On Wednesday, December 3, 2014, Austin Beutner, Publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times, spoke to Town Hall about "132 Years of the Essential Conversation - Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Times." Beutner, who was named Publisher in August 2014, discussed his vision for the newspaper and how it will continue to serve our increasingly diverse community. He revealed how he was approached to become publisher of the newspaper, his relationship with the editorial board, and how much of an impact digital will have on the paper and its bottom line.
 

"So, distribution was the barrier in the print world.  It’s an enabler in the digital world.  So, any one, two, three of us could get together tomorrow and say, you know what, we’re gonna start a blog and we’re gonna cover the Dodgers or we’re gonna report on Town Hall and what happened here today.  And we could do that.  All the tools are ubiquitous.  There’s no sustainable comparative advantage that I can see in the tools and technologies. So, where’s our comparative advantage?  It’s in our brand, 133 years of quality integrity, a voice you can trust and most importantly, it’s in the 500 journalists in our newsroom who are broad, deep, highly engaged, not just in our community, but in issues around the world.  And that is our comparative advantage if we can adapt and use those tools and technologies and find differing revenue streams to help make the business model work."

To read a full transcript of the speech, click here.