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The Los Angeles Times in Crisis: Stalled Subscriptions, Drowsy Leadership, Slack Channel Trash Talk (Exclusive)

One year ago, top editors at the Los Angeles Times delivered a sobering update to the newsroom: The future of the paper was at stake. With 170,000 digital subscribers, the Times was far from its target of 300,000 for the year — a number that didn’t even cover half of the newsroom’s costs. It was an alarmed call to action, leading to the formation of a special “sprint” team to focus on increasing conversions — whereby a non-subscribing reader takes the plunge to become a subscriber — and a plea that everyone in the newsroom make subscription conversions their “top priority.” Now, a full year later, the Times has barely surpassed its previous goals. Despite an influx of new paying subscribers, the paper had 253,000 paying digital subscribers and 356,000 total digital subscribers — which includes readers accessing content via Apple News subscriptions — as of last week, according to the paper. Hillary Manning, a spokesperson for the Times, said the “number of direct paid digital subscribers has increased by at least 78,500 since the beginning of February,” in response to questions from TheWrap. The Times is certainly not alone in its struggle to convert its past successes with print...

Read original story The Los Angeles Times in Crisis: Stalled Subscriptions, Drowsy Leadership, Slack Channel Trash Talk (Exclusive) At TheWrap