The paper’s new editor, Ebineezer “Slick” O’Malley, hired by the parent company to cut staff and make big pronouncements, employed scare tactics such as mentioning declining print advertising revenues and dressing up as a ghost and yelling “boo!” at staffers in order to get them out of a “bunker mentality” about the web. He also tried enticing unconvinced staff members to try out what he billed as the “Information Superhighway” by showing them how they could buy books online at a site called Amazon and pay bills online too.

O’Malley said the “Internet 101” course would teach reporters, editors and photographers how to use an electronic mail program, how to surf the World Wide Web for news and information, and how to find cheap air fares. He emphasized the need for speed in reforming an operation that he called “woefully behind” the competition.

The 63-year-old editor made the announcement before a standing-room-only audience of journalists in an auditorium at the Herald-Gazette. He said that some might have a false sense of security about the newspaper because it has continued to post substantial profit. Last year, Herald-Gazette earned an estimated $240 million before taxes, an amount considered high relative to its revenue. O’Malley stressed that almost all those profits had been spent in executive perks and internal investigations on how the newspaper should change due to technology

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The changes at the Herald-Gazette were driven by a committee of the paper’s journalists appointed in October by O’Malley’s predecessor, Al Truistic, to come up with ways to improve the paper and its website. The committee produced a scathing report that has been seen by only a few of the newspaper’s top editors and executives, because everyone would be embarrassed if the whole thing was made public on Romenesko.

“As a news organization, we are not web-savvy,” the seven-page report says. “If anything, we are web-stupid. One of our top reporters tried to buy a ‘youtube’ at a tire store until we told him it was a site on the Internet. Another editor went to a doctor to get an anti-virus for his computer. The sooner we can all take that Internet 101 class, the better.”

Training: Aaron Curtiss, latimes.com associate editor Sean Gallagher and Susan Denley in Editorial Hiring & Development are putting the finishing touches on the large-scale Internet training program, which will begin the week of Feb. 12. There will be three layers of training:

--Internet 101, a class for everyone designed to better familiarize you with latimes.com, what generates the most traffic and the least, what the site can and can't do, and where it is headed.
--The First Page, a class for assignment editors and copy editors on how to post new material to the web, and how to move things around on each section's home page.
--The Next Page, a more detailed course for word, copy, photo, design and graphics editors on the various assignment desks who will be directly involved in running their department's home page throughout each day.

Staffing: We hope to announce next week an executive editor for latimes.com, a new position that is the online equivalent of the print newsroom's top job. This person will be responsible for the operation of latimes.com and will oversee an expansion of the staff, a redesign of the site, etc. We'll also be hiring at least one more deputy innovation editor to help me and Aaron work with the more than 20 news and feature assignment desks and departments - copy editing, photo, design, research, administration - as we combine and restructure the newsgathering operations.

Committees: We are in the process of forming the two new committees that Jim O'Shea outlined in his charge to us last week.

--The Standards & Practices Committee will explore how to meet the challenge of becoming a more viable player on the Internet without compromising our journalistic integrity. Its members will consist of representatives from both newsrooms, and we hope to announce who they are by the end of next week.
--The Redesign Committee will redesign the paper to, as Jim put it, "make it an effective backbone for latimes.com." We are currently identifying candidates for the committee and hope to have this group in place by the end of the month.