At a time when printed newspapers are striving to be as fresh as possible when they hit the doorstep each morning, the Los Angeles Times appears to be heading in the opposite direction. According to LA Observed, the Times will move up its deadline to as early as 6 p.m. to make way for the Wall Street Journal to be printed on its presses. LA Observed writes that Publisher Eddy Hartenstein is forced to make a decision about which to print first in the wake of the announcement that the company’s Orange County presses will be shuttered.
Under the Hartenstein plan, big news that happens late won’t be on the front page or even in the A section — which, remember, is now also the LAT’s only local news section. Late news will run in a new section-lite being called AA — and branded as LATExtra. For now, at least, Stanton is telling the newsroom that AA will usually run behind the front section, not wrapped around the front page. Stanton’s sales pitch today to skeptical editors and reporters was that the trade-off would have been more layoffs.
Like most newspapers, the Times’ current deadline is 11 p.m. each night (some papers “go to bed” even later). A 6 p.m. deadline will make the paper look incredibly stale on mornings when breaking news happened the night before.
