Michael Kinsley shook up the editorial staff of The Los Angeles Times recently, transferring four of his eleven writers, letting one go, and outsourcing some editorials to freelancers.
Michael Kinsley is not unaccustomed to controversy as an editor.
But many on the newspaper's staff knew what was coming because Mr. Kinsley, who was hired to oversee the newspaper's editorial and opinion pages last spring, accidentally left a Power Point document describing his plans on a Xerox machine in their office in early May. He said he had intended to share his ideas at a company management retreat.
"We had a series of Power Point slides Michael was going to share at a retreat and some people stumbled across those and inferred that we were going to blow up the editorial board," said Andr�s Martinez, the editorial page editor. "Michael does like to ask questions, such as, 'In today's world, what is the continuing relevance of a newspaper editorial board?' "
Mr. Kinsley, who earned a reputation as an iconoclastic editor at Harpers, The New Republic and Slate, seems determined to answer that question by upending the established notion of the newspaper editorial.
Typically a collection of well-reasoned, short, unsigned, sometimes stodgy pieces on critical issues, editorial pages have long been a stalwart of newspapers. They may garner respect and attention from politicians and decision makers but often no more than a stifled yawn from readers.
While some editorial pages have been nudged into new directions, Mr. Kinsley, the editorial and opinion page editor, is making the boldest attempt to make them more dynamic, argumentative and interactive with several innovations aimed squarely at online readers, while being less like an unseen voice of authority.
The changes, announced in yesterday's edition, include allowing editorial writers a once-a-year chance to write a signed piece dissenting from the editorial position of the newspaper. "Writer Judy Dugan has already used up her 2005 allotment with a strong rebuttal to our editorial endorsing the Republican Senate leadership's efforts to kill the filibuster," Mr. Martinez wrote in yesterday's paper.
This week, the newspaper, will introduce an online feature called "wikitorials," as a way for readers to engage in an online dialogue with the paper. The model is based on "Wikipedia," the Web's free-content encyclopedia that is edited by online contributors.
"We'll have some editorials where you can go online and edit an editorial to your satisfaction," Mr. Martinez said. "We are going to do that with selected editorials initially. We don't know how this is going to turn out. It's all about finding new ways to allow readers to interact with us in the age of the Web."
Mr. Kinsley said that he was just trying something new with the wikitorials.
"It may be a complete mess but it's going to be interesting to try," he said. "Wikitorials may be one of those things that within six months will be standard. It's the ultimate in reader participation."
Mr. Kinsley also started an experimental feature, "Thinking Out Loud," where readers, op-ed and editorial writers hash out tough issues like immigration and traffic. "We hope within a year that we will have a solid, consistent, intelligent and correct position on these two issues and it will result from a process that is not only transparent but readers will participate," Mr. Kinsley said.
While some within the newspaper do not fault Mr. Kinsley for trying a new model as newspapers struggle with declining circulation and little interest from younger readers, he has been criticized by several staff members for how he's handled the changes. "I'm doing the best I can," he said.
Jacob Heilbrunn, an editorial writer who will be leaving the newspaper in July, said that "there's a good deal of disgruntlement and smashed crockery" over the changes and how they have been handled.
"Mike's coming in and selling a new model," Mr. Heilbrunn said. "He's an innovative free market guy who's basically saying, 'You may have won all these prizes but you're the General Motors of journalism, trying to sell outdated gas-guzzlers while everyone else is moving on to hybrids. Let's slash the workforce, get creative, and start outsourcing.' "
Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab, the institute of interactive journalism at the University of Maryland, was heartened by Mr. Kinsley's changes.
"It's great that a mainstream newspaper has the spine to innovate so aggressively," Ms. Schaffer said. "What's really fresh about what The L.A. Times is doing is it's not just blog central. They are creating new entry points for readers to weigh in with their collective wisdom and enrich the journalistic commentary."
Mr. Kinsley said he planned to hire three researchers to work on the editorial Web site. He also plans to have a three-month visiting fellow, most likely a scholar or foreign journalist, write editorials.
As for outsiders writing editorials, a domain traditionally reserved for the newspaper's staff, that is up in the air. "We might have a few adjunct board members with special knowledge write editorials that we commission and we would set the editorial line, but we haven't decided," Mr. Martinez said. The paper has already run three such editorials.
That notion troubles Jack Nelson, the newspaper's former Washington bureau chief. "I think it's absolutely crazy to have outsiders writing editorials at all," he said. "What happens to the institutional voice?"
Some at the newspaper have found Mr. Kinsley distant and uncommunicative, saying that he rarely answers internal e-mail messages. They said that situation was not helped by the fact that Mr. Kinsley still primarily lives in Seattle and flies to Los Angeles every other week.
"I'm not known for being uncommunicative," Mr. Kinsley said. "I'm known for being overly communicative. The commuting is working out O.K.. It's not ideal but it's pretty great for me."
The discovery of the Power Point document resulted in a handful of editorial writers confronting Mr. Kinsley, followed by a long afternoon meeting of damage control with Mr. Kinsley; the newspaper's executive editor, John S. Carroll; and the writers. "It was intended for a management retreat where the premise was, 'Let's be pie-in-the-sky and throw up any ideas you have about anything,' " said Mr. Kinsley, adding that it was not intended for his staff.
When asked if he planned to get rid of the editorial board, Mr. Kinsley replied: "No, but who knows? My intention was to push the envelope with those proposals. There were several and they were contradictory. But I'm not tearing my hair out over this."
Among those asked to transfer were an editorial writer, Alex Raksin, who, with his colleague Bob Sipchen, won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2002 for a series exploring issues related to mentally ill homeless people. Mr. Raksin moved, not by choice, to the newspaper's Science section. Another editorial writer, Molly Selvin, was in Germany when she received an e-mail message to call the paper, and was told she was being reassigned.
Mr. Martinez, who came from The New York Times last September, and Mr. Carroll said there were no plans to wipe out the editorial board, the panel whose members decide the editorial positions of the newspaper, which is owned by the Tribune Company, which is based in Chicago.
"We'll have an editorial board that will formulate and write opinions," Mr. Carroll said. "We are looking for outside voices in the editorial and op-ed pages from people who aren't necessarily professional journalists. California is full of Nobel Prize winners and brilliant people and we want to get their voices into the paper. One thing about editorial pages in general is many tend to not surprise people. I think you'll find many surprises in these pages."
Mr. Martinez said he planned to hire new editorial writers and that by the end of the summer, the editorial board should have 13 members, down 2 from the 15 he inherited. Mr. Martinez said that he recently hired Jon Healey, a technology writer from the business section.
Mr. Martinez said that Mr. Kinsey wanted to make changes. "In order to do that, we needed to bring in fresh blood. The fact that it all happened at once might have made a bigger splash than it needed to."
Mr. Kinsley is not unaccustomed to controversy. Earlier this year, he got into a bitter public fight with the feminist writer Susan Estrich, a former Harvard Law School classmate, when she tried to get him to run more opinion pieces by women.
Last week, the newspaper's entire editorial column was filled by an unsigned 1,400-word article arguing that malaria does not receive the attention or money it deserves. The article noted that Mr. Kinsley's wife, Patty Stonesiferis co-chairwoman and president of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The foundation is overseeing an anti-malaria campaign, but some of the newspaper's staff thought the article's appearance was a conflict of interest.Mr. Martinez addressed the issue by saying "the idea that we can't bring more attention because the Gates foundation is trying to find a cure is a bit mind boggling."
Mr. Heilbrunn said conflicts were inevitable. "This is what happens when an outsider tries to shake up an ossified institution," he said. "But is the paper sacrificing its franchise, its authority with moves like having readers participate in what's been the institutional voice of the paper? The ultimate extension of this vision would be to have readers vote every day on what editorials they want the next morning. It's either inspired genius or a very costly experiment."
