Whatever you've got to say about the murder of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw or the arrest of 19-year-old Pedro Espinoza for the crime, start your engines. Please keep it clean: no threats, bullying, bogarting or unamusing ad hominems will be accepted. I'll approve as fast as I can. Some scenes from Shaw's funeral may give the conversation a little focus.

My feelings on the fabled Sam Zell f-word exchange with a photographer for the Orlando Sentinel pretty much boil down to: Whatever you say, Mr. Zell! How else may I be of service? I'm not going out on  a limb by saying it's bad form for the chairman of a company to curse out an employee. (Based on our story's indication that Zell was seeking to smooth things over with the employee in question, it would appear he feels the same way.) But I'm with Patterico in finding the photographer's "what readers want are puppy dogs" comment to be far more alarming than the four-letter word. A cuss is just a cuss, but there is a lot of journalistic arrogance embedded in that dismissive comment about readers. People on the wrong end of the plummeting-circulation continuum should show some humility, and maybe even gratitude, toward the customers who are still showing up.

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.

Bill Quick:

I wonder if this will have any effect on the LAT's naked anti-Israel, pro-Palestine bias in its reporting and opinion?

Nikki Finke:

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.

Mickey Kaus:

Watch Out Zell! The giant newspaper you are buying is in the grip of a perverse cult! ... A rare Kausfiles Special report.

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.

L.A. Taco:

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.

There have been many outrages uttered during the past few days around and about these parts, but for my money (literally speaking) the cruelest blow of all came within this dog-bites-tennis-ball story about how former mayor Richard Riordan, in light of the recent Spring Street tumult, still doesn't care for these L.A. Times. The offending (to me) bit:

Riordan once fancied himself as a newspaper publisher. He toyed with the idea of creating a paper that could compete with the Los Angeles Times. Eventually, Riordan determined that the project wasn't viable and dropped it.

"The smartest thing I ever did was not following through," he said. "I was in over my head."

He walked away lighter by a few hundred thousand dollars, but much wiser. "I lost a quarter-million bucks, which is nothing."

Italics mine, to emphasize the fact that WHERE THE HELL WAS MY CUT, HIZZONER? Barely four figures for basically four months' solid work on my part, during which time I was literally begging pathetically for scratch, while the consultants peddling last century's business models just kept the meter running? The rich are different from you and me ... they think we don't need money.

L.A. Examiner prototype editor Ken Layne (disclosure: Layne is reportedly my bandmate) comments:

It was fun to make a pretend paper with Dick Riordan. My only real regret is that I didn't take at least $100,000 of that $250,000 for myself. When Antonio Villaraigosa wants to start his pretend paper, my fee is $50,000 per month.

On Tuesday, you may recall, we editorialized that the expansion of NATO to Central and Eastern Europe was a "historic blunder" given the promises that were made to the Soviet Union and the domestic fears in modern Russia.

Today, kicking of a semi-new* feature here in Opinion land, we are publishing online a full-length response by Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Excerpt:

I had thought that the evident success of NATO enlargement had dispelled any doubts that had been raised at the time. But I relish the opportunity to revisit the argument. Indeed, I take immense pleasure in affirming that there was no Yalta moment during the break up of the Soviet Union, nor at any time since.

Whole thing here.

* We have in the past published online rebuttals such as contractor Ron Tutor's response to Steve Lopez's column about the big dig across our street, and also a Jack Valenti response to an editorial about the Motion Picture Association of America ... but you'll start seeing these things much more frequently from now on, under the heading of "Blowback."

Today's man-bites-dog stories regarding the Los Angeles Times:

* Hugh Hewitt offers some almost-friendly advice.

* Ken Reich gives us an attaboy.

* Patrick "Patterico" Frey doles out some "kudos" (plus some other stuff we won't mention).

* And TribCo announces some huge profit.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go grab a drink with Jim Murray....

If you read Steve Lopez' column "Watching a hole fill up with money" last week, you'll be interested in this rebuttal from Tutor-Saliba president Ron Tutor, whose company is doing the contracting work described in that column:

Gentlemen:

Of course, I spoke to Mr. Lopez and read his article in the Los Angeles Times.  If I was rude to your reporter, it was unfortunate; however, the sarcastic and negative tone of his questions and his obvious attitude was so unacceptable that I found myself angry that I could be approached in such a negative context. And yes as I spoke to Mr. Lopez, I do not believe that our company has ever received fair treatment from the Los Angeles Times and the majority of its reporters despite our literally billions of dollars of public works built for this city and state.

Lopez asks, “If the city is so nervous, why did it hand this job to Tutor-Saliba?”  The absurdity of that remark is that the city never hands anything to anyone.  We were the low bidder after the city tried for months to find competition from all over the country.  Tutor-Saliba was the only company that finally tendered a bid and after long negotiations agreed on a revised price to build this project.  To somehow create something negative out of that is just the typical outrage that’s put forth in the press.  We did not construct the circumstances of the bid, we only responded as a company based in Los Angeles that has performed work for the city for some 40 years.

Patrick "Patterico" Frey and Kevin Roderick take different looks.

Joel Pett rounds up international cartoonists' responses to the war in Iraq.

You may have heard that David Geffen wants to buy the L.A. Times. But what exactly would he do with the thing? Accounts differ.

From the target newspaper:

Geffen often raises The Times in conversation, these people say, and talks about how he would improve the paper's look and its coverage of the arts, among other things. He has said the would try to get New York Times star columnist Maureen Dowd to jump to the Los Angeles Times.

The L.A. Weekly's Nikke Finke:

Here's what he's saying to friends: He'll pour money into more hires. He plans to staff -- more like stuff -- the paper with name writers and journalism stars. (Of course, he'll raid The New York Times, where Frank Rich and his wife, Alex Witchel, are his good friends and occasional overnight guests. So are Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi. So are a lot of literati.) He'll demand quality. He'll ratchet up the Web site (even though he hates how prohibitively expensive it is to do that). He'll figure out a way to bring in Latinos as readers. Geffen loathes how boring, badly written, inconsequential and pedestrian the L.A. Times' editorial and opinion section is. He thinks nobody reads it. He knows nobody talks about it. Most of all, he wants his newspaper to be talked about.

The New York Times:

Irving Azoff, a music industry executive who has known Mr. Geffen for years and who now manages the Eagles and Christina Aguilera, said Mr. Geffen was not a micromanager, and was more likely to hire editors with whom he sees eye to eye. “I am sure David would hire people that think the same as him, so he would be sure they didn’t like who he didn’t like before he hired them,” Mr. Azoff said.

The New York Observer:

"It could be very exciting if David Geffen buys it and makes Arianna Huffington the editor," said former editorial-page editor Michael Kinsley.

The Guardian (UK):

For decades, America's newspaper landscape has been dominated by the 'Grey Lady', the New York Times, which rightly claims to being the nearest America has to a quality national. Geffen, however, never plays second fiddle and is reported to be willing to meet this challenge: to stare the Grey Lady in the eye and turn the LA Times into the other American national newspaper. Who would bet against him?

Who knows, maybe the investors in Pop.com? (Totally just kidding, D-Geff!)

So how are the critics receiving our A-section redesign?

The Editors Weblog, NewsDesigner.com and the Free Republic offer summaries of the changes, with Free Republic calling it "deck chair rearrangement".

Kevin Roderick of LAObserved -- a former Timesman himself -- has the most comprehensive commentary, noting that "redesigns take time to grow on you. This one, though, has the feel of aiming to please the design pros rather than Los Angeles newspaper readers." The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum agrees, blaming the "J-Consultant mafia" for homogenizing and dumbing down newspaper design across the country and making the Times look a lot like the Chicago Tribune.

JAmussen of L.A. Voice, calling the redesign "retro" and "focus grouped into banality," wonders why the money and effort spent on the changes didn't go to reporters. Fishbowl L.A.'s Kate Coe has some words for coming changes to the Sunday Calendar section. The Delicious Pundit thinks the paper is getting dumber in its quest to land on "every driveway in the Southland." Will Sullivan at Journerdism, for one, thinks the changes were overdue, saying about the old design, "I didn't know papers still layed out front pages like that."

Martini Republic, however, has better things to do:

While other entities were busy fawning over slight cosmetic changes to the front page of the Los Angeles Times [...] a couple of other papers and blogs this past weekend were busy documenting what’s going on in Los Angeles.

On Oct. 14, we ran an editorial criticizing the Motion Picture Association of America's movie-ratings system, arguing "the MPAA should work harder to make its system more precise and less arbitrary."

Legendary former MPAA head Jack Valenti was not pleased. His full rebuttal is here; below are two snippets:

I have been an avid reader and admirer of The LA Times for 40 years. I write you now to give you a brief résumé of the movie industry's voluntary film rating system. The facts of its birth, design and collide with your Oct. 14 editorial [...]

The rating system will be 38 years old on Nov. 1. Is it fair to say that nothing lasts that long in this brutal marketplace unless it is providing some kind of benefit to the people it aims to serve -- in this case, parents.

We are into Day Four of the L.A. Times' Manhattan Project (for background, see the links and especially comments at this post, and also this one). Commenter Gingerguy has divvied up the reader suggestions/diagnoses so far thusly:

8...liberal bias of the Times
7...improve the content
4...focus more on regional news
3...increase online vs print
?...could not figure out what they wanted
4...all other opinions

To further the discussion into the concrete, here's a tripartite question for the peanut gallery:
1) Name three features you think the paper should add.
2) Name three features you think the paper should kill.
3) Name three features you like just the way they are.

"Feature" can mean anything from Column One to a comic strip to a columnist to My Favorite Weekend, etc.

Meanwhile, here's the latest batch of reax to the not-so-top-secret plan to save the world Times:

The LA Weekly's Nikki Finke continues her enthusiasm for all things Dean Baquet:

So now there's yet another distraction. Seems a couple of those Baquet cultists went to him with an idea to find ways that the paper could reengage readers. Suddenly, the paper drops a bomb: there's a new emergency "Manhattan Project" overseen by some handpicked internal committee of reporters and editors. Sheesh, you couldn't make up stuff this hilarious. The very idea of the lunatics taking over the asylum, down to the ridiculous name that demonstrates yet again that the men who run the LA Times are forever NY-centric in their thinking, sadly. Do these people even know we're in one of the busiest news periods of the entire year? So while the Washington Post and The New York Times are scooping the LA Times on the biggest stories of the day, Spring Street will be wasting its diminishing resources senselessly contemplating its navel. The brass at Tribune Co. must be laughing their asses off: after all, the more time that the LAT worker bees busy themselves with this project, the less time they have to battle the Chicago bosses. The readership problem and its solution don't require rocket scientists, much less a trio of investigative journalists.

Media critic Matthew Sheffield gives some recommendations:

* Stop patronizing to your audience. You aren't better than them. That you know how to write or edit a story says nothing about your intellectual capacity.
* Recruit newer blood into the pages. Expand your employment search beyond the drones coming out of America's journalism schools. These kids have no experience with real life and no educational background beyond journalism. And for god's sake, hire some conservatives and libertarians.
* Put the kibosh on the left-wing bias. Stop with the immature photos of Republicans. Stop treating people who oppose abortion like they're the scum of the earth. Start realizing that most folks don't want higher taxes like you do.
* Expand your outreach to the reader. The regular American has a lot to say.

The blogger known as penraker looks at Saturday's Meghan Daum column in which she interviews a former member of the Weather Underground, and comments:

Maybe the Times would not need a "Manhattan Project" if their writers had anything more than the moral intuition of a gnat.

And a journalist calling himself "Gadfly" observes:

The seven-day daily has never been the same since the AP, Reuters and AFP began providing free online content. And that genie will never be put back in the bottle.

More fallout (get it?!) from the announcement yesterday that the newspaper you are reading has formed a curiously named blue-ribbon panel of executives and reporters to figure out what big ideas will bring readers back, instead of sending them screaming for the exits. Ex-Timesman (there sure are a lot of those!) Kevin Roderick offers some unusually (for him) lengthy criticism:

Why the editor at a struggling major property like the Los Angeles Times isn't already fluent on all of these issues — and why the business side hasn't already examined every possible revenue angle — are just two of the big questions raised by such an abrupt and public declaration of an emergency. [...]

I can't remember a single big newsroom committee that ever truly delivered the goods, even those I sat on, and this one has a tall order. Three reporters not noted for their media savvy or future vision — nothing personal, it's just not in their job descriptions or their resumes — are being asked to come up with solutions that elude even the most thoughtful media thinkers — essentially, the secret to saving newspapers. Good luck with that, guys. Perhaps a more useful idea would have been to convene a panel of Los Angeles thinkers, creative types and ordinary people and ask them how they want their news. Really ask them, and listen to the painful answers.

Which brings me to the effort's opening gaffe — using World War II imagery and calling it the Manhattan Project in the pages of the New York Times. Besides looking silly claiming an extreme level of urgency and commitment of high talent, it opens up the L.A. Times to mockery on so many levels.

Mack Reed (who used to work for ... the L.A. Times!) provides a five-point plan:

1. Walk away from Pulitzers for a year. Recall all the staffers you've given 6-8 months to cover long, thumb-sucking, big-splash award-bait and reassign them to investigating the biggest, hairiest story in L.A.'s five or six most complex neighborhoods. Give them three-week deadlines. Do this right, and you'll turn up Pulitzer fodder right in your own back yard and win new and dedicated readers.

2. Cover Hollywood for a change. Act like private investigators, not junket-riding critics. Dig for stories on the way money, influence and Machiavellian venom ruin people's lives. Write about the grinding machinery, about the PAs and grips and casting-couch pimps. Ignore the howls of the publicists you've coddled and kissed up to for so long. Screw "access." Cover the industry like it's the most important socio-economic engine in Los Angeles, not some faaabulous passing carnival that you're privileged to watch from the curb.

3. Shift at least two or three "national" correspondents back to Los Angeles Get them to work on covering social and personal issues in your own city as intensely as they've been covering minor personal tragedies in the Midwest or deep South. Everywhere you turn right now, you should be hearing how everyone is screaming, "COVER LOS ANGELES!" Listen to them.

Longtime newspaper online strategist Steve Yelvington:

I've only been to the Los Angeles Times once. It felt like a big, dark, cavernous chunk of the past, stranded in a strange new world. My experience was very odd. I was there to speak at an IFRA Newsplex "convergence road show" sponsored in part by the Times. I had just done a similar gig at Florida Today to a fairly packed room. But in Los Angeles, no one showed up. No one. Had they already figured out the future, and decided not to talk about it any more? Martha Stone and I sat around and chatted awhile, ate some Los Angeles Times pastries, drank some Los Angeles Times coffee, then left. I looked over some museum pieces in the lobby on my way out.

Most of my impressions of the Times were formed in my decades as an editor, and especially from the LAT-WP wire. It's long been a reporter's newspaper, a place where there was plenty of space and freedom and resources to go out and do serious, long-term, long-form journalism.

Such institutions are good for society. But it seems the Los Angeles Times today is "caught between two worlds" in many dimensions. It's not a failure (it is, in fact, making tons of money) but is being flogged by the investment marketplace. It is too big to be a local newspaper, but rather seems to be a regionally distributed national newspaper, which makes no sense at all. It is an artifact of the 20th century protruding uncomfortably into the 21st. [...]

In a general sense, I applaud any effort by a newsroom to critically examine the current media landscape and the relationship between reporting and audience; it certainly beats living by assumptions derived from a bygone era. But it seems likely that the effort will be all about preservation and not about creation.

So, having stated the obvious, where do I really land on this issue? What would I do with the Los Angeles Times? I sight, shake my head, and say I'm not sure. But I don't think it can sit forever between local and national. And I am reminded that the real Manhattan Project ended in blowing things up, and Oppenheimer quoting Hindu scripture: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

Local prosecutor Patrick "Patterico" Frey:

If I could give the paper only one piece of advice, it would be this: expand the web site. Open up every single story to comments and trackbacks, just like a blog post. For a paper that claims to be looking for ways to “re-engag[e]the reader,” this is a no-brainer.

The Web and interactivity are the future. Stop fighting it and embrace it.

Fishbowl LA's Kate Coe was initially sarcastic....

What a fantastic idea! Instead of having these guys go out and report the news that would drive readers to pick up the paper every morning, squirrel these guys away in a conference room and have them spend months wondering what they should be doing instead. Eventually, we hope, they'll get it.

... but then she suggested the paper start "a real gossip column," and declared herself "ready to serve."

Here's a little slice o' love that the Times' critics and readers have been dishing our way this past week, presented in (mostly) reverse chronological order:

Ken Reich: "Hezbollah Is Controlled by Syria and Iran, Regardless What L.A. Times Says."

Mickey Kaus:

Here's a question: Is [George] Skelton such a fool that he actually believed the Democrats would pass a redistricting reform once they'd defeated Schwarzenegger's? Or was he swayed by a not-so-subtle not-so-subconscious anti-Schwarzenegger bias--perhaps a desire to deny the governor a victory, or to see him humbled, or to please layoff-prone LAT bosses who might entertain those anti-Arnold impulses?

Hugh Hewitt: "For the agenda-'journalists' at the Times, if the Bush Adminsitration is blaming Syria and Iran, Syria and Iran must be blameless."

Mark, at NewsCorpse: "In his most recent op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldberg demonstrates again what a lousy trade the Times made when they picked up Goldberg in place of Robert Scheer."

Media Matters:

A Los Angeles Times article echoed the claim -- frequently advanced by conservatives -- that special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of then-CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity "concluded that the disclosure did not violate a federal law protecting the identity of covert operatives." In fact, Fitzgerald has stated that he was unable to determine whether any laws were violated in the leaking of Plame's identity because his investigation was impeded by former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, whom he charged with perjury and obstructing the grand jury investigation.

Patrick Frey:

I am especially interested in the parts [of an interview with Times Editor Dean Baquet] where he claims that what happened to [Michael] Hiltzik was in part a result of the paper’s failure to “push back” effectively (!). That is an odd statement that I hadn’t noticed in Luke [Ford]’s description. Also, he believes that part of the reason for the paper’s declining circulation is “cheap criticism” of the paper. (And he sounds plenty angry when he says it, too!)

This could be the real reason he won’t let me interview him after all: maybe he thinks my blog is an example of the “cheap criticism” that is costing him readers — and that cost him a business columnist. (He didn’t say any of this; I’m speculating here.)

Mary Katharine Ham: "LAT: Beyond Parody."

Rob McMillin:

The world hasn't been subjected to the incompetent typings of Times hack journo Bill Plaschke in over a month, and yet what do we read today but another inane hatchet job on the trade that brought one of the Dodgers' two best pitchers into town. As usual, it's riddled with easily verifiable errors and readily dismissed claims.

Joe McDonnell:

I know I said I wasn’t going to write…but my pal Bill Plaschke has lost his mind. His column on Brad Penny and Paul LoDuca was loony. Would you trade a 34 year old catcher who fades in the second half of every season for a 28 year old ace who throws nearly 100 MPH? I didn’t think so…..

Ernest, at Dodgers Blue Heaven: "Plaschke... You Ding Bat."

Paul Horwitz:

[Erin Aubry] Kaplan writes that these regulations send the message that "[i]f blacks want to have a chance in the increasingly unforgiving corporate world, they will have to shave off their rough edges -- starting with their hair." I suspect she's wrong to say that the corporate world is increasingly unforgiving, especially on questions of appearance. She does raise a valid point about the effects of appearance norms. But does the fact that the regulations she cites (aside from the egregious example of the Louisiana sheriff) come from black institutions complicate the picture?

Jacob Weisberg:

[L]et me depart from the liberal consensus and argue that the New York Times, while acting in good faith, made the wrong call by printing the SWIFT story. Editors there and at the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal who also had pieces of the scoop should have waited to publish it, at least until they could be more certain that the snooping program was no longer useful.

Gal Beckerman:

The unfortunate bit about this episode is that there is actually an interesting and crucial conversation to be had over this issue - one that [New York Times Editor Bill] Keller himself, along with his Los Angeles Times counterpart, Dean Baquet, tried to initiate last week, and one that was then picked up by a number of prominent journalism school deans, writing by committee on the Washington Post's op-ed page.

But how is Keller, or anyone, supposed to have a reasoned debate when your opponent on the other side is producing little more than spittle and bile?

Hugh Hewitt, interviewing Times op-ed columnist Jonathan Chait:

HH: He's really sort of the superego of the Los Angeles Times, in my view, sort of the uber-columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Jonathan…

JC: What an odd position for me to have attained, despite never having set foot in their newsroom.

HH: I know. That's why it's such an interesting newspaper. They've totally absorbed you without you even having been there.

Hugh Hewitt:

An examination of the leadership lineage of the four major dailies that are widely and correctly understood to be very left of center in this country –the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times—reveals that much of the dysfunction of these newsrooms may fairly be traced to inbreeding among their elites.

The cloistered word of big papers breeds its own peculiar type of leader, always selected from within the world of the big papers, always carrying forward to the top the same assumptions of importance and privilege, the same world view and indeed the same unusual combination of arrogance and limited experience that defines big journalism.

Ken Reich: "Sonni Efron's Basayev Column On LAT Op-Ed Page A Masterpiece."

Hugh Hewitt:

When the death scene of Bombay --and London, Madrid, Beslan, Jerusalem, Egypt,Jordan, Bali etc-- is recreated here, then will people look back at the recklessness of Bill Keller, Dean Baquet and other Bush-hating hyper-partisans and demand an accounting.

It may take a decade, or a generation, or even longer, but if these papers survive (and there is great doubt on that score at least as regards the Los Angeles Times) a day will come when their editors issue an apology for the fecklessness. It will be too late for some future victims, but like Walter Duranty, Keller and Baquet will eventually be discredited and their papers shamed.

Kent, of RightFromLeft: "Bill Keller and Dean Baquet have failed miserably to do their jobs."

David Limbaugh:

[T]heir previous good deeds do nothing to undo the damage they deliberately inflicted on the national interest and American lives by exposing details of a live-saving program. A first-time murderer is still a murderer. His formerly pristine record will not make his victim any less dead.

Remember, you can comment on the editor's note here, or in the comments below.

Some preliminary blogosphere reactions to Baquet's column:

* Former Times staffer Ken Reich at Take Back the Times says: "For me the bottom line is that the press, on its side, should go back to its World War II policies and, fundamentally, side with the war effort."

* Armed Liberal at windsofchange.net says: "By the standard Baquet holds up here, any and all surveillance programs are up for disclosure, no matter how legal or effective - simply because the controversy exists. I guess I'd like to know where Baquet draws the line."

* Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt: "Only a fool would believe [that the LAT is not out to get the president] given the Los Angeles Times' endless and almost unbroken war on the war over the past three years. And if Baquet believes it, he's completely out of touch with his paper's staff and their agenda journalism."

* Don Surber says Baquet gave a "reasonable explanation": "At least [the] LAT recognizes that there is an enemy."

* Nathan Goulding at the National Review's Media Blog: "It surprises me greatly that the L.A. Times considers itself to be the best judge of both 'legitimate public interest' as well as the 'cost to counterterrorism efforts.' Herein lies the arrogance."

* Patrick Frey at Patterico's Pontifications: "Baquet fails to offer any compelling justification for eviscerating this legal and successful counterterrorism program. And Baquet fails to recognize that his decision was made on the basis of woefully inadequate information."

* Political Fan writes: "The LA Times views the 'potential' abusive power of the Bush administration to be greater than that of the terrorists."

* Blue Crab Boulevard writes: "Nowhere in my well-thumbed copy of [the constitution] do I see any mention of the press having an oversight role on the government."

* Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly's Political Animal: "Can anyone think of a serious case in the past few decades of a newspaper withholding an entire story like this simply because the government asked them to?"

* Ron Chusid of the Democratic Daily summarizes blogger reaction to the publication of the story: "While it is impossible to survery all the blogs, I found that generally the centrist blogs and those which describe themselves as 'moderate Republicans' were supportive of the newspapers, while the far right continued their authoritarian streak. "

On Saturday, The Times editorialized that the unusually high levels of fraud in the wake of Katrina were not unexpected, and that cutting back immediate aid in the future was a bad idea. Not everyone agreed. Some samples from across the blogosphere:

* Seth at Standing Up For Nothing says, "FEMA did the virtuous thing poorly, while scores of Katrina victims did the immoral thing excellently, and we can criticize FEMA but not the thieves?"

* Kirk at Just My Opinion writes, "what exactly are these people a 'victim' of in this particular context?"

* David Markland at Metroblogging Los Angeles says, "I certainly would have thought twice had I known where some of this money would have gone. Maybe, at the very least, I'd have given 16% less."

* Scott at Environmental Republican writes, "Let's imagine if FEMA had put serious restrictions on the program and busted people using the funds for non-emergency needs, don't you think the Times would've been blasting the agency for not being compassionate?"

* Politickchick says, "Yeah, that really makes a whole lot of sense, considering the people using the money fraudulently weren't exactly victims."

* Old Soldier at My Republican Blog writes, "Hurricane victims (and others) who defrauded FEMA became criminal perpetrators and FEMA became a victim. So, the unknown editor is correct in that the 'victim' should not be blamed; but in this case the victim is FEMA, not the perpetrators of criminal fraud."

* Laura at Laura's Miscellanious Musings says, "Darn straight I'll blame the victim and be shocked, when my own hard-earned income is taken by the government and then passed on to others to be spent on sex change operations, porn movies, and divorce fees, not to mention season football tickets and tropical vacations."

* McQ at the QandO Blog writes, "They are crooks. And the LA Times should know better than to try to cast crooks as 'victims.'"

* Brendan Loy at The Irish Trojan's Blog says, "When people wilfully abuse a system that is designed to help them get the essentials that they need, OF COURSE they should be blamed!"

* Mark Epstein at The Ultimate Truth writes, "Contrary to the editorial mindset at the LA Times, it is FEMA’s responsibility to obsess over the spending habits of more than 16,000 people; 16,000 people who engaged in deliberate defrauding of the American taxpayer."

* Right Thinking Girl says, "It was basically a little bit of bad weather and it sent the whole country into a tailspin [...] the money was wasted the instant it was given to those people."

* Michael at In Defense of America writes, "I swear, the more I hear about NOLA the less I want to rebuild it, and the more I want to cut these leeches off."

We have one defender of The Times' position: Christopher Wavrin at commentarypage.com:

Considering the spending habits of Americans, I'd say if 84 percent of the people spend their money wisely, then that's pretty good.

Similarly, Chris Martel at Metroblogging New Orleans also agrees that misuse of money was inevitable:

You know what I spent my FEMA money on? A laptop, booze, eating out, music, seersucker suits, etc. Luxuries. Friends spent it on flying V guitars, drugs, etc. Note that I did not ask FEMA for $2,000, nor did I ask for the subsequent $2,300 in rental assistance. In fact, I was living rent free and still being paid by my employer the entire time, but they still put the cash directly into my bank account.

The Times drew some fire and praise over the weekend for its coverage of the military and corrupt Las Vegas judges. In Current, Marine dad Frank Schaeffer bashed the paper for not giving war heroes an A-1 parade. According to Schaeffer:

I haven't seen one recent story dedicated to the heroism of our troops given such consistent prominence in The Times or other leading papers. Nor have I read a front-page headline about a military medal ceremony and the story behind it, although every year I see front-page treatment in The Times of who wins the Oscars.

Meanwhile, the Times’ "Juice vs. Justice" series on judges in Las Vegas (Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) has been generating controversy.

Our paper’s own Las Vegas blog details the reaction from the tight-knit Las Vegas legal community. The Las Vegas Sun reports that the selection of judges in Vegas may be overhauled. And Sun columnist Jon Ralston expresses the city’s profound shame:

I'm embarrassed. For the local judicial system. For the valley's media. And for Southern Nevada.

It took an out-of-state newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, to publish one of the most devastating pieces about Las Vegas that we have seen in many years [....]

While Ralston praises Times for devoting resources to the Las Vegas investigation Cal State Fullerton's Jeffrey Brody criticizes The Times for just that (via LA Observed). Brody writes:

A newspaper that has its core business in Southern California, and is losing circulation, needs to pay attention to the communities in its own backyard. Study after study stresses the importance of local news. The Times has many skilled journalists who could do a great job in Southern California. Better to focus on prize-winning reporting in your circulation area than risk losing more readers and face a sale to a media company that will diminish the quality of the institution.

But local blogger Brady Westwater defends the series:

First, Las Vegas is in the LAT's market. Second, Las Vegas is to a certain extent a suburb of Los Angeles since LA supplies the largest number of its visitors, many of its second home buyers and a lot of now full time residents who are still interested in Los Angeles.

Most importantly, though, many of the people most affected by the crooked judges in Nevada are Los Angeles business people and visitors to Vegas.

Today's criticism/praise of the L.A. Times....

* Downtown civic activist Brady Westwater rips apart the factual descriptions in an article on Eastside politics, and then gives a big are you kidding me? to this post-march account's assertion that in downtown L.A., "seldom is anyone seen walking."

* Patrick "Patterico" Frey is puzzled by the paper's public explanation of l'affaire Hiltzik:

Other than the brief Editor's Note from the other day, no story on this issue has appeared in the L.A. Times. Nothing has appeared to explain the background of how Hiltzik’s pseudonyms came to light.

This means that the very readers who are going to lose his column are also the people who are most left in the dark as to why.

* Contra Patterico is "scribes" over at Martini Republic, who excerpts some anti-illegal immigrant comments from Frey, and then questions

the ethics of a guy spouting about the nuisance of undocumented citizens while working on the County nickel

* Rabble-rouser Bob Morris gives kudos to today's May Day roundup:

The L.A. Times has excellent coverage this morning. They’d seemed somewhat opposed to the marches during the buildup, however today they have comprehensive reporting.

* TakeBackTheTimes blogger Ken Reich offers these roses (complete with thorns) to the Opinion Section's leadership:

The article in the L.A. Times' Current section Sunday recounting a visit to Cuba by Times editorial page editor Andres Martinez was well worth reading and marks the steady improvement of Current under the deputy editorial page editor, Michael Newman.

Martinez, whose bland editorials continue for the most part, had an incisive report on Cuba in a state of waiting, waiting for Fidel Castro to die and wondering what will happen to the Communist system when he does go. [...]

This article again confirms my impression that Martinez writes better articles and columns than he does editorials.

More at the link dissecting the Opinion Section. Point of clarification -- Current is under the stewardship of Nicholas Goldberg, not Newman.

* It's neither precisely criticism or praise, but Media Bistro's FishbowlLA has a daily feature called LAT in 90 Seconds that's usually worth the minute-and-a-half.