By Jonathan Arkin
Student Writer

The Jan. 26 Journalism Director’s Forum at USC Annenberg brought editors and producers from L.A.’s largest daily newspaper to discuss “What’s innovative at the Los Angeles Times.”

Hosted by School of Journalism director Geneva Overholser, the talk (full video here) featured a panel with Times journalists Ben Welsh, its chief Web data journalist; Megan Garvey, the assistant metro editor; and Daniel Gaines, managing editor of operations at latimes.com – who also serves as an adjunct journalism professor at Annenberg.

“I hope this is sort of what we continue to do,” said Garvey, who along with Welsh and others began work two years ago on the widely viewed “War Dead” project, an online, interactive compendium of fallen U.S. soldiers from the Los Angeles area. “I was a traditional print journalist, but I embraced (the new technology) when we did the War Dead project. The newsroom embraced it…I think that there is an acknowledgement that this work is of basic use to them.”

The panelists discussed the expanding role of the Times’ online presence further, including individual and group social media ventures plus experiments with Kindle, “multimedia jukeboxes,” Google maps and blogging, and offered reassurance that, amidst current layoffs decimating most legacy media newsrooms – including their own – it was more productive to look forward with optimism.

“Though it’s a relentless, ongoing trauma,” said Gaines of the changes facing the Times and other major newspapers, “you can’t look at what’s being taken away, but what’s being given to you."

These tools, Gaines added, included the myriad possibilities inherent in the Times’ blogs and mapping projects that are currently attracting a large audience of viewers eager to comment and contribute to those innovative new efforts – which in turn create the need for online curating and moderating, thereby perpetuating a new journalistic life for the paper’s future.

“I found it very heartening to hear Megan say that her colleagues are beginning to focus less on what they’re losing and more on what they’re starting to gain,” Overholser said. “This is a crucial change, when you can shift from looking backward in lament to looking forward with a sense of hope and enthusiasm. Then you’ve made the essential change…that you can really make a difference in journalism. The point is, the whole problem with legacy media organizations is that they worry about what they’re losing rather than exalting over what they’re gaining.”