With an average of 50,000 page views a day, Web log LAist competes with the Washington, D.C. as the second most visited site in the ist Universe. Running the site from his Sherman Oaks home is editor Zach Behrens. The 27-year-old Midwest native was promoted to the position in December after his predecessor was hired away by the Los Angeles Times. Behrens has contributed to the site since 2005. As editor, Behrens covers the “important” and breaking news, a task that turns into a seven-day a week job. A cadre of volunteer writers write up the things you want to know (who is appearing at a local bookstore or concert venue) and the things you need to know (best kept secrets for happy hour). “They are what make LAist the best,” Behrens said of his staff. When not performing his editor duties, Behrens serves on the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council and is a member of the San Fernando Valley Jaycees. Question: Where does LAist fit into the overall media scene of Los Angeles? Answer: The goal at the end of the day is to capture and picture Los Angeles well through the news, arts and events, food, and miscellaneous. Those are the four buckets of coverage. You can fit anything into one of those because miscellaneous is the catch-all bucket. Did we present the great picture Los Angeles to our readers that day in that every half hour post? That’s the ideal goal. We are getting there. It’s selecting new staff who are interested in certain areas. That’s why I was so excited to have a dance writer. Even though a dance writer is not going to be the most popular thing by any means but that’s an important deficit in our coverage. It’s getting into the neighborhoods and getting hyper-hyper-hyper-local. What’s that story going on in East L.A. that’s important and is of interest and can be important to someone in Santa Monica? We are not going to get that unless someone is out in the field who really knows that. We love getting that original content. News tells one story, crime tells another but what’s that random coffee shop around the corner? Q: Do you see yourself filling in the gaps of the Los Angeles Times? A: I know people at the L.A. Times want to be doing more. For whatever reason budget, direction, philosophy it is not happening. We can definitely fill it in. We can do things like papers did in the 20’s or the 1890s and there is a City Hall politics news story next to a story about a sex swinging club. It gets more crazy, more Wild West. There was a time when I had my classical pick of the week next to a marijuana review. You can have that when you’re hyper-local. This is our role. If L.A. Times does it, that’s great. It’s what they should be doing. If we’re doing it and they are not and people are coming to us for that, that’s great for our readers and great for us. The more readers we can get the more our traffic can go up and the more we can build up our resources. Q: Before becoming editor, did you think there was enough Valley-related news making it onto the site? A: I think I may talk about it too much. There definitely are deficits in coverage. We are not a Valley-dominated site but we do cover it. We are not the Daily News in that sense. L.A. is so big there are many places I need to cover. I want someone in South L.A. I know nothing about the San Pedro/Long Beach harbor area. We don’t have coverage down there. I don’t know what the cool coffee shop is. Same goes with San Gabriel Valley. We just picked up an East L.A. writer; and Pasadena too. Those are areas we just don’t touch at all. We cover the Valley a lot more than some regions of the city. We do have a number of new hires who are Valley people. They always eventually write about the Valley because this is where they live. Q: What are your thoughts on the reputation of bloggers? There are some criticisms that bloggers aren’t real journalists. A: Two years ago I called the L.A. Philharmonic and said I’m from LAist and we want to cover your Minimalist Fest. They were like, “We don’t talk to bloggers.” That was the end of the conversation right there. This summer and this fall, I know all of them in the press office, they send me releases, and they approach me for stories. Q: What was the change? A: I think it was a few things. Blogs are getting a little more credibility. They [the Philharmonic] have a young office; they are pretty hip. They don’t have the traditional [public relations] person portrayed on TV. Also it’s the growth of LAist. It is different now walking around the city at events and saying you are from LAist than it was two years ago. People were like, “LA what?” Now I can go somewhere and can cherry pick a few people out who have heard of us, especially at the institutions and the P.R. firms; the ones dealing with an L.A. audience. We got credentials for Sundance this year. I can call the Los Angeles Fire Department press line 24 hours a day and get a response. [Spokesman] Brian Humphrey says to me, ‘we will treat you with exactly the same way and respect as the L.A. Times.’ The Los Angeles Police Department, I spent an hour down there with their press relations one day and met the crew. Q: You went to Cal Arts so you don’t have a journalism background. Do many of your contributors have a reporting background or are they just people who like to write and are good at it? A: There are a few with journalism backgrounds. Our news editor Andy [Sternberg] has a degree in online media. He is one of the few who came out of USC with that degree. We do have one writer who is a Reuters writer. We have a few writers; some of them are freelancers so they are off doing their other things. Some are really out on the fringes and pop in, do this awesome article and then disappear again. We have a super secret L.A. Times writer in there. The other people have a passion for something. They are able to write and are able to understand how to post because it takes some technical ability. You need to be able to re-size your photos and know slight HTML. It is a good mix. I would say there are more amateur writers than ones who write professionally. This is a good stepping stone for them if they want to be taken seriously. Staff Reporter Mark Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or by e-mail at [email protected] .