Pajama Time(s)
Pajamas Media is pooling together all of the info coming out of the L.A. Times bloodbath.
I want to draw particular attention to the searing piece done by former Times Books Review Editor Steve Wasserman over at Truthdig.com (where I will soon be contributing a piece on Hugo Chavez). Says Wasserman of the uneasy relationship between the Chicago-based Tribune Co. and the Times:
...There is a strong feeling within the newsroom at the Los Angeles Times that its Chicago masters regard Los Angeles as an alien planet whose denizens are made of different DNA. Chicago’s faint and unenthusiastic recognition of the 13 Pulitzers the paper was awarded during the five years that John Carroll was its editor is a wound that refuses to heal. It’s almost as if Mars had conquered Jupiter but somehow, much to the Martians’ bafflement, Jupiter still exercises a larger gravitational pull and looms still brighter in the heavens above. More than one high official of the paper has remarked on the odd but palpable admixture of resentment and envy the paper’s Midwestern owners evince when they are in the presence of their West Coast underlings...
...After all, the men who control the paper’s fiscal destiny have never shown any particular commitment to Los Angeles, regarding it with all the unbridled avariciousness and ill-concealed contempt that Cortez displayed toward Montezuma and his benighted Aztecs. As a former high official of the paper recently told me, “You’ve no idea how fast these folks are strip-mining the place. They’ve already carted away millions of dollars. Their efforts to attract advertising and grow the business have come to nothing. They’re Midwestern white men obsessed with only two things: the Chicago Cubs and accounting. They care nothing for journalism. They are Philistines.”
Ouch!
November 29th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
It’s funny…I was just about to put up a comment on the last thread that Scheer had launched his new “truthdig” webmag and it looks pretty good. Glad to hear that you’ll be a contributor. The quote Wasserman relays is devastating, although I find it more than a bit disingenuous for, presumably, an LA white man (”former high Times official”) to suggest that Midwestern white men are inherently more cannibalistic than most of his local peers - particularly the Hollywood variety. I guess I don’t see much difference between guys who are obsessed with their tan and accounting vs. guys who are obsessed with the Cubs and accounting, but then I don’t know a damn thing about accounting or the Cubs and, like most of us Northern California provinicials, I don’t have a tan. Maybe there’s a baseball nut accountant from, say, sunny Atlanta who could speak to the finer points. Or, more likely, attack the subject with a chain saw…
November 29th, 2005 at 8:33 pm
By the way - while this compilation from Open Pajamas(TMavis - who it turns out, shades of The Crying Game, is a “dude” I learned on another thread earlier today) is the best thing I’ve seen there so far - what’s with the Hugh Hefner outfit as their new logo. Those aren’t Pajamas, Open or otherwise…that’s either a bathrobe or a smoking jacket.
November 30th, 2005 at 12:18 am
I didn’t know Wasserman left the Times.
Ah, that sucks. He built the LA Times Book Fest into the best literary fest in the goddam country. In LA of all places! 100,000 for a book fest. No wonder the Book Review section has seemed a bit stale.
Well these phillistines certainly will ruin the festival. No doubt about that.
November 30th, 2005 at 1:08 am
Josh.. Steve left some months ago after a turbulent period with the poo-bahs. He’s now an agent.
November 30th, 2005 at 8:29 am
They’re Midwestern white men obsessed with only two things: the Chicago Cubs and accounting.
White guys who like baseball and accounting…. You better listen to them.
I explained the business rationale for the changes to the LA Times in another thread. Most of you are obsessed with the quality of the reporting (especially if it’s left wing) rather than profits to the shareholders–which is what drives the business. The two can only be connected if the quality results in lower sales and profit. We’ll see if that happens or if these white baseball loving accountants know more than you think.
November 30th, 2005 at 9:19 am
Yes it’s the business of right wing ideology. That’s the direction. Patterico will be giddy.
November 30th, 2005 at 10:58 am
“I explained the business rationale for the changes to the LA Times in another thread.”
Thanks for letting us liberal naifs in on the profit motive, Woody. However there’s a difference between short term accounting strategies and successful, long-term business strategies. Ask Ken Lay about this.
I don’t have a plan to save the Times, but your assumption that you’ve disclosed other than the patently obvious regarding the Times on these threads is a bit much. Strip mining businesses that require some sense of loyalty and customer satisfaction - as opposed to the dissatisfaction with the looming new product that has been discussed here - generally is a lousy business strategy. The Oakland Tribune was successfully folded into a “newspaper group” of near-identical advertising rags serving various outlying East Bay burgs, but I have a nasty feeling Los Angeles isn’t going to fall for something akin to that. But then, I’m not in the newspaper business.
Anyway the only point worth considering as regards a fairly important newspaper which the region it serves sees as one of it’s essential institutions (insert “baseball team” here if you need an analogy) is that it’s turning to shit as a newspaper, not whether shareholders’ short-term profit horizons are more than capable of driving businesses into the ditch. That’s long been one of the banes of U.S. corporate practice and the really good companies that survive over the long term, grow customer loyalty, create real value and learn to innovate have generally had to fight the short-term impulse to goose quarterlies for the stock analysts. It’s called entrepeneurial leadership vs. strategies aimed purely at accrual and without it the system - or a particular business - stagnates. A counter-generalization, but one that attempts to move the discussion beyond the obvious banalities about profits and shareholders. Frankly I find it bizarre that you would suggest that the issue of quality wouldn’t be key to the success of any product over the long term, be it journalism or automobiles. Certainly we can discuss what “quality” means in terms of customer satisfaction (was “Friends” the highest quality show on TV? ), but from what I read here the Times is in the process of alienating a very vocal and discerning segment of the people who actually give a goddam about what’s in their newspaper. That doesn’t seem like an auspicious beginning. Maybe it’s all smoke in your view because Marc and the rest are just a bunch of liberal whiners - but I would suggest that even assuming you want to treat them dismissively, based on what I read in your own comments about the Left Coast, etc., to alienate that particular demographic in these parts would appear to be a rather large mistake.
November 30th, 2005 at 11:15 am
If a steak house became a McDonald’s, it would lower the quality of its product but could increase it profits. But, I’m not too sure that the quality of the L.A. Times is being lowered if the paper makes a transition from being a voice of the radical left and becomes a communication tool that a broader and more conservative segment of society will appreciate and support. The left definitely makes a lot of noise, but maybe (and likely) there is a greater “silent majority.”
November 30th, 2005 at 11:21 am
Perhaps the business model of The Washington Times, the flagship of conservative print media, is instructive in terms of serving the needs of the greater “silent majority”. Get a fascist, foreign nutcase to bankroll the operation, continue to lose money hand over fist, but use profits from stuff like arms deals with North Korea to keep the right-wing propaganda machine rolling.
November 30th, 2005 at 11:28 am
I mean if LAT is really the liberal rag some claim why would they do this to the loyal audience? It’s absurd on its face. The silent majority of LA is conservative? Au contraire, the majority are not. The majority of Orange County are.
November 30th, 2005 at 1:54 pm
“If a steak house became a McDonald’s, it would lower the quality of its product but could increase it profits.”
Would it be too harsh to suggest that this steak house had, in fact, gone out of business ?
November 30th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
Where’s the beef?
November 30th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
The LA Times is the voice of the radical left! Good one, Woody. I’m not gonna let that one bother me since I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason you wrote it.
December 1st, 2005 at 6:59 pm
I worked with the Tribune Co. when it invested in a major online company, and they were never shy about seeking a return on that investment.
What is surprising is that never through-out the recent New Yorker piece on the LAT/Tribune dust-up are the phrases ‘paper of record’ or ‘getting out in front of the issues’ mentioned…by EITHER side, the LAT editorial folks, nor the Tribune ’suits.’
Which isn’t really surprising, all the traffic, sprawl, pollution, a transit map that looks like a child’s stick drawing — all of it happened on the Times’ watch. L.A. remains the only major North American - and we can include Mexico City in this - which doesn’t have a direct rail connection to its rail transit system. SF and NYC jumped on board within the last five years, and Vancouver’s is in the works.
L.A.? Um, maybe a ‘people-mover.’
The L.A. Times DC bureau must love the free food at GOP cocktail parties, because Bush’s words are reprinted verbatim, with nary a contextual discussion of the biggest concern the Administration has: winning the 2006 elections in Congress. That was and is there only concern - winning elections, making their friends wealthy. The Times continues to report to be unable to step back from the ‘bubble’ of SoCal to report truly deconstructive, de-mystifying, incisive stories out about the region.
The L.A. Times is a center-right, above-average paper, which is running terribly scared of television coverage, radio coverage, the Internet and now the Tribune, but can’t seem to find the internal strength to take a fresh look at its political coverage. Feature-wise, the paper is one of the strongest in the country, so it’s doubly-sad for its readers that they can’t translate that into truly good coverage of the issues that face SoCal from top to bottom. Notice that the desperately needed ‘boroughs’ discussion has disappeared…the Times is totally unable to mediate public discussion, nor lead it, via its coverage - the mark of a truly great paper.
Sad.
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