Opinion: Zell’s bells
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Some local reaction to that media-company purchase you may have read about. Ken Reich:
Who would have ever thought, during the Chandler era, that the L.A. Times would one day be owned by the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, and a strong philanthropic backer of both Israel and the Israeli support association in the U.S., AIPAC? Such facts should certainly have been mentioned in the extensive Los Angeles Times and New York Times coverage this morning, but weren’t.
I wonder if this will have any effect on the LAT’s naked anti-Israel, pro-Palestine bias in its reporting and opinion?
Talking to LA Times staff today, I’m hearing similar responses to the Zell/Trib deal: “Horrifying”. “Scary”. “My resume is out”. “My resume isn’t out because I don’t want to leave L.A.” As a senior editor told me, “You can argue it both ways. People say, well, anything’s better than what we’ve got now. Then there are others who say, wrong, wrong wrong, because things can always get worse.” So it’s with a long sigh that, based on my reporting today, I come to this conclusion: the deal is wonderful for the Chicago billionaire and media managers, and terrible for the 20,000 Trib grunts suddenly at risk because of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan.
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Emphases his, as always. L.A. Voice:
The Times is bleeding. Cost cutting alone isn’t going to save it. The product must be reinvented. [Asking Donald Rumsfeld to edit Current] may have been a crazy idea, but at least somebody was thinking outside the box and trying to save the paper.
Our hometown newspaper, once a source of either pride or rage, and now a source of disinterest or confusion, has a new owner, conservative Real Estate financier Sam Zell. Is Zell the man to restore the Times to prominence, relevancy, and respect? Clearly not, he has zero experience with journalism, no roots in Los Angeles, and no driving mission to restore the paper. Furthermore, his motives in buying the paper are murky, and private ownership doesn’t mean much to a newspaper if the private owner is a. not local and b. not a newspaperman.