There was a time when @LAist quadrupled the @LATimes' #1 blog because it figured out to fill in the gaps the Times felt too important to cover.
It would have either retweeted the news from today or blogged something up about it… even on a weekend.
You win again, @LAPDHQ. pic.twitter.com/ho0ufo4xNR
— tony pierce (@busblog) July 18, 2021
Henry has seen it all in his decades at the LA Times. He worked in various offices around LA and saw it all from the inside out.
If he had not embraced The Web the way he had, there would have been no way our success would have happened.
I knew I was in trouble when I landed at KPCC and asked where the copy editors were. As Henry tweeted, when I was first at the LAT there were 100 of them. At KPCC there were zero. That never changed. Finances. They considered it a luxury.
When you drive your car do you consider your brakes a luxury?
The man who would successfully push me out at the Times also didn’t believe in the copy desk. He created a blog that would publish first and have copy come in afterwards. I said why would you do that? He said he wanted to be at the cutting edge of Google Trends. I said great you get your headline on the top of Google News and what’s gonna happen when people click and it’s a mess? He said, no one will notice.
But that’s the funny thing about big time digital news from a big time news org: they notice the errors way more than the successes.
I am glad that guy is no longer in my universe.
Likewise, I feel blessed that Henry even knows my name.
i was the blog editor of the times at the time and i was trying my best to get one of our movie blogs on the map.
it was written by this excellent reporter who traveled around and got these great stories
but he wasnt a critic, he wrote about movie news, which was fine, and he’d write a few features. good features. but the web was yawning.
i was starting to learn that unless a movie blog was something super dooper special and unique like The Hero Complex
it was gonna be a struggle to get it happening.
so i thought of this great idea, i was gonna dress up in costume every week and go to the movies
and invite all of our readers to come with us and afterwards we would interview the readers
and ask them what they thought of the movie
and we would put their videos up a couple days later
and we would call the whole thing The LA Times Movie Club
well of course everyone jumped on board because it was a brilliant idea and i was making good money
so i didnt even expense the costumes or the wigs or the makeup or even the movies
and omg the entertainment editors came up to me and shook my hand and said
“tony god bless you. there are so many lonely people out there and you have
given them a way to see movies with other strangers and our fine paper. you’re amazing!”
so one day i was almost ready to go to the movies. it was robin hood. the remake with kevin costner.
and sass was in the neighborhood and she wanted to introduce me to her friend
and i was all, who cares, fine. i’ll say hi.
and in walks sass who always looks spectacular and who is this wearing a child’s tshirt as a dress
but candis marie from the east side and i was all, trust me i dont always dress like an elf.
she was all, nice tights.
and we took the picture of our shoes because rarely do i have cool shoes on.
technically she sits next to me
astrologically they say that pisces and libra will probably only meet each other because of work because we roll in different orbits and probably wouldnt get a long. but id say we get along quite well and together we’ve done ok with the blogs.
lindsay asked for and received the day off to go to disneyland but before she left she compiled some “fun facts” that appeared in our boss meredith’s letter to the staff today. in these monthly letters meredith talks about the cool new things we’re up to (like this month was the launch of the mapping la project and the relaunch/redesign of la now), she goes over the most viewed stories, and then reports on what happened on the blogs, video, photo, and everything we do online like the amaaaaaaazing mexico under siege series.
this month she reported that we had an alltime record in pageviews, with over 17 million. there were some interesting LA-based stories in february from octomom to rihanna to the oscars and its nice to see that when people want to read about those things they’re coming to our blogs more and more. From the Readers Rep Journal:
Blogs
Our blogs broke a traffic record for February – impressive given it was a short month. Three blogs had more than a million page views. A warm welcome to Pete Thomas and his Outposts into the top 10. Congrats to Dodger Thoughts and Idol Tracker -– both new blogs -– on their strong showings. Blogs with an asterisk broke individual page view records.
1. Dish Rag – 3,224,676 *
2. L.A. Now – 2,443,674 *
3. Top of the Ticket – 1,276,706
4. Gold Derby – 898,618 *
5. Pop & Hiss – 739,750 *
6. Show Tracker – 678,270
7. Fabulous Forum – 576,199
8. Lakers – 528,093
9. Technology – 527,553
10. Outposts – 426,816 *
11. L.A. Unleashed *
12. Idol Tracker *
13. Dodger Thoughts
14. Hero Complex
15. L.A. Land
16. Daily Mirror *
17. Comments Blog *
18. All the Rage
19. Booster Shots
20. Culture Monster *
Fun facts from Lindsay Barnett:
* Last February we had an all-time traffic record with 5,764,230 PVs. We almost tripled it this month.
* Dish Rag’s traffic this February was almost 15 times what it was a year ago.
* L.A. Now’s traffic this February was more than 10 times what it was a year ago.
there are many tales behind those numbers and one of them involves Lindsay. because of promotions and people moving around, the animal blog Unleashed found itself needing some tlc. lindsay took it over and she was so close to breaking into the top ten with no spikes from digg or links from drudge or anything other than grade a blogging.
also prepare to see the dodgers blog, dodger thoughts, to break the top ten next month. bro gets 200+ comments on many of his posts and spring training just started. wait till theres a) a fella named manny playing b) actual games.
anyways i hope lindsay had a nice birthday. none of the success of the lat blogs could have happened without her. shes the not so secret weapon of our little dept.
thats why im pretty much disqualified to comment on our first black president.
my sister and i were the only black kids out in the suburbs for much of our time growing up.
in one of the magazines our grandmother subscribed to, Jet, they would list all of the black people who were going to be on tv that week. even though these were the days of The Jeffersons, and Good Times, some weeks there were barely enough names for half of a page – and Jet was a tiny little magazine. a little bigger than your hand.
today i got to support one of the biggest blogs in the world, Top of the Ticket. i added pictures and videos to posts, i even got to write a few. as a bi-coastal team we were liveblogging. reporters photographers video journalists editors copy editors and bloggers covering what wonkette so wryly deemed “the Actual Most Historical Thing Ever, Since the Moon Landing“.
but to me it was still a black man on tv and i wondered how jet would have listed it.
although it was mighty cool to be in the belly of the beast during a day of such dramatic advancement for the perception and reality of minorities in america, my sister wins because she was there, in a chair, in the good section.
even desperately posting a photo of yourself being felt up by two canadian girls while wearing a silk shirt adorned with a variety of ac/dc album covers cant beat that.
although welchy’s hit n run blog came close with their “Obama Inaugurated, Ex-Klansman Collapses” headline
also, ken layne was on fire (nsfw)
i want to write good. i want to fight good. i want to fuck good. i want to rock good.
when im with people i want them to have a good time. when im with a girl i want her to think of noone else. when im skateboarding down sunset i want the budhists to say shit weve gone down the wrong path all along.
im not feeling well.
in my review i told them that i hadnt been sick all year. now im feeling a little dizzy. i think i had bad roast beef yesterday and i thought i was having a heart attack. then i ate all these tums. then my buddy came over and wanted to do a quick shot with me.
one shot leads to another.
then i tried to write what i have to write for the big time web site. wasnt able to. passed out on the couch. ashley called me and woke me up. went back to sleep. woke up. went back to sleep.
i just want to do good and be good and feel good and write good.
i want the pearly gates to open when i arrive and for them to say that motherfucker was good.
i want the dogs to bark and the fat ladies to sing.
i want i want i want. camus said that wanting is the root of all pain but you know what i say to camus.
i say fuck camus, thats right.
fuck you camus.
i want to make tshirts. i want to make hats. i want to make mousepads that people can give to their dads.
whats this boy?
its a fuck you camus mousepad, pops.
i want this hot girl to come over but im sick. im not sick. im pre-sick. my buddy gave me some echinacia, i ate clam chowder for lunch, now im gonna pound water.
every time my throat hurts i always think that its from my after-work pipe.
when i was a kid i always thought that when i was an adult i would love to have a pipe hanging around cuz they looked and smelled so damn good.
little did i know how easilly dreams can come true.
i want you.
im going to say it again until i instill it.
right now i could use a shot of rum. we chased this mother down thai town in the heat and i cant catch my breath.
some of the fellas shot at him but missed and i shot and hit him in the foot.
nice shot, footy, they say. they think its lame that i always hit people either in the eye or in the foot and i say what good is marksmanship if you dont apply it and they say thats bullshit that if you hit them in the foot they can still shoot back and i tell em let em shoot back its not like any things ever going to hit us. ever.
and they look at me like im crazy and i tell them nothings ever going to get us.
nothing.
nothing.
and you know what they say?
they say,
good.
