The NY Times notices the LA Times has Michael Kinsley experimenting with the editorial page. Kinsley says that one of his goals is to ‘surprise people.’

NY Times: Upheaval on Los Angeles Times Editorial Pages by Alicia C. Shepard

While some editorial pages have been nudged into new directions, Mr. Kinsley, the editorial and opinion page editor, is making the boldest attempt to make them more dynamic, argumentative and interactive with several innovations aimed squarely at online readers, while being less like an unseen voice of authority.

The changes, announced in yesterday’s edition, include allowing editorial writers a once-a-year chance to write a signed piece dissenting from the editorial position of the newspaper. …

This week, the newspaper, will introduce an online feature called "wikitorials," as a way for readers to engage in an online dialogue with the paper. The model is based on "Wikipedia," the Web’s free-content encyclopedia that is edited by online contributors. "We’ll have some editorials where you can go online and edit an editorial to your satisfaction," Mr. Martinez said. "We are going to do that with selected editorials initially. We don’t know how this is going to turn out. It’s all about finding new ways to allow readers to interact with us in the age of the Web." …

"It’s great that a mainstream newspaper has the spine to innovate so aggressively," Ms. Schaffer [Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab, the institute of interactive journalism at the University of Maryland] said. "What’s really fresh about what The L.A. Times is doing is it’s not just blog central. They are creating new entry points for readers to weigh in with their collective wisdom and enrich the journalistic commentary."