Upheaval on Los Angeles Times Editorial Pages

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.

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 Andrés 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.