LOS ANGELES, May 10 /PRNewswire/ -- The Los Angeles Times today launched the first stage of a yearlong initiative to redesign its website, latimes.com, and improve and expand the newspaper's Internet offerings, with a special emphasis on utility for Southern Californians.

"Our goal is to make latimes.com a daily stop in the lives of Southern Californians and a powerful complement to the paper," said Jeffrey M. Johnson, Los Angeles Times executive vice president and general manager, who becomes publisher on June 1.

As part of that effort, The Times today reintroduced free access to calendarlive.com. With more than 2,000 searchable events at any given time, and featuring The Times' top critics and reviewers, calendarlive.com has the Internet's most comprehensive listings for theater, music, dance, opera, art museums and galleries, and family events in Southern California.

"Entertainment guides and listings are key to the local online experience, and we want to make the extensive offerings of calendarlive.com available to the broadest audience possible," said Johnson.

Visitors to latimes.com also will find a wider, cleaner home page that includes "Pacific Time," a prominent home for Times stories that take the pulse of Southern California. The home page, which is lighter and loads faster on PCs, is also a one-stop online guide to all Los Angeles Times news, features and classifieds sections and content.

Other changes to latimes.com include: * A wider site layout that optimizes news presentation for the majority of Internet users; * On the home page, easier "tabbed" access to service features, including calendarlive.com listings, traffic, weather and classifieds; * On the home page, top headlines from all latimes.com sections every day; and * On every page of the site, right-hand promotion of breaking news, key Times features and "most emailed" stories.

In coming months, latimes.com will develop compelling online services and discussion forums in collaboration with Times editors and writers.

"Going forward, we will add original Web features and voices that will turn latimes.com sections into major online destinations," said Robertson Barrett, general manager of Los Angeles Times Interactive. "As part of that effort, we'll create venues for community interaction across the board -- in news, sports, local issues and activities, entertainment and classifieds marketplaces."

About latimes.com

With 50,000 content pages, latimes.com is one of the leading sources for national and international news and information on the World Wide Web, and the primary source of news and information for and about Southern California. The Times' Extended News Desk creates updates continuously throughout the day, making latimes.com one of the most comprehensive news sites on the Web. Every day more than 3,000 stories are uploaded to provide readers with all of the day's news. In addition, users have access to a million stories from past issues of the Los Angeles Times available in the latimes.com archives dating back to 1985.

Latimes.com is also part of Tribune Interactive and Classifieds, one of the largest sources of interactive news and information services in the country.

CONTACT: David Garcia of Los Angeles Times, +1-213-237-4715,
david.garcia@latimes.com

Web site: http://www.calendarlive.com/

Web site: http://www.latimes.com/

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