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Jimmy Orr, the deputy editor for LATimes.com, is getting the promotion to managing editor, online. He replaces Sean Gallagher, who is leaving to live and work in London. Orr is the former Internet strategist for George W. Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger whose first work for the Times was as the weekend relief for Andrew Malcolm's in-house Republican blog. Orr also had been online editor of the Christian Science Monitor. This morning's memo from editor Russ Stanton is after the jump.
From: Stanton, Russ
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 10:28 AM
To: yyeditall
Subject: Jimmy Orr, Managing Editor/Online
Colleagues:
Jimmy Orr, deputy editor of latimes.com, will become managing editor, online, at the end of this month, upon the departure of Sean Gallagher.
Since joining our newsroom from the Christian Science Monitor in August, Jimmy has made significant strides in improving the usability of the site from a reader perspective. Particularly with our blogs, we are doing a much better job of selecting more relevant content, posting more frequently and optimizing search, all of which are keeping readers on the site longer. That progress is evidenced by the growth of the Technology, Ministry of Gossip and Politics Now blogs.
Jimmy has pushed to improve real-time delivery of news, which led to markedly improved online coverage of last year’s gubernatorial debates, the State of the Union address, the revolution in Egypt and entertainment awards coverage. He is working with officials at Google and Yahoo to better extend the reach of our world-class journalism, in part by improving our optimization of search. And he has developed an informative and instructional report that kicks off the A1 news meeting each weekday.
As he has for the past seven months, Jimmy will continue to work closely with section editors and his colleagues on the masthead, particularly Managing Editor Davan Maharaj, to ensure that coverage in our two primary channels – print and online – is both seamless and complementary. This includes coordinating and implementing the daily news and features report for our online readers and supervising the skilled team of producers behind latimes.com. We have set an ambitious list of goals for our flagship online report this year, and Jimmy will be responsible for seeing that we achieve the desired results.
In addition, he will help oversee and expand the Los Angeles Times Media Group’s growing portfolio of digital and mobile properties, which includes the debut of Android, iPad and Windows applications this year. As part of this effort, he will work closely with the senior vice president of digital product development, a new job that will report to Bill Nagel. We are interviewing candidates for that position and hope to fill it soon.
The Monitor, as you know, became the first major U.S. newspaper to convert to an online-only journalism model, and Jimmy was key to that successful transformation. He helped convert the Monitor’s newsroom into a 24/7 operation and then focused on building traffic through the creation of new blogs, search engine optimization and social networking.
Jimmy has had successful and innovative careers in both journalism and politics. Before joining the Monitor in 2007 as online editor, he served as the chief Internet communications strategist for former President George W. Bush and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. In both positions, Jimmy focused on bringing government closer to the citizenry by means of creative uses of interactivity and video.
He graduated from Principia College in 1992 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. Jimmy will report to me.
Russ Stanton
Editor