Just Like the Manhattan Project, Except for That Whole Saving-the-Free-World Thing
The New York Times reports today that the braintrust of the L.A. Times
is dedicating three investigative reporters and half a dozen editors to find ideas, at home and abroad, for re-engaging the reader, both in print and online. The newspaper's editor, Dean Baquet, and its new publisher, David Hiller, plan to convene a meeting today to start the effort, which is being called the Manhattan Project. A report is expected in about two months.
Nitpickers might notice some subtle differences from the actual Manhattan Project -- instead of four years, this'll take two months; instead of legendary airtight secrecy this was announced in the New York Times before the first meeting -- but the important thing is that there'll be some kind of fiery explosion at the end.
We kid! How about some local reaction, then?
Mack Reed of LaVoice.org says "Good instinct, good goals, and good action."
Just not sure why it would take two months to figure out they can engage their readers by covering Los Angeles better and maybe doing some real investigative work in Hollywood
Italics his. Former Timesman Ed Padgett seems to like it, and adds:
I say take it a big step further by having all Times employees involved in increasing our circulation.
Another former Timesman, Ken Reich, reckons that:
this cannot be done, in my view, without some willingness on the part of Tribune Co., the present unimaginative owners, to spend some money on the improvements. And to pay for a marketing campaign to publicize them.
Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News says:
It's a great idea, and so we hope they get it right. My biggest concern is that they will focus too much on the print edition, and not enough on the Web.
Meanwhile, the helpful tipsters over at The Free Republic have a bounty of advice, including this from "abb":
1. Assign competitive teams to cover each area of the city. Cover those areas as if each were small towns (which, in a way, they are.) Find positive stories and human interest stories and print them, not just crime reports. Include pictures. People will start to buy a paper if they recognize their neighbors in it, or if their kids get a mention for their participation in Community Service or sports or something.
2. Make a true, concerted effort to make your reporting impartial. Political viewpoints should go to the editorial and op ed pages.
3. Find a non-partisan cause to support...cleaing up litter, Boys and Girls Clubs, tree-planting, etc. and get the community involved. Devote your efforts to this cause instead of constant snarky comments about Republicans.
4. Require all reporters to spend 2 weeks each year riding with a cop, working construction, following a small businessman around, etc. They need a dose of the real world. Better yet...require all reporters to take their vacations in small Midwestern towns. In the winter.
What should the 21st century Manhattan Project produce? Please leave suggestions in the comments. To see what a bunch of grumpy journalists think, click here.
UPDATE: Reaction to the 21st century Oppenheimers keeps coming in. New Media guy Jeff Jarvis:
I wish them luck, but I fear they are off on the wrong if predictable foot: namely, preserving print and the past. [...]
I find it surprising that I find nothing under "Manhattan Project" or its boss' name at the LA Times. I'd think the first, best thing to do is to get the ideas from your public.
Venice-based syndicated advice columnist Amy Alkon:
Perhaps I should send Marc Duvoisin my column samples. I mean, if they aren't pulling 'em in in droves with Al Martinez and Howard Leff.
Make sure to read the comments! Thomas Kelley over at California Connected:
from this reporter's vantage point, the LA Times would do well to also match the Web innovations of their Manhattan-based competitor, The New York Times. With an easy-to-use, uncluttered Web site, The New York Times delivers a seamless and engaging multimedia experience.
In contrast, despite producing a worldclass video series on ocean pollution, the LA Times failed to promote it properly on its own Web site. I have spoken to no one, including journalists and journalism professors, who have seen it. If the same series had appeared on the NY Times' interface, it would have created a much bigger buzz.
Boston media critic extraordinnaire Dan Kennedy:
Visions of nuclear armaggedon aside, the "Los Angeles Project" would definitely be a more promising name.
Are you people crazy? This is pure TQM, not journalism. Even worse, it doesn't address the problem!
For the sake of the argument: in the following model, marketing is like marketing, product managers are like editors, and investigative reporters are like engineers.
In TQM, marketing asks clients and prospects what they want. Then try to get product managers to give it to them.
Then product managers weigh what has been found out about customers against what the company can actually build given its position and resources. Then engineers take their cues from product managers.
When product managers and engineers start taking cues directly from customers and prospects, nine times out of ten they run off a cliff and make products neither customers nor clients can stand.
Investigative reporters should be as
remote from this kind of marketing activity as possible, and their editors should only be tangentially involved with market research. Asking investigative reporters and editors instead of marketing to be part of market research and to take cues from readers is like the engineers who design the pistons at Chevy to ask drivers what the optimal displacement should be. If their managers buy in, they will give you monster, fetishized pistons in utterly undrivable cars.
~~~
The problem is not the scribes. The problems is, the Times doesn't have the gumption at the editorial level to piss off elites, so it just tries to piss off various segments of its readers. I predict that this kind of "market-driven journalism" will just piss off readers all the more, as the investigative reporters and editors find out first hand how insouciant and their (average age 55) readers are, and lose esteem for what they do for a living.
Here's what every customer wants: the hometown newspaper to take on elites. The Times track record: kid gloves on Meruelo. Kid gloves on Broad. Kid gloves on Frank Gehry. Kid gloves on Parke Skelton. Kid gloves on Mahony, kid gloves on Riordan, on Garcetti, and girls' kid gloves on Villaraigosa. But they went in tough against---the legacy of Cesar Chavez?
The Times really blinked at the criticism it got for taking on Schwarzenegger. But that was the right track. The "product lines" pulsing readers is the wrong one.
Posted by: joseph | October 12, 2006 at 03:32 PM
The concept is great - the execution is shall we say... somewhat flawed.
The concept is to find a way to get people who do not read the LA Times... to read the LA Times.
The execution, however, is to ask the writers and editors who are writing and editing a paper no one is reading what those same writers and editors should be writing and editing in the paper.
Now can anyone spot the flaw in that process?
Apparently, it did not occur to anyone that asking people why they do not read the Times and asking what would make them want to read the paper might be a better idea.
And even better idea might be to hold a day long charette where various groups can give their vision of what the Times should be just as is done with major civic projects Grand Avenue.
We should make the redesign of the LA Times a civic dialogue. And if the Times is seriously interested in engaging the citizens of Los Angeles, as Chair of the Los Angles Congress of Neighborhood Councils, I would be glad to invite all the NC's to meet with the redesigners of the 'new' LA Times in a forum about how our leading newspaper can better serve all the diverse communities of Los Angeles.
Posted by: Brady Westwater | October 12, 2006 at 03:40 PM
Why do I subscribe to LA Weekly, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times?
LA Weekly covers what I seek, live music and comedy. But, they add a twist with alternative reporting, and to fully understand an artcle I enjoy reading different views. And finding the latest edition of LA Weekly is almost impossible in the area (8th and Alameda)of Los Angeles that I work in, so I have it mailed to my home.
The San Gabriel Valley Tribune offers the news that is important to my neighbors and myself, the San Gabriel Valley. Usually only twenty-five to thirty page weekdays, it's rather easy to read in twenty minutes.
As a third generation Times employee, the Los Angeles Times has been a staple in every home I have lived in my entire life. As a reader of the Times I enjoy the editorial pages, and my ten year old grandson reads the sports section. The Thursday Weekend tabloid section is now a must read for myself, and anyone that enjoys live music.
I'm seeking out, from my co-workers, why they read the publications they subscribe to for answers I can share online. Hopefully this will generate other ideas for the future of the Los Angeles Times.
Posted by: Edward Padgett | October 12, 2006 at 11:15 PM
Dear Times;
I might be a good source of input, because I was a long-time subscriber to the L.A. Times (long-time = 16 years, or more than 30 years, if you count my parents' subscription when I was young)... but I canceled my subscription when I'd finally had enough.
As disclosure, I am not conservative, but I am anti-liberal and anti-left. But until about eight or nine years ago, I was able to read the Times without feeling insulted every five column inches.
The problem is not mere bias; every news source has a bias, whether they choose to admit it or not. What finally drove me away was being treated like a subliterate moron.
Example: you gave a book of free-market economics to Eric Hobsbawm to review; not surprisingly, he trashed it. But in your squib about the reviewer, you neglected to mention that Hobsbawm was a lifelong Communist -- I mean an actual member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. I got the distinct impression the editor of the review section was giggling at having put one over us readers.
Example: your "gropegate" hit piece on Arnold Schwarzenegger scant days before the 2003 recall election. Did you imagine readers wouldn't know that you had (as the paper admitted) sat on the accusations for months, just waiting for the most devastating moment to release it?
Example: an opinion piece by a resident of the city about the evils of capital punishment. The tag line at the bottom said only: "O.J. Simpson lives in Los Angeles." Don't you think his peculiar history was relevant to his opinions on capital punishment?
These are not isolated incidents; these examples are the everyday fodder of the Los Angeles Times, which really seems to have it in for the center-right and beyond -- and that's not even counting Robert Scheer's assaults on our intelligence. I mean in the actual news stories as well as reviews and opinion pieces.
The paper very frequently makes errors of fact in its actual news stories; but these errors invariably serve to denigrate the Right and authenticate the Left. It's like a restaurant that makes frequent mistakes in adding up the check... but always in the restaurant's favor.
I hope I'm being clear: you are bleeding circulation in no small part because anybody to the right of Antonio Villaraigosa feels snubbed, insulted, offended, and abused by your news coverage (not to mention the editorial pages). It's telling that both the Washington Post and the New York Times are less aggressively partisan than the L.A. Times, and I have no problem reading them without feeling dirty; the only paper comparable to the L.A. Times is the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
I would strongly urge you to hire a few experienced, respected editors who happen to be at least center-right in their politics. The idea isn't to bias the paper to the right, but rather to have at least a few loud voices outside the Times left-center-left echo chamber... a couple of people to say, "hey, that doesn't sound right; can we recheck a few facts in this story?" or "don't you think you should ask the opinion of some Republican other than Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins, or Ron Paul?"
So long as a significant chunk of Los Angeles believes that the paper publishes liberal propaganda rather than news, circulation will continue to plummet, and more of your publishers will be fired.
You needn't lean right; but you mustn't bend so awfully far to the left. If you were a little more centered, you might begin to repair the damage.
(Oh, and also keep the snarky, editorial comments out of straight news stories, please. They're inappropriate and infantile.)
Thanks for the opportunity to give some input.
Dafydd ab Hugh
http://biglizards.net/blog
Posted by: Dafydd ab Hugh | October 13, 2006 at 01:20 AM
You guys crack me up. All this dribble about making changes to survive. You all know your product does not appeal to 49% of the population. Until you decide that your political bias in print is NOT as important as your own survival then nothing will change. You have the surveys of 'why' people cancel their subscriptions, publish those figures, let us see for ourselves as to how many have canceled their subscriptions because of your media bias vs. other reasons.
Posted by: Gingerguy | October 13, 2006 at 05:03 AM
The stories are out there, and the stories are what seem to attract and keep readers. That gets lost a bit in the hullabaloo around online vs. offline, etc. It's those great stories, or even the merely helpful stories, that willkeep and build readership.
To that end, it's a bit of a numbers game. I don't think it is realistic that minus some buckling down, 450 good, plugged in reporters can produce more compelling work than 600 of the same.
My belief is a new combination of permanent freelancers, quasi staff or stipended bloggers will wind up filling the gaps, and that may not be a bad things. A stay at home reporter who gives half time to the L.A. Times for $45,000 a year can do a lot of good.
Posted by: Ben Sullivan | October 13, 2006 at 06:25 AM
What happened to Joel Sappell's much publicized project to improve the website? Reich indicates it was a lack of support. What does that mean?
Posted by: retired | October 13, 2006 at 07:45 AM
Read the first three items from The Free Republic over and over. People buy newspapers for local news of interest and for accurate and unbiased information on important issues locally and world wide. Current newspapers are long on sensationalizm and political bias and very short on factual reporting. Today's reporters appear not to care if what they report is correct or not, just will it promote the reporter's selfinterest. I suspect this will require hiring reporters that have the ability to think and to reason logically and statistically. Things apparently not taught in journalism today.
Posted by: Joe Jenney | October 13, 2006 at 08:00 AM
I recently moved back to LA after 5 years in Washington, DC. Altough the Washington Post has its fair share of flawas, one thing it does very well is to engage the DC community. It has weekly online chats on all sorts of topics - work life, job searches, money management, entertainment, happenings around town, restaurants. In this way, it formed an online connection with readers and local residents. Often, my first stop for information on many topics was the Washington Post. The Los Angeles Times should consider doing something similar.
Posted by: RZ | October 13, 2006 at 09:44 AM
I must respond to those who claim L.A. Times has a liberal bias, because the reason I cancelled my subscription was I was sick of the L.A. Times tilting to the right, especially in a city that is vastly liberal and critical of the current administration. The L.A. Times had the fortune of having one of the only columnists in the country whose pre-invasion predictions about Iraq were dead on: Robert Scheer. As the debacle in the Middle East unfolded, Scheer was proved to be right about everything from sectarian violence to WMDs. And what was his reward from the Times? He was fired. And replaced with two new pro-Iraq war columnsists, whose own predictions had proved to be wildly wrong, delusional even.
What has turned the L.A. Times from a real newspaper into a rag is the attention paid to "liberal media" conspiracy theorists, who see bias if a paper calls a failure a failure. Go back to reporting what you know is true. Have reporters investigate and tell your readers what's true, and don't compromise it with delicacy or "balance".
Posted by: Andrew Matthews | October 13, 2006 at 10:44 AM
I got a chuckle from Andrew. If the Times hasn't got him, I can't help.
I would make a couple of suggestions. The Times used to have a decent Orange County section. That became California Section and the change suggested an absence of local interest. The only Orange County coverage now seems to be attacks on a few local officials from the point of view of leftist state wide organizations like the "public interest law firms" allied with developers of subsidized "affordable housing."
The web site is not bad and I use it to follow sports. I was a subscriber for 40 years but finally gave up when the tilt of the op-ed page spread to the news pages. If you want the center right to come back, get the bias and snarky comments out of the news pages. I would also suggest going back to the "Right" and "Left" POV columns. It's obvious anyway. Lastly, the e-mail addresses that used to be appended to columns were a good thing and I even had civil debates with Robert Scheer 15 years ago. If he can say it, he should be able to defend it. I had a hilarious exchange with Hiltzik a few months ago that ended with him ranting at the importunate peasant who dared to criticize him.
You could work on the Business Office, too. I tried to resubscribe a year ago because I felt I should support the web site and the price was minimal. I couldn't get it done. I was getting threatening letters from the collections department before I had gotten the first bill. I gave up and unsubscribed again.
Posted by: MIchael Kennedy | October 13, 2006 at 11:39 AM
I second Andrew Matthews (I think). Buy blue pencils by the truckload. Have your editors pretend they are Journalism 101 professors. "Just the facts, please, ma'am". Be cold and dry but accurate without bias. Be better than the wire services. (For example, I have read stories from the LAT which refused to accept all the allegations put out by Reuters and were later proven right.) This will engender trust. Let your editorial page (the fluff pages too) provide the color. If people trust your reporting they will continue to read your paper even if your editorials make them angry or they find the Arts and Styles sections boring. The media -- print, broadcast and internet -- is inundated with opinion and entertainment. There is a hunger for credible information.
Posted by: nk | October 13, 2006 at 11:44 AM
1) First and foremost, make the website more readable and workable. The New York Times website loads in a flash, is clearly laid out and easy to navigate. A quick look shows there are only about three ads per article instead of the L.A. Times' six per article -- perhaps not as big a moneymaker, but much more pleasant to read.
2) Then make it possible to easily comment on specific articles like at Salon.com. Maybe that's not necessary for every news article, but it certainly makes opinions and features more interesting.
3) The whole Calendar Live thing is outdated and unworkable, trash it and organize this section properly -- half the features in the Thursday calendar are impossible to find online.
4) Get rid of the awful Getting Personal column -- if you can't find good writers for this type of feature like the New York Times does for its Modern Love section, then don't bother running it.
5) Get rid of the fast food reviews, they're embarrassingly tacky.
Posted by: Pat Saperstein | October 13, 2006 at 11:54 AM
Political Correctness. The illness permeates the very foundations of your institution. So much so that you will never, ever, effect a turn-around without outside help and intervention. You're far too parochial to take this task on alone. Decades of bashing the middle class has taken its toll, no? But of course you don't (incapable of) see it that way.
Want more readers? Be prepared to take some bitter medicine to make the institution healthy. Or die doing the same old, same old: martyrs hanging on the cross of social justice. It's your choice though. If you choose to die, then please, as a final gesture, have the courage to confess on your deathbed that the disease was self-administered. For maximum effect, any contrition should run above the fold.
Posted by: Antonio Villaraigosa's Cabana Boy | October 13, 2006 at 12:19 PM
I'll leave the comments about right/left bias alone (although I note that just one of the commenters thinks you lean too far right).
Hire editors who can edit stories to a reasonable length( see the NYT and the WSJ). Your editors have traditionally let reporters run on ad nauseam. If you keep your reporters to the traditional who what where when and why, the opportunity to throw in gratuitous political snarky comments will go away. You can use the space you save to publish editorials to your heart's content. But then based on the bias that creeps into your news pages, you've gone at the problem from the other direction.
As far as I can tell by looking at your work, the copy desk disappeared from the Times newsroom maybe twenty years ago.
Posted by: Mike Myers | October 13, 2006 at 01:13 PM
Andrew Matthews is right on the money. Most of the other comments in here suggest the L.A. Times won't be acceptable until it's indistinguishable from Free Republic.
What the paper needs is solid local reporting on actual news regardless of how the political chips will fall, and regardless of fashion. L.A. is not New York, though much coverage in the L.A. Times suggests it thinks it is.
Attacking political figures of whatever stripe as mere personalities will not do. They're specific programs (or lack of same) should be closely examined and interrogated.
Posted by: David Ehrenstein | October 13, 2006 at 02:47 PM
I have to laugh that people actually miss Robert Scheer. Don't you know "he" was merely a piece of software designed to troll the net for negative stories on Bush and then auto-generate a weekly column? Now if we could just uninstall Steve Lopez…
The first poster has it right “the Times doesn't have the gumption at the editorial level to piss off elites,…” and I’m not sure they have it at the reporter level either. Might be even deeper than that; an ideological mindset that renders one incapable of seeing any other points of view.
You want to know why talk radio and blogs work? They make people uncomfortable. They make proponents of crazy causes justify their results or explain their methodology.
Require your staff to pass college level logic and statistics classes. Teach them how to ask follow up questions. Immediately banish anyone caught re-typing a press release.
Posted by: TakeFive | October 13, 2006 at 04:13 PM
I don't have any data and can't offer much beyond a sort of introspective review -- i.e., what's important to this individual reader.
I've been a reader for close to 50 years and continue to place a very high value on the paper's core competency, newsgathering.
I value the broad scope of coverage and don't want to see it diminished. The foreign and national bureaus are the paper's crown jewels and anything that threatens to undermine them should be strongly resisted.
At the same time, I agree with the frequently heard criticism that the paper doesn't cover Los Angeles and the region nearly as well as it should. I think the zoned editions and the bureaus that went with them are sorely missed. Regional editors with clout and resources seem essential.
But this means more boots on the ground, not less.
"Business" under Bill Sing was very consumer-friendly and useful. As a reader, I've been sorry to see that diminish, although it's made my professional life easier.
But, again, more resources are needed, not less.
I'm old, so I like print. I still read the paper first thing in the morning. What I look to the Web site for is updates throughout the day. I go to the NYT or the wire services on Yahoo! before I go to the LAT, however. Fresher content, easier navigation -- it's that simple.
Again, more resources, rather than less.
The "Oceans" series was very impressive and its use of video promising. However, this, too, would require more investment.
So as far as the distribution of news goes, print is declining while the Web is rising. How to wring more revenue from Web distribution of content? I wish I knew, but I think that's where the real challenge is. It's far more important than all the "right vs. left" commotion.
I would pay more attention to blogs, however, from all sides of the political spectrum and make use of their corrective potential. I have some sympathy for the "faster, more visible" corrections" school-of-thought. Finally, the paper needs to take its own blogs more seriously. More consistency and continuity would be a good place to start.
Posted by: Tim McGarry | October 13, 2006 at 04:38 PM
One more comment. I want to buy the Times. I miss having it in my driveway in the morning. There's just something more satisfying about an actual physical newspaper than reading on a screen.
I've been reading it since 1976 and it seems like a part of southern california. But I need a reason to buy it. What is the value added? What would make me crave to read it first thing in the morning?
Posted by: TakeFive | October 13, 2006 at 05:07 PM
You can disregard complaints from the far-right blogging echo-chamber. A quick survey of their complaints shows that they have pretty peculiar notions as to what constitutes balanced journalism (see, "Iraq, Reporting Good News From"). Of course you run a business, but chasing after the crazies can also alienate your current readership.
Also, how about bringing in a serial novel or two?
Posted by: m.croche | October 13, 2006 at 05:17 PM
The thing is ... the LAT has basically screwed the pooch. With seriously unbalanced news presentation, many potential readers will never buy it again. At the same time, the people who like such a tilt to the left will expect it to continue and they risk losing them if they ever try to right the ship. It just doesn't make sense to let that happen but the damage has been done. ... One thing they might consider is if their "editor" ever gets the notion of doing a joint article with the NYT again ... just fire him immediately. No questions asked. Same for the Pyongyang Times. If he's considering doing such a thing with Granma, ask him some serious questions.
Posted by: Joe Yowsa | October 13, 2006 at 05:56 PM
I have been reading the Times ever since I moved to Southern California in 1976, and had been aware of its vaunted reputation before then. The paper started going to hell when the conversative retards in the Chandler family reasserted control, and it was only after the sale to the Tribune Company that the paper took the onramp to recovery. The blockheads who rant about tilting to the left were writing the same crap in 1976.
I do think that the Times had made a mistake in dropping most of its local coverage. From what I can tell, the San Gabriel Valley doesn't exist in the Times building. And I am so tired of the self-satisfied Westside homeowners being lauded for their creativity while living such pressured lives. There are two valleys and the South Bay surrounding that core area, and they contain the greater share of the metropolitan population.
The matter of not tackling the Brahmen class is another sore point. Steve Lopez takes his shots at some, but the Times has yet to take on Eli Broad and his bloated ego/Grand Avenue project. Rick Caruso is another one. These people have all these grand plans on how people should live, work, and shop, yet they themselves will never exist in those circumstances.
A great many comments have been made about healthcare, housing, education, etc., yet the Times has not put the hammer to the nail - you cannot reduce taxes (and make that a priority) and fund the services needed by our citizens. The GOP, including Arnold, prides itself on not raising taxes, and then lies to the public regarding why services must be reduced. The Times owes it to its readers to shine the light of day on these antics.
Give people a reason to read the Times. You can't please everybody, but you can certainly be more interesting, even controversial, if you pursue the truth. Remember, if people are reading the Times, then advertisers will follow.
And finally, yes, I look at the website, which could use some improvements. However, I do not wish to rely on a computer screen for all my news. I enjoy reading the paper while having coffee, eating, listening to the radio, watching TV, etc. The computer does not lend itself to those other activities.
Posted by: Gary St.Clair | October 14, 2006 at 01:56 AM
Any time anyone notes that the L.A. Times (or any other news source) has a strong leftward bias, it's inevitable that a passle of folks will come screaming over to say no, it's a right-wing bias.
There is a very easy way to prove the former is correct: go around the newsroom, stop each reporter or editor you see, and ask the following:
"I'm doing a little informal survey, no names. I just want to ask you one question: did you always know that Bush lied to get us into Iraq so we can steal their oil, or were you fooled for a while and only found out later?"
If even a single person you ask objects to the premise of the question, I will be pleasantly surprised. What I expect is that every respondent will simply answer the question one way or the other.
(And I think we know what Andrew Matthews would do.)
Seriously, when only ardent liberals with full-blown Bush Derangement Syndrome believe the paper is fair and unbiased, then you have a very serious problem indeed. The L.A. Times, having forced virtually every other paper out of Los Angeles, has an obligation to be the paper for all of us... not just for one side of the political spectrum.
Think about what I suggested: hiring a couple of high-ranking editors (of the news pages, not the financial pages, the Op-Eds, or the help-wanted ads) who actually call themselves "center right." Have them vet articles on sensitive subjects, or any article which generates a lot of complaints about bias.
You may lose the loons on the left who think Robert Scheer is a middle-of-the-road centrist... but would you rather appeal to the most liberal 50%, or would you rather appeal to the middle 80%, losing only the lunatic 10% on either side?
Dafydd
Posted by: Dafydd ab Hugh | October 14, 2006 at 02:12 AM
I've subscribed to the Los Angeles Times since 1979. I used to be able to take the Times Editorial recommended voter guide straight to the voting booth, and with few exceptions rely upon it for help in choosing candidates and voting for or against propositions. That is, until a few years ago.
Yes, I am an unabashed progressive liberal who used to drive a Volvo. The letting go of Sheer and Rodriguez was the moment I ceased my subscriptions. I should say I did not do so because I read them religiously, but because the event simply focused more attention on how the new ownership by the Tribune was exerting more influence. Let's call it the 'USA Today' influence... or a homogenizing. The result is pablum.
Maybe it's fantasy, but I think the L.A. Times I used to read would have torn apart and investigated the administration's versions of why we had to go to war in Iraq. All the media were guilty of this avoidance of their role, but the L.A. Times was a particular disappointment to me.
I like what I read earlier in these posts about how readers want their paper to make people (in power) uncomfortable. Rodriguez pissed me off every other cartoon. Sheer informed me and got me excited. Although, his articles got me mad at those in power. Like the current administration who demoted, fired or ignored those who disagreed with them, the Trib let Sheer go... the one writer who was most aggressive and prescient in his commentaries about the Iraq war.
I know the Times has other writers who took liberal and antiwar perspectives, but Sheer did so with the aggressive spirit of the muckrakers of the past. THAT'S what makes a reader want to subscribe!
I am very worried about the concentration of media and the fourth estate in the hands of the few. Democracy depends upon an informed electorate. Gee, I wonder what position the L.A. Times editorial board would take on the FCC issue of one company dominating the media in geographic areas?
Bottom line: The Times does not reflect my views and is not exciting, nor can I look to it to make those in power squirm (re:editorial pages).
And, oh how I so miss the smell of the newsprint wafting and mixing with that of my morning coffee!
Posted by: Marc Sadoff | October 14, 2006 at 06:27 AM
I canceled the paper recently due to ongoing, though simple to correct delivery problems. So I would first get delivery people who can get the paper to the front door on time, all the sections together, everyday.
Next, the international reporting is still top notch. Local is barely there, and this is a local paper. And Opinion has stunk every since Kinsley took over (though his op-ed piece last week was right on the money).
Now that I'm reading the Times on line everyday, please, work on the website. I also read the Wall Street Journal, and it is so much easier to read online. It is more like a paper newspaper in its fonts and layout. The Times is too cluttered, too hard to navigate. Plus the interactivity is hard to use.
Posted by: Carol May | October 14, 2006 at 06:29 AM