Yesterday I linked to Kevin Grant’s Neon Tommy story about new LA Weekly editor-in-chief, Drex Heikes and his plans to bring the paper back to strength and relevance.
Last night, as I reread Kevin’s piece I got to thinking about what has become so bothersome about the existing LA Weekly in the last few years.
Certainly, it still has Jonathan Gold’s wonderful reviews, and Christine Pelisek is still doing truly fine crime reporting. (Although, Christine, is it really necessary to refer to some of LA’s less affluent neighborhoods as the city’s “badlands?” A small point, admittedly, but that and the use of diseases to describe certain elements in LA’s population could go, trust me.)
And the new guy, Dennis Romero, seem to be doing a lively job his daily news blogging. I miss Steve Mikulan’s intelligent take on things, but okay, we’ve got Dennis now. And he’s got his good qualities too.
He had, for example, a nicely grumpy take this week on the city council’s inability to regulate marijuana dispensaries after two years, contrasted with their quick passage of a regulation banning cat declawing. (I’m personally against cat declawing too, but really. Priorities, people.)
But here’s the problem. Too often I catch the Weekly writing things that are either cringe-makingly slanted, or demonstrably untrue. One example of the former was the Weekly’s hit piece on Bill Bratton that ran last spring..
Then more recently, Romero wrote a small news feature on the new chief of police, Charlie Beck, that was littered with unsupported insinuations and outright falsehoods.
POLICE CHIEFS AND POODLES
The piece led with the suggestion that Beck was being trotted around like the mayor’s “poodle” to the four regional meet-and-greets that he and Villaraigosa did in South Los Angeles, Van Nuys, El Sereno, and the Westside. Student reporters from my USC class went to two of the four events and found them jammed with community members, and described Beck as very responsive to the questions and comments of residents who seemed thriller to have a chance to check out the new (nearly) chief.
But, sure, yeah, Antonio had his own political reasons for trotting out the likable Beck in advance of Beck’s confirmation by the City Council. And, okay, if one wishes to write a snarky story to point that out, why not?
IT WAS MIDWAY THROUGH THE SAME STORY THAT ROMERO WENT OFF THE RAILS.
After the snark about Beck being the mayor’s fancy dog (which is reasonably preposterous, but whatever) Romero went a lot farther.
He wrote that Beck was a forced choice who was jammed down the collective throat of an unhappy police commission by the mayor (along with Bill Bratton) who was determined to have Charlie Beck and no one but Charlie Beck as his chief.
….a backroom process that was so rapid and, perhaps, so prejudiced toward the man backed by Bratton that few outsiders applied for what is the brass ring of the police world.
Romero quotes blogger and former LA Daily News editor, Ron Kaye, as saying: “….it was always a done deal. There wasn’t any real process or search that was conducted.” (On his own blog Kaye goes further and quotes anonymous sources as saying that Beck wasn’t even on the list of the commission’s original three finalists at all, and that the commission had to rejigger the list of three to add Beck so as not to anger the mayor.)
Romero followed up with how…”…it is widely known now that the Police Commission was irritated when Villaraigosa undercut it by publicly announcing during the summer that a chief would be chosen by the fall, making it all but impossible politically for the Police Commission to launch a serious nationwide search that takes months…
In that the position of chief of police has a strong affect on the city’s health and well being, if the mayor had completely compromised the selection process that would be in important thing on which to report.
If it happened to be true.
SOURCES ANYONE?
Since I’d followed the selection process closely, some might say….um…obsessively, and Romero and Kaye’s reporting didn’t jibe with anything I heard, I figured I’d simply do a bit of fact checking.
Although, I had plenty of inside sources, I had not talked to anybody on the police commission.
I called Alan Skobin, one of the five police commissioners who were given the task of narrowing the 13 semi-finalist candidates given them by the city’s personnel chief (whose team had winnowed the field from the original 24 applicants).
In other words, Skobin was one of those five-some of folks whom Romero and the Weekly said had been force-fed Beck, and who were “widely known” to be damned unhappy that their search process was amputated, and who may not have wanted Beck on their list of three finalists at all.
I noted that Romero had briefly quoted Skobin, meaning he too had spoken to him. So maybe Skobin knew the inside dirt that I had somehow missed.
THE COMMISSIONER SPEAKS
Skobin and I spoke for about a half hour during which time we chatted in dept about all of the Weekly’s points—about the pressure, the truncated search time, and so on.
Skobin—an attorney and the Vice President of Galpin Motors—is a very bright, mild-mannered man, but he was clearly exasperated about what the Weekly had inferred.
“That’s absolutely not true,” he said—and he had told the Weekly as much as well.
“I was there. I was one of the five people in the room for every discussion! We didn’t have any pressure from the mayor. He kept his hands completely off and let us do our job. In fact I even thanked him for it.” Skobin paused to look for the right words. “Honestly, Celeste, we felt good at the end because we felt the process really worked. I know my fellow commissioners. And I really feel that everyone had an open mind. There was an incredibly diverse pool of very credible, capable candidates. And we worked to make sure that everyone had an even playing field.”
Skobin said a lot more and in greater detail. But that’s the bottom line of it.
About the accusation that there wasn’t a proper search, Skobin laughed. “Look,” he said, Bill Bratton was the highest profile police chief in the nation. When he resigned it was national news. “We paid for a small search and certainly had ads in all the proper places.” But what serious candidate wouldn’t know the job was open, Skobin said. “We didn’t feel in was necessary to spend $100 thousand more of the tax payers’ money to pay some executive search company. Why would we? Everyone knew this job was open.”
Moreover, according to Skobin, although there was there was the general belief that, unlike when Bratton was selected, the time was likely ripe for a homegrown candidate, the process still welcomed all comers.
The Weekly, however, insisted otherwise. As further proof that the fix was in, Romero wrote ominously that “….such big-gun names as San Francisco Police Chief George Gascon and Miami Police Chief John Timoney did not turn up as finalists. The process was seen by some as a mayoral ramrod down the public’s throat of Bratton’s favorite soldier.”
Let’s see. Hmmmm. Maybe it’s a mayoral a conspiracy. Or…..maybe Gascon and Timoney weren’t on the list of finalists because they didn’t apply for the job?
I knew the answer to the question from my own sources, but I asked Skobin anyway.
“Timoney didn’t apply to my knowledge. We certainly never saw him.”
And Gascon?
George Gascon is the LAPD’s former Assistant Chief who had since taken over as chief of police in Mesa, Arizona and then had been sworn in as San Francisco’s new chief on the day that Bratton formally announced his resignation.
Skobin laughed again. “I know George didn’t apply because he announced as much publicly. It was in all the papers.”
Right. A fact that I knew because I know Gascon. But also information which Romero or his editor Jill Stewart could have acquired with a 30-second with Google search.
But really, why let facts get in the way when you’ve got a mayor to slam.
EVERYONE IS NOT ENTITLED TO HIS OWN FACTS
For the record, yes, Bratton made it known that Beck was his preference, plus Connie Rice and Jeff Carr (the mayor’s former gang guy, now chief of staff) were actively and forcefully lobbying for Charlie Beck who was also their pick to click.
But by every single credible insider account, the mayor liked Beck a lot, but was dithering right up until the last minute BECAUSE HE DIDN’T LIKE BEING PRESSURED.
“I know for a fact he was still deciding up until the last minute,” said Skobin.
I do too.
And so to counter those sources and to bolster their assertions the Weekly had…..?
No one. Not a soul on the record. Or off the record for that matter.
Evidently Romero was able to intuit that these things were “widely known”.….. by “many”…. and also by “some City Hall critics.”
Okay, to be fair, the Weekly also had Ron Kaye—editor turned pundit, who on his own blog had the purported conspiracy so muddled that he couldn’t even get the number of semi-finalists sent to the police commission right, and gleefully reported as valid every crackpot rumor he could get his hands on, no matter how easily dispelled.
SO WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT THIS?
Why does this matter? After all the LA Weekly is perfectly free to opine however much it wants about Antonio Villaraigosa and any other public figure.
It is a newspaper’s job—it is its sacred task, if you will—to hold public figures accountable.
(And Villaraigosa assuredly has a list of things that require some accounting. [see above post])
A news outlet is not, however, free to manufacture its own facts in order to do so.
If a paper shaves the dice on the truth when it is convenient—even if the untruths are the inside-baseballish sort of things most people would not catch, and even fewer would care all that much about—then we cannot trust what that paper says on anything.
And that, my dear friends, matters very much.
A FRIENDLY NOTE TO DREX HEIKES:
Drex, I know your work well and I don’t think for a minute that you would willingly co-sign on this kind of shoddy, deliberately mendacious behavior. But it has happened more than a few times at the paper whose helm you are now commanding, and this time it happened under your watch.
So it is you who needs to fix it. We are counting on you.
The LA Weekly once mattered.
It would be nice if it mattered again.
All these media on media pieces strike me as so remarkably naive — as if editorial quality really matters to the people at the top of a national media chain like VVM.
The LA Weekly doesn’t care about its reporting because Mike Lacey doesn’t care about reporting. Sure, he wants to win some awards here and there — good marketing. But what he cares about is money. In the New Times business model a standardized product is easier and cheaper to sell than one that varies from market to market. That way a cabal of fat middle managers and editorial flunkies can sit in Phoenix and do the same work that a much larger team of local folks used to do.
The style of reporting you’ve so thoroughly deconstructed works for the Weekly because it catches eyeballs. It catches eyeballs in exactly the same way Lacey’s other papers catch eyeballs. It establishes a brand — one that can be sold out of a centralized (downsized) corporate headquarters to national advertisers, especially on the web.
Facts don’t matter — so long as the paper stops short of being libelous. Tone is the most important thing for branding, and Jill Stewart is goddess of the VVM tone. Heikes can’t crack down on her, or he cracks down on the brand. I think the point is moot though, because from what I’ve seen of him thus far, he doesn’t have it in him to fight.
The LA Weekly has been sacrificed to the gods of efficiency. The same gods that gutted America and turned it into a broke, empty strip mall.
I think a recent article on VVM in Forbes, in which VVM CEO Jim Larkin celebrates laying off more than 35% of his workforce, and boasts of his company’s newfound ability to land national ad revenue, proves my points.
“Last year, Village Voice Media pulled in $141 million in advertising revenue; this year an expected $120 million, he boasts.
Down 14% is hardly something to post on the cover of the free weeklies, but Larkin says the company runs at profit, though he won’t divulge the details. He and Lacey have built an advertising network that sells ads to over 12,000 local stores and restaurants. They’ve slashed 300 employees from a workforce of 1,100 and have pushed ad sales to big marketers, such as Verizon ( VZ – news – people ) and Chipotle, who pay $7 to $15 per thousand impressions for online display ads and as much as $350 CPM to post ads in personal e-mail lists sent out to 775,000 people weekly.”
Yeah, we do need a new alt weekly.
I was trying to take the optimistic high road. But I think you’ve outlined things quite accurately and insightfully—and sadly.
Thanks for all the Forbes-related information. I’d not seen the article.
It’s very, very creepy.
Here’s hoping the LA Record starts getting into news and culture. Those guys will pummel the Weekly if they can scrape together the money to expand their paper.
Good luck with that “new alt weekly thing.” There is a reason the LA Weekly was for sale and changed owners several times in its history.
As for Heikes, as someone who worked with him for years… The notion that he “doesn’t have it in him to fight” is laughable. You obviously know nothing about that cat. He walked out on a big job on principle, which made him semi-famous long before the Times, where he fought all the time to do the right thing.
He also signs his name to what he writes, which is more than I can say for you.
Oh, by the way, my name is John Knowlton
John K., just to be clear, I was not signing on to the observations about Drex (whose work I know well and respect enormously), only to the observations about Village Voice Media, which I think are pretty on the mark. (The one exception is that Lacey et al seem willing to support a a more rigorous quality of work at the Phoenix New Times, which has honestly done some very good work on Joe Arpaio.)
I very much hope that Drex can do what needs to be done. But I admit I’ve grown cynical and very, very saddened in observing the Weekly in the past few years, since it was purchased by Lacy and company.
I wrote for the Weekly off and on for around 25 years—from Jay Levin onward, thus I have a great affection for the paper, which makes me very personally pained to see what has happened.
Drex is the perfect hire as editor. If anyone can do it, he likely can.
But seeing stories like the one I deconstructed tends to dent my confidence.
You’re right, I don’t know much about his past. I only really know what I’ve seen thus far from him at the Weekly.
Let’s see: he’s run two VVM chain pieces on the cover — something that never happened under Laurie Ochoa’s watch — one atrocious, the other purely mediocre and about 3,000 words too long.
He ran a three-story cover package on classical music, in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the great depression, in which the main motif of the lead story was referring to Gustavo Dudamel as “The Dude.”
He changed the name of the lifestyle section of the paper from the clever LA Vida — which plays off the city’s Latino heritage — to LA Life, which is just plain mediocre.
He fired the talented, nuanced and uncompromising Steven Mikulan and replaced him with the also-talented, but seemingly more pliable, Denis Romero. The result: stories like one Celeste just deconstructed.
Under his watch the coverage of the medical marijuana battle in LA has been atrocious. The Weekly has written at least five stories on the topic, and every one includes at least one propagandistic plea for the safety of THE CHILDREN. City Council why aren’t you helping THE CHILDREN? THE CHILDREN DAMNITTTTTT!!!!!!!
And for all his talk of investigative journalism, in his more than 3 months here I’ve yet to see an investigative piece with his imprint on it. Show me one.
Oh, but he did redo the letters to the editor section. Now all the hate mail the paper gets is softened with witty commentary.
All you need is eyes, not a name, to see that this dog doesn’t have much fight left.
Well, Celeste, I think we know the root of the problem here. The pieces you cite bear the usual pawprints of “news” editor Jill Stewart, right down to the ritualistic use of Ron Kaye as a primary source. We know she has a penchant for heavy handedly rewriting the copy of her reporters and that’s what I see here. Kaye, of course, shares Stewart’s frizzy core sensibility. When Kaye edited the Daily News he turned it into an overtly Valley-centric knee-jerk anti-Los Angeles megaphone with all of the attendant racial and ideological dog whistles. It’s basically the voice of cranky, white, Valley-based middle-class homeowner groups (which unfortunately often resonate with the sort of harmonics found at a Teabag rally). Take it from me, I live in Woodland Hills.
I also know Drex and his work and it is to be respected. But he faces a huge challenge, if he so wishes. Everyone close to the Weekly knows that for the last two years Stewart was unaccountable to the editor in chief and answered only to corporate boss Mike Lacey (whose sensibilities are… shall we say… strange) and to whom she has been a favored lapdoggie for 15 years. As I wrote on my own blog at the time of Mikulan’s firing, either Drex will have to put Stewart in a box and ship her out to sea and REBUILD the news operation, or he will get nowhere real fast.
Frankly, I think the odds are against him — provided he has the will to take on the task. It could be professionally suicidal depending on whether or not Stewart still wears Lacey’s shield of impunity. And who says Drex really wants that fight? I can’t believe for one moment, given his smarts and his professionalism, that he didn’t see right through her long before he took the job. To me that means only one of two things: either he is going into this knowing in the end she has to go. Or, he is going into this having already made the intellectual compromise to accomodate her and basically submit. I hope not. But the odds for turn around are bad in any case because the sweat-shop economic model of the Mother Company happens to jibe with the half-assed and sloppy reporting that has become the paper’s trademark. You do get what you pay for in this world. There’s also the generalized problem of print media advertising to which the Weekly is not immune. There is also the Mickey Mouse web presence that even Drex publicly acknowledges. Finally, let’s be clear: though Mike Lacey hates the thought, the Weekly built itself into the biggest and most profitable metro weekly in America by being an overtlly LIBERAL newspaper for a very LIBERAL Los Angeles. That didn’t keep the paper from calling out liberals when so merited, but it did not champion reactionaries.
How much business sense do you have to lack to consciously piss on an audience that took you 30 years to build?
What that tells me is a story about human foibles. Marxist analysis aside, the owners of things don’t always operate in their own economic interests. They let vanity, ego, arrogance and all kinds of other emotional and material substances get in the way of their own self-interest. Coming into the Weekly as the New Times did to teach the readers a lesson and convince them they have been wrong for two decades seems like a pretty poor strategy to me.
“Coming into the Weekly as the New Times did to teach the readers a lesson and convince them they have been wrong for two decades seems like a pretty poor strategy to me.”
One would think.
“the Weekly built itself into the biggest and most profitable metro weekly in America by being an overtly LIBERAL newspaper for a very LIBERAL Los Angeles.”
Of course most folks flipped past all that liberal froth at the front of the old Weekly to get to the stuff that got people to pick it up — the coverage of the arts, listing of band play dates at local clubs, what was playing at the local cineams (with showtimes), etc. The truly stupid thing about VVM is they have pared down the listings, let go longtime staff who were expert at digging up information on event happenings, etc. My impression is the Weekly has gotten to be less relevant partly because it no longer offers the information that it is used to have a lock on. And people in frustration turned to the net and now likely hace bookmarked various sites that do what the Weekly used to. There was an opportuunity via its website and deep knowledgebase for events listings etc. to have continued pulling in eyeballs and made money but the last few owners let the opportunity slip away. I don’t think the Weekly will ever regain its place in the culture.
And is doesn’t help that the current news coverage is sloppy and blows chunks. Back when she had her New Times column my rule of thumb is Jill Stewart was right maybe once in every three. This is someone who championed such dubuious presences as Richard Riordan and Richard Alatorre. She seems to have only gotten worse since then and I have for several years now felt no need to pick up the Weekly.
Celeste:
Thanks for the kind words up top. I have long admired your reporting.
Just for the record, I did know about Gascon (whose office I called and got a response that he was unavailable) and Timoney: The point was, why didn’t they end up in the running? Why were such candidates — Gascon in particular had long coveted the job — turned off by this particularly brief search? As I point out — and say what you will about Kaye, but he has a good point here — the little city of Beverly Hills took much longer to find a city manager than L.A. did to find its top cop, arguably the most prestigious job in city law enforcement.
I did talk to Skobin, and he towed the mayoral line. That’s fine, I gave him his say, but there was little news in what he expressed.
I personally think that Beck is a fine chief and, frankly, I’m not so anti-Villaraigosa. But it’s our job as journalists to question these processes, not rubber stamp them. If my piece left you with more questions than answers, that’s fine. They’re questions that need to be asked.
Hi Dennis,
Thanks for your kind words. (And I am enjoying your daily blogging.)
I’m running off to teach, so I’ll try to make sense of my thoughts quickly.
In brief: what you’re saying is entirely counterfactual, as a couple of well-placed phone calls would have told you.
1. You state that the commissioners were pressured, that they were angry—and yet none of that is true. Please show me one source for that.
And then the one commissioner you spoke to told you that wasn’t true, and didn’t fit his information into your support-free theme, you dismiss him as “towing the mayoral line.” (It’s “toeing,” by the way, as in the toes on your foot, not a tow rope. Sorry, it’s the teacher thing.)
2. Antonio was not settled on Beck from the beginning, for a whole host of reasons, some good, some likely ego-related.
I have sterling sources on this, as does the LA Times’ Joel Rubin.
I’m sorry, but you simply don’t know what you’re talking about.
3. Gascon wasn’t turned off by the search process, for crying out loud, that’s utterly preposterous. He very, VERY much wanted to be LAPD chief and had every intention of applying for the job.
In fact, it was to better prepare and position himself for LAPD chief, that he went to Mesa and then to San Franciso.
But when the job of LAPD chief actually became available, he was prevented from applying because he had just accepted the job of Chief of the SFPD. In other words, he didn’t apply for the job he had prepared for his whole career because, sadly and rather ironically there was no possible way he could. Because of the sucky timing, he would have looked like the worst kind of idiot. Palinesque.
He was aced out, not because of anything the mayor did, or because of some truncated search, but because of Bill Bratton’s choice to resign abruptly without giving George a heads up, which he could have and should have done. (You want to look into something, look at Bratton’s timing vis-a-vis Gascon.)
Gascon is not considered an outsider, by the way. Had he applied, he likely would have been the front runner, frankly.
As for Timony, he was on the list of 3 finalists when Bratton was selected. I don’t personally know the man, but I’d not have applied if I had been him—simply because, if he did the math, he would have realized he would have been very, very unlikely to be selected—but not because of some kind of Beck-centric mayoral pressure.
Look, we’d already had the most famous law enforcement figure in America as our chief–who was an outsider. Why would we want to follow him with the outsider guy who once worked under him, and who doesn’t know LA at all, when we have equally strong people in the department? It would never happen. He wasn’t the best person for this particular job, and even Timony had to know that.
And all of this you could have found out.
Again, if you’d called somebody who had no investment, like—say—Barney Melekian from Pasadena PD (who has resigned to go to D.C.) he could have given you a brilliant rundown.
There are a lot of people who had no dog in the fight who would have been happy to give you a bit of insider info.
But instead you just did this: Hmmm, these are “questions that need to be asked” business.
Dennis, that’s so, so dishonest if you don’t bother to try to get real answers. Or if you do, and they don’t agree with your theme, you simply dismiss them.
The truth is out there.
And, no, Ron Kaye does not have a good point. A long search would have been required for the position of BH chief—not for the LAPD position, because anyone who was interested had been revving his or her engines for the last two years. Ron Kaye is putting out fact-free crap on the issue and can’t even matter to get his minor, easily checkable facts right. Sorry, but that happens to be the truth.
Dennis, there are plenty of very valid, very important things to look into having to do with the mayor. This isn’t one of them.
Really, I know you’re better than this.
1 – I don’t state the commissioners were angry. While Skobin had his point, and I let him make it, he had little to say outside of what was put in press releases from the mayor and police commission. So you think that deserved more airing?
2 – I don’t say the mayor was settled on Beck from the beginning. What I write is that Beck was Bratton’s choice from the beginning and that the process was quite rapid and forced for such a prestigious appointment. You can argue that the process needn’t be prolonged, that the city needed an insider, which you seem to be doing. That’s fine. That’s your argument. That’s your opinion. My story’s aim here was to point out the fact that the process was truncated, and, via Kaye, whether you like him or not, and whether you agree with his political outlook or not, has an absolutely valid observation here. For the city to find a chief in a little more than a month is a rapid process that, in fact, had little public input.
3 – I’m quite clear on Gascon’s employment. In referring to him, I’m making the point that the nation’s most coveted policing job came open and few if any of the nation’s star chiefs showed up for the audition. It’s odd. You disagree? Fine. Don’t diss me for pointing it out, however.
4 – You ding me for not knowing what I’m talking about, for not interviewing folks with no dogs in the race, and it’s not fair: I interviewed a lot of folks, some of whom were not quoted. You ding me for interviewing Ron Kaye, who I insist has a valid observation, but you suggest I interview another outsider to get inside information. Let me go on the record here: I attended all three town hall meetings that happened before my deadline — and spent more time at them than any other reporter I spotted — and I interviewed the mayor, Beck, Michel Moore, Dennis Zine, gang counselors, community activists, union leaders and many other folks. If you disagree with my slant, fine. We can all come to different conclusions. But it’s not fair to claim that I’m being dishonest or that I didn’t do the leg work. I did.
Dennis, leaving to teach. Much appreciate the willingness to discuss. More later.
is it kay or kaye? I think it’s kaye. palenesque? i think it’s palin. unless we’re talking palenque, which is a great place to check out mayan ruins. Speaking of ancient stuff, I thought everyone knew that jill’s stewart’s approach to journalism was only slightly older and slightly more offensive than lou dobb’s views on immigration. And while it is certainly entertaining to read about casitas, violent latino gangs (hmmm is there a trend developing here?) and all the other mierda that’s in la, i don’t think it’s necessarily great writing when it reads like a a csi episode. But I guess that’s who Jill Stewart thinks the readership is. Someone should tell ms. mallet that most folks who watch csi don’t want to read it, that’s why they watch tv…
Speaking of cringe-inducing slant, I can still remember the hit piece that the LA Weekly ran on the Los Angeles Eco-Village. I’m still mystified by that one, which didn’t seem too concerned with facts.
Drex Heikes needs to find his feet at the Weekly and it is only fair to give him more time to do that. But as someone who worked for him for a period of years, a few corrections are in order. First: Heikes did not, as John Knowlton says above, leave the LA Times “on principle.” He flounced out because the Rick Wartzman was handed the magazine that Drex and a then able staff had produced profitably and readably for quite a while without much credit or thanks. Was it fair? Probably not. But that does not make Heikes’ having jumped ship for the Las Vegas Sun in any way high-minded.
Two: The Las Vegas Sun may well have deserved the community service Pulitzer on construction worker deaths but that does not speak to the highness or lowness of his principles or his record of accuracy at the Sun. It means the Pulitzer judges thought the Sun ran a kicking series.
Three: Heikes is known for many things among those who have actually worked with him closely, first and foremost enthusiasm. He is an ideas man, what is known as a “salesman personality,” and he has the rare talent of supercharging any newsroom. He’s great at spotting and nurturing story ideas.
But what he brings in enthusiasm he lacks in rigor. As a line editor, he either elects not to distinguish fact from flair, or quite possibly he can’t. Strange as it sounds, that doesn’t matter. That in itself should not be his job — he’s the guy you need out front revving up the proprietor and making heroic sounding noises to interviewers.
The upshot is that what it will take for one of the most energized and energizing editors in the business to produce an accurate publication will be to have a trained and meticulous staff watching his back. The only way an Heikes-run newsroom could ever hope to attain a high standard of journalism is if he is given the kind of skilled back up staff that he enjoyed when Marty Smith, Ann Herold and a full fleet of fact checkers had his back at the Los Angeles Times magazine or, from the sounds of it, the kind of line he probably had at the Sun to get that Pulitzer. If he is given that, then good things surely will happen.
Dennis, there is no doubt about the fact that you are a hardworking and intelligent reporter and a good writer. Those qualities show up regularly in your work.
My problem is with the second half of the piece where you have a particular thesis that you attempt to prove without having any kind of facts to do so that I could find—the thesis being that the mayor skewed the selection process in favor of Charlie Beck, who was Bratton’s pick (on that we can agree) by—among other things—pushing the selection timeline to the point that qualified outsiders were discouraged from applying.
To back this thesis, you have no named sources, and not even quotes from unnamed sources. (Except for Ron Kaye, who is a pundit, not a primary source.)
But I’ve already said all that.
I started to respond to your last post, point by point, then deleted it, suspecting that the only people we would be amusing is ourselves.
I said what I had to say in the post and the comment after.
And I very much appreciate the fact that you responded twice in the interest of a the good-faith discussion
(I’d be happy to continue the same good faith discussion out of the cyber venue, but I recommend that either pinot noir or a good vodka be involved.)
Happy weekend.
PS: Flip, thank you for catching the “Palinesque” typo—and Kaye. Geeze. I accuse the guy of getting his facts wrong and then misspell his name (which I know how to spell). Twice. Arrrghhh.
Anyway, thanks.
For those keeping score at home — Celeste, 78, Dennis, 0. As an easily distracted student of L.A. media wars, I am heartened that someone with Celeste’s rigor and integrity has accepted the voluntary position of L.A. Weekly ombudswoman. I hope to see her critiques of every issue and urge her to put tough questions every week to Drex Heikes himself. Celeste, congratulations on your appointment, and we all look forward to your insights here at Save the L.A. Weekly.