The Fake Angeleno

Fake Angeleno to Sam Zell: "I Told You So."

This blog turns one year old tomorrow.  In anticipation of a birthday celebration, I'm looking back on some classic posts.  (Read: I'm too busy at work to come up with anything original.)

Given the Tribune Co.'s recent bankruptcy filing and the generally awful state of the economy, I thought now is as good a time as any to say "I told you so."

Wrote the Fake Angeleno back on March 20, 2008:  "You can imagine my surprise this morning when, at bottom right on the front page of the L.A. Times I found this story: Why This Downturn Doesn't Portend Another Recession  Is that a fact?  How can we know with certainty?  To me, it looks an awful lot like an opinion piece  has cracked the front page of the Times.

I hope you'll re-enjoy  Memo To Sam Zell: What's With The Opinion Piece Masquerading as News on the Front Page of the L.A. Times Today?

Fake Media Criticism: LAT's Big Investigative Story This Week a Puzzler

I'm all for long-form investigative journalism, but this L.A. Times three-part series on a lawyer's semi-secret marriage to an incarcerated leader of the Aryan Brotherhood gang strikes me as a bit of a head scratcher.  With everything else going on in the U.S., was this story really worth 10,000 words, front page real estate, and three days worth of ink over the course of a week?

I understand the lawyer has worked hard to free her husband, but if the paper wanted to dig into a broken correctional system, it seems to me there ought to be dozens of stories with more substance...   

Special ALOUD on the State of the LAT Scheduled Thursday

Lots of heavy hitters will gather at the Central Library Thursday evening for an impromptu chat about the state of the local paper.  The main talking point is provocative indeed: Los Angeles without the Los Angeles Times? The event is already sold out, but stand-by tickets might be available.  If recent events are any indication, the discussion is sure to *spirited.*  Details below:

On Thursday, Aug. 14, the Aloud speaker series at the Central Library will host a special program on the state and future of the Los Angeles Times. Louise Steinman, who curates Aloud, said she put the discussion, "Los Angeles Without the Los Angeles Times?" together so that the community can discuss what the staff cutbacks and other changes at the Downtown Los Angeles-based publication mean beyond the physical paper itself. "What will this mean to our community and to a vigorous democracy when we don't have an adequate press response?" she asked. The 7 p.m. event will be moderated by Kit Rachlis, editor-in-chief of Los Angeles Magazine. Panelists include Geneva Overholser, director of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism; Robin Kramer, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's chief of staff; attorney George Kieffer; former Times Executive Editor Joel Sappell; and blogger Brady Westwater. David Lauter, an editor at the L.A. Times, will also participate. Although reservations for the event are booked, Steinman said some people who show up early may be able to get standby tickets. Others will be able to listen to an audio feed of the event. Later, the discussion will be broadcast on KCRW and it will be available as a podcast at aloudla.org.

LINK: [ALOUD Community Forum and Panel Discussion: Los Angeles Without the Los Angeles Times? ]

LAT's Southern California Songbook Promo (Rabbit Hole)

In what's probably a worldwide first in web marketing history, an ad in a newspaper actually drove me to the newspaper's website yesterday.   The LAT ran a little "On latimes.com" promo in the calendar section yesterday featuring a small photo of Randy Newman and this copy:

Such a lovely place...  It's L.A. and as Randy Newman sang, "We love it!" We even love to sing about it. Geoff Boucher's Southern California Songbook, at latimes.com/entertainment, chronicles the history of music about our town by the Eagles, Celine Dion, System of a Down, Bad Religion, Rickie Lee Jones and others -- including, of course, Newman. 

Excellent work, 22 year old intern!  Your tossed off cleverness and very-wide-net selection of artists has induced, me, the print-edition-reading rube, to log onto the internet and "engage."  But when I get to the latimes.com website, navigation to Boucher's songbook selections is nowhere to be found.  I'm now so hurt and confused that I could be in the middle of a Celine Dion ditty called "My Bad User Experience Will Go On."

Hey, at least they have a gallery of Miley-Cyrus-inspired notorious nymphets throughout recent history.   Well done, interactive team!  You even had the good taste to include the "Rock the Cradle of Love" video girl at number 7.  Now that was the nymphet of the early '90s.  (Who, by the way, is now a mom and a school teacher in suburban Atlanta.  No tragic Dolores Haze, she.)

Finally, shaking off the distraction of the nymphets gallery, I spend five minutes trying to find the SoCAL song gallery.  I finally get there by searching for "Boucher" and clicking through a couple times. 

The SoCal songbook is actually a great page.  It looks like Boucher's been taxonomizing an L.A. song every month since summer 2006.  He's got essays on Bing Crosby singing "San Fernando Valley," Burt Bacharach on the "Pacific Coast Highway," The Flying Burrito Brothers, Loudon Wainwright, Warren Zevon, Frank Black, The Decemberists, The Handsome Furs ... but not (yet, anyways) Barry White. 

My only complaint is that the paper hasn't gone the extra mile to license each song so I can listen along while I'm reading Boucher's piece.  At any rate, when I set out to create my L.A. '08 mix tape later this year, Boucher's handiwork will provide me with one-stop shopping...

LINK: [Geoff Boucher's SoCal Songbook]

 

Memo To Sam Zell: What's With The Opinion Piece Masquerading as News on the Front Page of the L.A. Times Today?

To: Sam Zell -- Charirman/CEO, Tribune Co.

From: The Fake Angeleno -- Blogosphere Crackpot

Dear Mr Zell:

It was my pleasure to hear you speak last month at the Hammer Museum.  I'd never seen a real, live plutocrat in person, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by your no-nonsense style of delivering intelligent observations and opinions.  Also: your sense of humor was completely disarming.  Amongst the many strongly held opinions you shared that night, there were two that really stood out to me:

1.  You maintained the current turbulence in the credit markets is a temporarily painful sorting out process, and that all the other bad economic indications reported lately do not point to a fundamentally weak economy.  Your basic point was this: Despite loads of political and media rhetoric to the contrary, the economy will be fine and it remains to be seen if we are even in recession. (PS: I hope you're right.) 

2.  You feel there is too much opinion seeping into newspaper journalism.  You maintain that the news and the editorial sections of a paper should be kept strictly separated.  You said very clearly: A newspaper's main job is to report the facts.    

So you can imagine my surprise this morning when, at bottom right on the front page of the L.A. Times I found this story: Why This Downturn Doesn't Portend Another Recession  Is that a fact?  How can we know with certainty?  To me, it looks an awful lot like an opinion piece  has cracked the front page of the Times. 

I also was disappointed the story quotes only three primary sources, none of whom break any news.  Ironically, the first quote from an original source is pure (albeit expert) opinion:

I've been asked many times whether we will have another Great Depression," said David M. Kennedy, a Stanford University history professor and the author of "Freedom From Fear," a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Depression and World War II. "My standard answer is that we won't have that one again -- I'd be surprised to have one of that seriousness and duration. But that doesn't mean we wouldn't have a catastrophe we haven't seen before."

I don't want to "Fisk" this article any further because I don't have time, but I will mention one more point.  I was shocked, shocked to see that the article was continued after the jump under the subhead Policy Profits From Lessons of The Past.

Some people would beg to disagree.  In fact, David Frum's opinion piece on Marketplace yesterday disagrees in pretty strong terms.  You can read it here: Forgetful Fed Repeats Errors of Past.

My goodness, Mr. Zell!  You've got me hot and bothered enough to link to David frumming Frum on my personal blog.  That's a first. 

I'll close with a question: Do you plan to send a memo to the editor responsible for the placement of this story?  And will this note be to let him/her know you heartily agree with him/her that no depression is on the way?  Or will the memo state your strong condemnation of running an opinion piece on the front page?  If you're the kind of guy I think you are, I suspect you'll mention both...

Sincerely,

The Fake Angeleno    

P.S. Since this is the blogosphere, I might has well take a gratuitous and most-likely-unfair pot shot at the writer of the article, Michael Hiltzik, and ask if he bears any resemblance to The Wire's Scott Templeton?  You know: the ambitious guy that curried favor with the big bosses by writing exactly what they wanted to see?  Wow, maybe he does.

Dept. of "Didn't They just Do This A Year Ago?"

From the New York Times:

The top editor of The Los Angeles Times has been forced out for resisting newsroom budget cuts, executives at the paper said Sunday, marking the fourth time in less than three years that the highest-ranking editor or the publisher has left for that reason.

It's a real shame the Tribune Co., which now owns the L.A.T., has seemed committed to starving the paper of resources after a 2000 takeover.

The relationship between the Los Angeles and Chicago offices has been troubled for much of the time since then. Chicago has demanded cost savings and higher profit — officials at The Times say the paper still makes a healthy profit, despite its troubles — and the view in Los Angeles has been that the new owners are slowly killing an asset they neither value nor understand.

The L.A.T. is/was a great paper, and it'd be a shame to see it decline because of staffing reductions and loss of morale and top talent.  Between this sad situation and Rupert Murdoch's takeover of the Wall Street Journal, we could soon have only two great daily papers left in the country.