Save 50% on a 3-month Digiday+ membership. Ends Dec 5.
Newspapers lag far behind in the share of time spent on mobile devices. That’s a reality the Los Angeles Times is hoping to counter when it relaunches its site early Tuesday morning with mobile users top of mind.
“We know that there are readers who are coming to us increasingly on mobile,” said Emily Smith, svp of digital for the Times. “We’ve not yet reached the turning point where they are the majority, but that day will come soon. So we are absolutely getting ready for that moment. We knew that we had to rethink the experience on a mobile screen. We also knew we had to future-proof our platform, because we wanted to be available on all the new devices, regardless of what screen sites are coming out.”
The Times is part of Tribune Co., which is preparing to spin off its eight newspapers as an independent company under CEO Jack Griffin later this year. Newspapers face a challenging operating environment, so moves like the site relaunch are likely to be closely watched as a model for the company’s other dailies, including the Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun.
Latimes.com, which was designed with help from Code and Theory, will be fully responsive when it goes live after midnight on May 6 — making it the latest publisher in the industry to pay more than lip service to being “mobile first.”
With people increasingly coming straight to articles through social sharing, the Times realized it needed to make article pages the new home page. So at the end of articles, readers will be given recommendations for content elsewhere on the site. That’s pretty standard, but readers also can view that content by just continuing to scroll without going to a new page, doing away with endless clicking.
A key feature is the visual browse, which lets readers search content by displaying stories by section in an image-based way. The feature reflects the visual nature of the way people are consuming news and content on mobiles and tablets.
Ad position: web_incontent_pos1
Finally, the Times is trying to make it easier for people to share stories. A third, notable feature is the Sharelines. They’re prewritten summaries of articles that lie below each article. So if a reader wants to share an article on Facebook or Twitter, the tweet is written for them. Not bad — readers can sound intelligent without even reading the article.
More in Media
Digiday+ Research Subscription Index 2025: Subscription strategies from Bloomberg, The New York Times, Vox and others
Digiday’s third annual Subscription Index examines and measures publishers’ subscription strategies to identify common approaches and key tactics among Bloomberg, The New York Times, Vox and others.
From lawsuits to lobbying: How publishers are fighting AI
We may be closing out 2025, but publishers aren’t retreating from the battle of AI search — some are escalating it, and they expect the fight to stretch deep into 2026.
Media Briefing: Publishers turn to vertical video to compete with creators and grow ad revenue in 2026
Publishers add vertical video feeds to their sites to boost engagement, attract video ad spend and compete with news creators.
Ad position: web_bfu