Decisiveness would serve L.A. Times in wired world; history shows that delaying overhaul won't prevent the inevitable.

THE announcement last week that the Los Angeles Times will reduce its newsroom staff by as many as 150 people came with Publisher David Hiller's grim acknowledgment that the cuts "reflect the fundamental and ongoing changes occurring" in the newspaper business.

He continued stating that "the fact is, we have to take actions to keep staffing in line with the revenue picture, which currently is falling in the core print business." Indeed, given the continued declines in circulation, these cuts won't be the last. But some experts say that if the Times must "right-size" itself, why not do it all at once instead of this gradual process of handwringing and gloom?

The Times leadership might recall the Industry Standard, the self-proclaimed "Newsmagazine of the Internet Economy" that launched in 1998. By 2000, it was the biggest magazine in the nation. In one year it sold 7,558 pages of advertising, an all-time record. At its height, it was bigger than People, Fortune or Vanity Fair and produced annual revenues of $140 million.

And then it was gone. When the dot-com bubble popped, Standard's board shut down operations and fired the 180 staffers. After a quick Chapter 11 bankruptcy, they sold off the magazine's assets for a mere $1.4 million. The Standard's board understood the tech market and knew that the bubble burst wasn't a blip. They moved quickly to safeguard money made during the Net's heyday.

Of course, the Times won't shut down. There are profound differences between a magazine that captures lightning in a bottle and a newspaper that is more than a century old, is part of huge media conglomerate and is a critical part of a major city's cultural fabric.

The parallel is that the Times, like the Standard, finds intself in sector undergoing a primarily negative sea change. Faced with imminent disaster, the Standard leadership took decisive action. To survive, some suggest, the Times must re-define itself for a wired media world--and the sooner the better. Despite the newspaper industry's change-resistant culture, it faces the same kind of transformation that railroads did with the appearance of the automobile, radio versus television, and banks with the advent of money market accounts.

Many business in that situation choose to change quickly and completely--not incrementally.

"There is no better time to re-engineer the company for the revolutionary changes to come," said Jeff Zucker, chief executive of the NBC Universal Television Group, when he announced 700 lay-offs last year. "We have to recognize that the changes of the next five years will dwarf the changes of the last 50."