Web becomes Times' "primary vehicle"

Did you see that The L.A. Times is rethinking the whole mission of its newsroom -- making the newspaper's Web site its "primary vehicle for breaking news 24 hours a day?"

Editor James O'Shea, in his address to the staff of the Times, declared "(T)he Los Angeles Times is going to transform itself from being a great newspaper to becoming an awesome, relentless, powerful story-telling machine online and in print."

Reporters now enter the newsroom and tell editors what kind of a story they will write for the newspaper the next day.

Then -- we tend to think what can we do for the Internet, as if it were some kind of journalistic orphan.

That kind of thinking must change if we want to remain competitive.We need to enter the newsroom and think about how we are going to break news on the Internet.

My personal favorite excerpt:

Currently we have a newspaper staff and an latimes.com staff. No more. From now on, there are no two staffs, there is just one. And we will function as one.

The L.A. Times is facing the brave new world, as we all must face it.