-alone business section. The newspaper's editors plan to sprinkle business news into the combined world/nation/state/local section each Monday.

Deadlines for the main sections of the newspaper will be advanced about three hours earlier, to accommodate a 6 p.m. press run. Late-breaking news will be highlighted in a new section to be called LATExtra, which will be inserted into the main sections late each evening.

The sports section will continue to have its customary late deadlines each night, to enable coverage of games and scores, The Times said.

Insiders at The Times have griped that the earlier deadlines are to enable The Times to continue a lucrative printing job: producing West Coast editions of the Wall Street Journal and New York Post under contract from press baron Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

Times editor Russ Stanton strongly disputes that. He told a reader in an e-mail that The Times has sufficient capacity at Ninth Street to print the Journal and Post in "a little more than an hour, and it has no effect on what we are doing with the Los Angeles Times."

The earlier deadlines are necessary, Stanton wrote, "to save money so we can continue to deliver you a world-class news and features report each and every day.

"We have the latest printing deadlines in the continental United States at present, and that will still be the case after Feb. 2," Stanton told the reader.

Like all newspapers, the print edition's readership has declined more than 30 percent in the Internet era, and the amount of ads has been drastically cut by deep recessions in the car and real estate sectors, newspaper analysts have noted. A stand-alone daily California-local news section has already evaporated, as have the book review, Sunday opinion section, real estate section, and other longstanding features.

The Times is owned by the Tribune Company, which remains in bankruptcy protection while majority owner Sam Zell and the company's creditors and debt-holders battle over a restructuring plan. Some journalists have filed suit charging Zell for mismanaging Tribune employees' retirement funds to finance his purchase of the Chicago-based company.

Many journalists at The Times and other Tribune properties are chafing at a bankruptcy court's decision last week to award $45.6 million in performance bonuses to 720 Tribune managers across the company's 19 television stations and major newspapers, including California's biggest newspaper and the Chicago Tribune.

The New York Times reported that the Tribune bonuses represent 11 percent of the company's cash flow, a sum more than three times bigger than the bonus pool when the company was profitable. The company has laid off 3,000 employees nationwide.

"It's a greater reward for lower performance," said a Baltimore Sun union representative.