Press-Enterprise's owner wants to toss the old newspaper image

The Press-Enterprise Company, which owns and operates the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, La Prensa, and a few other publications and websites, has adopted a new name: Enterprise Media.

The name change has several purposes, not the least of which is to shed the image of a company tied to a tired, "one-dimensional" product: newspapers.

The new name also appears designed to position the company to better capture new revenue sources - Belo, Enterprise Media's parent, is going to experiment with paywalls come spring - and could simplify matters if Enterprise Media chose to partner with other media companies in the region.

From the memo to staff (my emphasis):

This change in our Company name has been planned for some time to ensure our business is seen by our clients as keeping pace with the significant, rapid and dynamic changes that are happening in the media industry. It also is aligned with the long-term vision for our business to reflect the innovation, new directions and forward-thinking multimedia strategy that our Company is actively pursuing. We have expanded from being a newspaper company to become a diversified media company. It’s now time for our customers to know us as more than a newspaper company as well.

The name Enterprise Media describes and defines who we are as a company. It effectively conveys our position as a future-focused media company; a leading and digitally savvy, multi-media news and information content provider. It is a name that will impress and influence our advertising and business-side clients to change their minds and attitudes about who we are.

This change is important because the name ‘Press-Enterprise Company’ does not align with our strategy. It is inextricably tied to our daily newspaper, ‘The Press-Enterprise,’ and it does not communicate to our customers the size, scale and capabilities of our multi-media product portfolio. ...

[T]he name ‘Press-Enterprise Company’ is tied to their past experiences with a newspaper company and it evokes attitudes and perceptions that are:

· One-dimensional. It causes our B2B [business-to-business] clients to see us as a one-product company; in their minds, one that has limited, if any, value for their needs. Reality is we are so much more as a business partner.

· Geographically limited. In the minds of our B2B clients our Company’s market and audience reach is limited to the geography of our newspaper circulation area. Reality is that our sphere of influence and audience extends well beyond the geographic area our newspaper serves.

· Institutionally bound. It says “newspaper” which means “inflexible,” “high rates,” and “old media” to advertisers who are looking for new ways to reach their clients using social media, mobile, and more. We want our name to convey that we’re playing in that space too.

The full memo is here.

More popups, comments coming to LA Times.com

Readers will soon be able to comment on selected stories and photos at the Los Angeles Times website, according to a memo from Editor Russ Stanton to staff. In addition, the paper plans to embed advertising links (those pesky green links that often bring up a pop-up window for some product or other) in the text of non-news stories as a way to make money. LA Observed has the full here.

It's Wonderland, Russ

Los Angeles Times editor Russ Stanton let it be known that he opposed Friday's takeover ad, which featured a mock front page with a giant picture of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter alongside recent Times' articles, but said he got overruled by the suits.

From the New York Times:

The top editor of The Times, Russ Stanton, and several of his deputies vigorously opposed the ad before it was published, but they were overruled by the paper’s business executives, according to people with direct knowledge of the dispute, who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Mr. Stanton said only, “Obviously, it was not my decision.”

John Conroy, a spokesman for The Times, said, “Stretching the boundaries was what we were going for.” He said Eddy W. Hartenstein, the publisher and chief executive, and other executives would not comment.

Conroy goes on to say the paper wants website advertising to set the tone for the way ads are presented in the newspaper, rather than have the newspaper set the standard.

Asked to comment, Geneva Overholser, director of USC's school of journalism, seemed resigned to the new world order: "This isn’t newspapering as it used to be, but that can’t be the determinant any more." At least one reporter, who spoke confidentially, accepted the move as a necessary, money-making evil.

A new Times on Monday*

Los Angeles Times subscribers will find a smaller, narrower newspaper starting Monday. The changes include the elimination of the Monday business section, an inch cut to the paper's width and earlier print deadlines. To compensate for the last, the paper will launch LATExtra, which is supposed to catch late-breaking stories that don't make the regular edition.

*Some of the changes won't take effect until tomorrow, according to LA Observed.

Ask the money man

Andrew Ross Sorkin, the popular New York Times financial writer who was recently profiled by New York Magazine, is answering readers' questions at the Times website this week. The link is here.

A California pick me up

For the last year, California has been portrayed as a broken state. Fast-growing debt, high unemployment, irreconcilable demands for more services and lower taxes, an intractable budget, and an impotent state government. Waterless, traffic jammed and on fire. Time magazine's Michael Grunwald suggests that only those who have it so good could whine so loudly:

Ignore the California whinery. It's still a dream state. In fact, the pioneering megastate that gave us microchips, freeways, blue jeans, tax revolts, extreme sports, energy efficiency, health clubs, Google searches, Craigslist, iPhones and the Hollywood vision of success is still the cutting edge of the American future — economically, environmentally, demographically, culturally and maybe politically. It's the greenest and most diverse state, the most globalized in general and most Asia-oriented in particular at a time when the world is heading in all those directions. It's also an unparalleled engine of innovation, the mecca of high tech, biotech and now clean tech. In 2008, California's wipeout economy attracted more venture capital than the rest of the nation combined. Somehow its supposedly hostile business climate has nurtured Google, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Facebook, Twitter, Disney, Cisco, Intel, eBay, YouTube, MySpace, the Gap and countless other companies that drive the way we live. ...

"In the depths of the breakdown, you can see the next narrative," says Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution's metropolitan-policy program. "It's California. The next economy is already in place there, and it's amazing."

The complete article is here.

L.A. Times Magazine back on the news side

The sad and expensive experiment of letting the business-side of the Los Angeles Times run the Sunday magazine has come to an end. Nikki Finke first reported that the magazine's editor, Annie Gilbar, a former Home Shopping Network host, had been axed, along with her $300,000 salary. She will be replaced by deputy editor Nancie Clare.

Finke lamented the move, saying the magazine will become "crappy all over again" under the Times' editorial control. LA Observed's Kevin Roderick was less fond of Gilbar's vision for L.A. coverage: "I found the magazine's view of L.A. too narrow and its personality too gushing — remember when Gilbar pronounced pessimism a bummer?"

Totally.

None of our business

Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell visited UCLA's business school last week. The press was barred from attending the event, but Matthew Fleischer of LA CityBeat hung around outside to get a sense of things. From his dispatch:

A couple of students described the event as “mellow.” Questions for Zell ranged from the economic downturn to Zell's management style. Most students lacked an opinion about the efficacy of referring to your staff as "overhead," as Zell has told members of the Times' editorial section on at least one occasion.

In general, the students I spoke with seemed to eat up Zell's spiel. His presentation style was "lucid," and he had a tremendous "command of the room."

"I really like how the event was media-free," one student remarked to another.

“Really?" her conversational partner responded. "I thought that it was kind of ironic actually. I mean, the guy owns a bunch of newspapers right?"

Hey, the kid’s alright.