Local News Donneybrook Brews Online In LA

It should come as no surprise that L.A. news sites have added splashy interactive, color-coded traffic maps, with Web cam views and tie-up alerts. In this car-crazy city, the Los Angeles Times site has one. And so do each of the three network television news sites.

Using Clear Channel Communication’s SigAlert.com and Google maps, the features let site users see at a glance where traffic is zooming along (green-colored roads) and where it is jammed up (red).

But there are other, less racy undertakings here in tinsel town, the nation’s second largest Nielsen market. (L.A. is also second when it comes to local online ad spending, according to media consulting firm Borrell Associates. Local advertisers spent more than $4.5 billion here last year and will shell out about $6.1 billion in 2015, when $1.2 billion will go for online ads, according to Borrell.)

“The $64,000 question looming over Los Angeles is if there’s going to be some sort of news startup that gets any traction,” said Marc Cooper, an associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California.

Earlier this year, reports that former Times Mirror Co. executive Thomas Unterman was considering starting a nonprofit news site similar to ones in San Diego, Austin and Minneapolis created a stir in the city’s journalism and power circles. But, so far, no such site has materialized.

“I think there’s just been no decision,” an assistant at Unterman’s venture capital firm, Rustic Canyon Partners, said this week. “It’s just unsure what he’s going to do at this time.”

Meanwhile, a local public radio station, KPCC, has started expanding its staff, with hopes to grow into a news operation more than double its size by the end of this year.

In December, board members of Southern California Public Radio network, which operates KPCC-FM, decided to metamorphose from a public radio station into a “multiplatform public media institution,” said Bill Davis, president of SCPR.

The planned transformation would involve redesigning and emphasizing the station’s Web site, scpr.org, and boosting its editorial staff.

A new blogger and videographer have already been hired, he said, and the network wants to bring in another 13 staffers. That would grow the editorial roster to 25, according to Davis.

“We want to have compelling coverage,” he explained. But, he added, “We’re still working on the funds to do this.”

Davis figures SCPR will need an additional $8 million to pay for such an expansion through its first year. So far, he said, the board has raised $2.5 million and that has come from the members themselves.

The goal, Davis said, isn’t to take on the market behemoth LATimes.com, which is visited by 19% of area adults during a given month, according to The Media Audit, which tracks Web activity. “They’ve got 15 million uniques,” he said, dwarfing SCPR’s 300,000 to 400,000 monthly unique visitors. [Ed. Note: The number of monthly unique visitors was corrected to 300,000 to 400,000.]

The plan, he said, is to focus on areas the down-sized Times doesn’t cover as thoroughly or focus on them from a different perspective. “Our coverage is really a hit ’em where they ain’t,” Davis said.

And the content should reflect and complement the content that National Public Radio airs, he said. “You know within a nanosecond that you’re listening to a public radio station, right? We want to create that instantaneous recognition on the Web site,” he said.

This NPR affiliate’s approach will be different from what the news industry has seen so far with nonprofit startups in other cities, he added. “We’re trying to build out from really a 40-year tradition …”

AOL’s Patch has set up shop in a big way here. It has opened hyperlocal news sites in communities such as Beverly Hills and Brentwood and lured some of the experienced journalists the Times shed during its downsizings, as well as the usual cadre of cub reporters.

“We’ve got a zillion Patch sites,” said the Times’ media columnist, James Rainey.

The Times, for its part, offers those hungry for local details something called Neighborhoods, a project that has divided the sprawling metropolis into 16 regions, and serves up basic demographic and school system information for people in those areas. It also provides updated maps with crime statistics and information.

There is also a separate “Westside Now” section on the Local News page for news from L.A.’s Westside, West Hollywood, and other communities.

Neither Rainey nor USC’s Cooper thought the Patch sites are having much impact. “So far, what I see in a lot of them isn’t that impressive,” Rainey said.

Of course, some aren’t impressed with the Times site either.

LATimes.com, which reported it had 189.5 million page views in May, leads its market in The Media Audit’s most recent tally of adult visits. The network TV sites -- ABC7.com, NBCLosAngeles.com and CBS2.com -- followed with 14.1%, 11.5% and 10.5% of area adults visiting, respectively.