Arthur emphasizes that the paper uses the three-hour time difference between Los Angeles and the east coast to its advantage. He monitors the web sites of other major papers, and if a story breaks, “we might give it a run” and see if they can get it before deadline. The first edition of the front page goes to bed at 10:45 p.m., with sports finishing up at 11:00. Even after that, there is still the option of updating the paper around midnight. (Arthur noted that the day before, a big story out of Iraq had broken late, and the paper had been able to revise its lead article to include the information, and insert a color photo inside, for about 40 percent of its print run.)


What’s wrong with this picture? In the age of the internet, the notion of page one is, to a certain extent, an anachronism. The Times’ web presence, while an extension of the paper in tone and content, stands outside of the strictures imposed by page one. For example, the paper had posted five of the pieces it would run on page one to its web site by 8:30 p.m., whereas print readers would not see them until morning. Mike Young, head of the paper’s online news desk, told me that the web site lines up almost completely with page one by the time the paper hits newsstands, but that “paper is still the benchmark.”


And it is the web version, rather than print, that is the national presence of the paper. While the paper circulates a small national edition, Young said that 70 percent of the web site’s readership comes from outside the five-county Los Angeles metro area.


The difference, says Wolinksy, is that in print “it feels like you’re setting the agenda” for readers. “We try to capture a day, say, here’s what’s really important,” he says. “We’re creating a small bit of history on the run.”


Corrections: The above post has been changed to correctly note that the Times headquarters was bombed in 1910, and delete an in correct reference to that building as the first headquarters of the Times (it was the second). It has also been corrected to reflect the fact that the current building combines four different structures into a single building.