LAT's Spector strategy

Clarkson and Spector The Times has rolled out a new web section devoted to the Lana Clarkson death and Phil Spector trial — stories that ran in the paper, photos, miscellany. The occasion is cause for another email memo from Innovation Editor Russ Stanton, talking up big online plans to "attract and hold readers." Whole thing after the jump:

From: Stanton, Russ
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 11:13 AM
To: yyeditall
Subject: Spector page is live, a preview of where we're headed

April 12, 2007

Folks:

The Phil Spector page went live this morning at latimes.com/spector , providing another example of how we plan to pull our coverage together in ways that attract and hold readers. The site will change as the trial gets underway - and will include features such as live video coverage when court is in session, breaking updates from Michael Muskal on the Continuous News Desk as well as stories, observations and analysis from Metro's Peter Hong and John Spano. Calendar's Geoff Boucher hosted a video produced by Multimedia's Carlos Uribe and John VandeWege that details Spector's role in music history. Leslie Carlson from Graphics worked closely with Laura Elliott at LATimes.com to produce a very cool interactive map retracing Spector's steps in the hours before Lana Clarkson died. Gale Holland and Mary Macvean on the Metro desk will be working closely with Mike Castelvecchi on the Continuous News Desk once the trial starts to ensure that our coverage online and in print is complementary.

Watch this page to see how our coverage of the trial evolves - and, more importantly, to get a sense of where we're going in the months ahead. The idea is to organize what we do every day into manageable sections that people can find and use easily. The Crime & Courts page that rolled out this week latimes.com/crime is already the second most popular destination within California-Local and will only grow as we add more features and make it easier to access. We're starting with crime because we already have tremendous material from the paper. Other sections are working on similar destinations. Foreign, for instance, already has created regional coverage pages and is experimenting with La Plaza, Science is building topic sections and Book Review will significantly beef up its online presence later this month - kicking it off with a series of live chats with some of the
most country's most recognizable authors.

Russ Stanton
Innovation Editor
Los Angeles Times

Previously:
Times hiring 'celebrity justice' reporter
Changes — and jobs — at Times website