In the past three years, the Los Angeles Times has increased its blogs from 3 to 42 and according to the Times, they are seen as "an increasingly important way to report the news." In June, it added six more blogs.

Meredith Artley, Times executive editor of interactive, said that blogs are the "center of gravity" for original journalism on latimes.com. They "allow minute-by-minute reporting by staffers, as well as comments from readers", reported the Times blog, Readers' Representative Journal.

Although two blogs (Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Emerald City's Siel) were recently taken out, new ones are constantly added, like Countdown to Crawford, about the Bush administration's last few months, and the Olympic-focused Ticket to Beijing.

According to Artley, some blogs have become nearly as important as the newspaper section on the website, such as the newly launched Technology blog.

"Before the Technology blog, readers would come to www.latimes.com/technology and see a page dominated with links to our articles. Visitors to that page now see the blog, which is an up-to-date conversation, in addition to all the articles written for the website and the newspaper," Artley said.

The Times pointed out how important the reader responses may be, especially when it came to blogs, which is why it created the Comment Blog to receive readers' opinions.

The Times plans to add even more blogs in the next few months.

Source: Los Angeles Times

See also:

US: Greenslade to print journalists: Embrace the blog revolution
US: L.A. Times launches blog from column: "...Soon our blogs will be the backbone of the paper."