Any truth to rumors that LA Times is slowly filling jobs with Republicans?

[David Zephyr]

I heard that even staff positions are slowly being filled with conservatives. Anyone else heard this? Any truth to it?

[bananas]

1. Where did you hear the rumors?

Robert Scheer talked about it over the phone with Amy Goodman yesterday.
What does "shroodled" mean? Is that a real word?

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/14/1447244

<snip>
The Los Angeles Times is being shroodled by -- its owners are laying off 70 people this week. They’re just gonna -- John Carroll, the distinguished editor of that paper, left because he said they are just going to pillage the paper. He won 13 Pulitzer Prizes in recent years for the Los Angeles Times, and he clearly – it was discussed by Ken Auletta in The New Yorker -- left because he said these people don't care about journalism. These people are just going to suck what they can out of the property.
<snip>

[David Zephyr]

2. Someone within LAT had told me this several weeks back.

I don't want to jepordize anyone there, but I greatly appreciate your sharing with me the link to the Scheer interview. I guess it is true, after all.

I wish I could say more, but just can't.

The paper is trying to incrementalize a more conservative tone. I saw that Ramirez' cartoon was still in the paper this morning.

It's not just Scheer, though. It's throughout from what I heard.

[bananas]

6. Some articles from early October

The quote i gave mentioned an article by Ken Auletta in the New Yorker.
If you need some cover, you can say you read about it online:

This E&P article is dated Oct 3
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001221102

Here's an article dated Oct 2
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2005/10/auletta_piece_on_times_la_1.html

You can download a pdf of Auletta's article here
http://www.referencetone.com/2005/10/new-yorkers-los-angeles-times-story.html

[bananas]

7. Wall Street Journal - Oct 3

This article
http://www.editorsweblog.org/print_newspapers/2005/10/los_angeles_times_how_and_why_the_editor.php
links to this free Wall Street Journal article
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB112830208746958155-3bSMjiI_EfyMtPDHvmC7W4BOZIw_20061003.html

[David Zephyr]

8. Thank you, bananas!

The LA Times is morphing into a rightwing rag right in front of our eyes. It's more than just what a friend had told me. This is sickening.

[katty]

3. yup, people are being fired/leaving, Jeff Johnson at Trib Co

is rightwinger-they bought Times Mirror.

[David Zephyr]

4. Well, I was suspicious when the Tribune bought the paper, but...

a systematic replacement of employees is a whole new ball of wax.

I wish there was someone else here who either works at the LAT or knows someone there that I could communicate with. What I heard was alarming.

[cascadiance]

5. When you see what's been happening lately to Knight Ridder...

with the threats to buy it out with it's biggest RW investor threatening to facilitate a hostile takeover, in efforts to shut down their administration-critical Washington Bureau, you really wonder if there's a big campaign to take over the media in moreso now than they already are at this point.

Perhaps this is why publishers are treading lightly at trying to get any real journalism done, knowing that they have to use their silver bullets wisely, if more of this sort of "takeover" activity is going to target them sooner if they "try anything".

Keep in mind that one of the "alternatives" to the L.A. Times listed here is the San Jose Mercury News, who is also owned by the now threatened Knight Ridder. The San Diego Union Tribune is also in the Real Cities (Knight Ridder) network.

Truely scary times we live in!

[David Zephyr]

9. We are really entering a black out with regards to news in the U.S.

It is "scary", calipendence. I love the San Jose Mercury News. Remember when they wrote the entire series on the Iran/Contra cocaine selling in the streets of U.S. cities? Do you live out here, too?

[cascadiance]

11. I was working at KR up until the time I left after the dotcom bomb...

I could no longer afford to live there with the rising rents with tenants getting kicked out to raise rents 40%, etc. and moved down to San Diego then.

There are some good people at Knight Ridder, though it runs in a more "decentralized" fashion, where different VP's around the country that manage their different newspaper properties have more direct control over their operations. We tried to centralize their web content a bit while I was there, but it looks to still have very much of a local flavor every place to it.

I think that sort of decentralized control allowed their Washington Bureau to work more independently than they would within other media companies, which is why they got a lot of good stories out on Bushco, and also probably why the right wing folks are going after them now. I remember it being started up right before I left, and they were wanting to start building in pieces onto some of the pages I was putting in place. I built the shared election web page that most KR papers' web sites used for the 2000 election, which we had to "sit through" painfully that night it happened there. I think the Washington Bureau had a section they started to populate with some articles then.

[PatGund]

24. I dunno...

I'm not sure the San Diego Union-Tribune could *GET* anymore right wing.

Besides, it's not a Knight-Ridder paper, it's Copley Press

[cascadiance]

26. It's not Knight Ridder, but it is in their directory network...

If you look at their web site, you'll see the 'Real Cities" logo at the bottom of the page... They use Knight Ridder's Real Cities directory search engine for a lot of searching lookups, amongst other things. So directly, a Knight Ridder buyout won't affect them, but indirectly it would.

[99Pancakes]

10. Don't even get me started!!

I read the article in The New Yorker magazine(referenced in this thread) about the Chicago group taking over the LA Times. It was very detailed and quite revealing. The article was written by Ken Auletta and is entitled, "Fault Line: Can the Los Angeles Times survive its owners?" The issue is Oct. 10, 2005

My husband and I go to Pasadena 6 or more times each year. We used to pick up an LA Times on Sunday and read it over breakfast. In future visits, I refuse to buy that smut any more! During Ahhnuld's Not So Special Election, they endorsed ALL OF HIS PROPS AND 78, saying NO to 79 and 80 (which, as you know, were the "Left's" props). I wrote them several stinging letters and expressed my shock, then anger, then refusal to purchase their paper. Sounds to me like they are indeed turning into The Orange County Times. It's thoroughly disgusting!

The good news is, the LA Weekly is very progressive. A measure of that was their endorsements for the Nov 8th Election: NO on the first six and YES on the last two. Their articles are satisfyingly liberal as well. This paper has replaced that crappy LA Times.

[cascadiance]

12. I think change will only happen if enough people boycott them...

I encourage all who subscribe to drop them. Just wish there was a daily here that isn't right wing.

Union Tribune and NC Times here in the San Diego area also lean right a lot too. Union Tribune less so, but still enough that it hurts. One of their ex-columnists also complained about censorship in one of his newer columns in the Voice of San Diego.

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/site/apps/s/content.asp?c=euLTJbMUKvH&b=291837&ct=1500057

What would be cool is if web sites like Voice of San Diego and other more progressive minded sites in L.A. could team up together to put out a daily publication to compete somehow with these monsters. Stay privately owned by people that won't let the RW take over controlling interest too, so that we still have alternative viewpoints that we can read about while riding busses, etc.

Here's some other media buyouts, selloffs, etc. that are going on. Seems like a lot of stuff going on under the covers. I wonder what the real agenda that is going here might be...

http://www.benton.org/index.php?q=node/560
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=35767
http://www.mickeynews.com/News/DisplayPressRelease.asp_Q_id_E_10265Radio

Keep in mind that the liberal talk radio station of the west coast, KGO, is owned by ABC Radio, which appears to also be on the sales block by Disney. Could affect things like availability of talk show hosts like Bernie Ward and Ray Taliafierro.

[99Pancakes]

13. Newspapers are sinking

What's on the rise is Internet news. Research shows 18-35 yr olds get most of their news on-line now. This is good, because all of our reliable Leftist/Liberal/Progressive news comes via the Internet (Common Dreams, AlterNet, Michael Moore etc. etc. etc.)So who needs these RW papers? Ha! They'll never brainwash us. Gonna have to do more than buy up all of that outdated hardcopy stuff.

[cascadiance]

17. I know us brighter progressive folks have left the papers these days...

I let my Union Tribune subscription die a year ago. Probably for us, the best thing would be a weekly that has a lot of the stuff that has stuff like movie listings, classifieds, etc. that might be something we'd rather have a hard copy of at some point.

There are still a few problems with going towards internet news that haven't been fully overcome yet:

1) Many folks still aren't "techonology inclined" and still would just rather have a hard copy newspaper. If we can make it so that getting a "printout" of an internet publication is just as easy as getting a regular newspaper subscription, that might help at some point. But old habits die fast. This issue is completely an ease of use issue both for obtaining news as well as reading/absorbing it. And these are the people that we are having trouble with getting information to which the MSM media is "controlling".

2) Even though many folks are on the internet that might be more inclined to read internet news than the paper or watching TV, etc., the problem is that it is hard for them to establish the best way to get the news they feel is right for them to their browser, email or other means of receiving it. There are just too many different sources and choices now and no centralized and easy to work with "gatekeeper" that they feel they can trust to direct them to the news they want. Google, Yahoo, and other web sites are trying to work on this, but this is the fundamental piece that's holding internet news back from being the mainstream news everyone wants. By comparison, buying a newspaper still seems easier for many to get both the local and national news that they feel "appropriate" for them (even if we all know that it is increasingly becoming not appropriate towards keeping them adequately informed).

I've had some ideas on how to deal with this. Trying to compete with the regular newspapers (and TV networks) head on is a losing battle when you don't have the same resources they have. One needs to find another way to get into the "gatekeeper" list for a citizen to find news. One thought I had was to work with a blue business like Starbucks and get very inexpensive "kiosk" diskplays in all of their tables that would run a very easy to use (and use in scope and functionality that's scalable from novice to expert). Such an interface would try to operate as a "personalized" gatekeeper for the person(s) looking at it to give them the news they want from a wide variety of sources, and give them an opportunity to rate it and seek other similar customer's well-rated news for themselves, much like Ebay would rate sellers, or internet radio stations would rate your tastes in music by your music listening habits.

Since going to a place like Starbucks is something that many spend a good portion of their time doing during the day, it might be a good first step towards finding an alternate means of giving information to those that aren't inclined to take any or full advantage of internet resources through a computer. Done right, it would empower the news customers' ability to screen content themselves more with rules they create (or others that they trust create) rather than the MSM folks that do it every night with the news broadcasts they watch or the newspapers they read.

[Cleita]

20. Here on the Central Coast in San Luis Obispo county we

have a weekly, called "The New Times". It's very liberal in scope. Maybe they might see an opportunity to go statewide if they get some backing. Here's their website.

http://www.newtimes-slo.com/

[cascadiance]

21. That's good, because Knight Ridder owns SLO Tribune too...

Which might mean more right wing stuff coming your way if the right wing takeover of Knight Ridder is made to happen too. Here's their Real Cities Network web site...

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/

[bliss_eternal]

22. This is an excellent idea--

I hope you develop it further!

:)

I believe in the unbiased truth out, and hate seeing these rw companies taking over. It's bad enough they have fox.

[Maat]

23. Hey, I've been looking for James Goldsborough ever since

he parted ways acrimoniously with the Union-Trib.

Thanks for finding him for me!

[PatGund]

25. Odd....

I always felt the North County Times was a LOT more balanced and fair in it's reporting than the Union-Tribune. When I moved to Lakeside from Escondido, I missed the NCT's reporting, and couldn't stand the Copley fishwrap

[David Zephyr]

14. It killed me to do it, but I cancelled my subscription this morning.

I'm very, very sad, but I can't underwrite with my hard earned money the transition from what was once a great paper to still another right-wing rag.

[Cleita]

16. It seems L. A. needs a new paper.

I wonder if anyone will step up to the plate.

[cascadiance]

18. Hopefully someone like Ted Turner steps up and buys Knight Ridder

and then sees this opportunity and turns the San Jose Mercury News loose with an "L.A. Mercury News" edition. That would be cool! Knight Ridder was always looking for a good SoCal news property anyway I think...

[Cleita]

19. Well, the Times is already losing subscribers so there will

be a ready market there to take up the Times readership. I hope it will happen.

[Cleita]

15. Yes, it seems that when you fire Robert Scheer but still

have Max Boot as a columnist and you hire Jonah Goldberg to replace Robert Scheer, that their plan is to turn it into a neo-con spin and propaganda sheet. Also, someone I know, who still buys it, said that they have dropped a lot of the features and special sections and replaced them with advertising.

I myself will not buy it again.