On Thursday night I was sitting around with a group of writers who have gathered in Bennington College in Vermont—poets, novelists, and a few nonfiction types, like me—most of them resolutely East Coast, when the subject of the Los Angeles Times came up and instantly the tone turned mordant. It was as if someone had mentioned a friend who was gravely ill, or a family member who was married to a violent abuser.
I was part of a similar conversation the day before in Washington, DC.
It seems that, even at the other end of the country, those for whom good journalism matters are disturbed by the growing realization that something terrible is happening to LA’s hometown paper.
The cut backs, and the threats of more cut backs, have been dire enough. And the repeated loss of top editors has been demoralizing. But then there was the news last week (reported by LA Observed and finally confirmed by the Times) that the management of the Los Angeles Times Magazine (a section that was already cut from weekly to monthly and made over into some embarrassingly life-style driven rag) was being taken away from editorial and given to the “Media Group”—read: the advertising department.
(Jill Stewart blogged about the issue, remembering the cover stories she’d once done for the magazine, when the LA Times Magazine mattered. Her reminiscing made me think back on my own long-form stories for the LAT magazine, three of which won awards for me and for the Times.)
And here’s what editor Rim Rieder had to say for the American Journalism Review.
Yet still the person who’s most recently and suscinctly nailed the tragic nature of what continues to unfold at the paper like a slow motion car crash is Harold Meyerson in his column in Wednesday’s Washington Post. If you haven’t read it, please do. Here are the relevant clips:
[SNIP]
As the company prepares to shed more reporters, it has measured writers’ performances by the number of column inches of stories they ground out. It found, said one Zell executive, that the level of pages per reporter at one of Zell’s smaller papers, the Hartford Courant (about 300), greatly exceeded that at the Times (about 50). As one of the handful of major national papers, however, the Times employs the kind of investigative and expert beat reporters not found at most smaller papers. I could name a number of Times writers who labored for months on stories that went on to win Pulitzers and other prizes, and whose column-inch production, accordingly, was relatively light. Doing so, I fear, would only put their necks on Zell’s chopping block. So let me instead note that if The Post’s Dana Priest and Anne Hull, who spent months uncovering the scandalous conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and whose reporting not only won a Pulitzer but caused a shake-up in the Army’s treatment of wounded veterans, had been subjected to the Zellometer productivity index, they’d be prime candidates for termination.
It’s Zell’s money, some would argue — only, it’s not. Of the $8.2 billion he used to take the paper private last year, Zell put up $315 million of his own money and used the employee stock ownership plan (without the consent of any employees, of course) to finance the rest. It’s all legal, but that hardly means the deal was good for journalism or the cities where Zell owns papers.Great newspapers take decades to build. We are discovering that they can be dismantled in relatively short order. The Los Angeles Times was a hyperpartisan, parochial broadsheet until Otis Chandler became its publisher in 1960 and began the work of transforming it into the paper of both record and insight that it’s been for the past half-century. The diminution of such a paper diminishes its city, which is why L.A.’s otherwise disparate civic elites have periodically tried to restore the Times to local control since the Trib bought it at the turn of this century. Instead, in Zell, what Los Angeles has is a visiting Visigoth, whose civic influence is about as positive as that of the Crips, the Bloods and the Mexican mafia. Life in San Quentin sounds about right.
Yeah, maybe. But actually I’d go with Pelican Bay.
(Above cartoon—before I fiddled with it—by Daryl Cagle of MSNBC)
When businessmen run the papers, journalists are offended that profits are more important than them. But, if journalists ran the papers, there would be no profits and, eventually, no jobs and no papers. Journalists are showing what snobs and elitists that they can be, which is interesting for people who know little about running profitable businesses.
When I read that Randy Michaels was COO of Tribune, I knew that the fine newspaper chain was screwed with a capital S.
Michaels, who used to run Jacor and Clear Channel Radio is largely crddited with turning local radio into a sewer. it was Michaels who, with Clear Channel had the operations of several combined into one, and often had them run remotely with no personnel there, in violation of FCC regulations.
Under Michaels, Clear Channel effectively abandoned local programming outside of large metro areas. No less a Republican than Herbert Hoover stated that the airwaves belong to the public. The Communications Act is clear: broadcasters are licensed to broadcast in the public interest. Michaels response has effectively been an upraised middle finger.
Zell is bad news; Michaels is even worse.
RP: The Communications Act is clear: broadcasters are licensed to broadcast in the public interest.
And who gets to decide what is in the “public interest?” You? Do you favor restoring the “Fairness Doctrine?” Here’s the take on that by another liberals: Talk Radio, Fairness, and the Common Good
Even if it’s not conservative, even “bad journalists” have a right to publish.
And who gets to decide what is in the “public interest?â€Â
The FCC when the license comes up for renewal.
Lots of strawmen there, Woody. I didn’t mention the Fairness Doctrine. Mario Cuomo opposes the renewal of the Fairness Doctrine.
I worked in the broadcasting industry for nearly twenty years, Woody. Randy Michaels has a lousy reputation amongst independent local radio operators. He represents everything bad in broadcasting: the homogenization of radio and mediocritization of television.
In your typical peckerwood fashion, you attempt to tar me with an empty brush. Jackass.
Here’s what broadcasting in the public interest means, Woody and here’s where Clear Channel under Randy Michaels failed:
That’s not broadcasting in the public interest.
The major networks don’t warn us when liberals are about to ruin our nation. That’s worse than Randy Michaels.
The major networks don’t warn us when liberals are about to ruin our nation
What a typically asinine comment.
Here’s a quality site for journalists….The Huffington Post.
Obama: GOP Trying To Paint Michelle And I As “Too Black”
It’s bad enough for a candidate to end his campaign slogan in a preposition. Now, he’s portrayed as not knowing the difference between the subject and an object of a sentence.