Doomsday in L.A.: The L.A. Times Cuts 150 Newsroom Jobs
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The writing has been all the wall for weeks and now the carnage has been unleashed: the L.A. Times is cutting loose 150 newsroom positions, and 250 overall. Pink slips come by Labor Day. This news comes only a few months after the paper let go 36 newsroom jobs through buyouts, and puts the total newsroom number at about 700, down from the 1,200 it had just seven years ago.
Russ Stanton's sobering memo is here.
I lived in L.A. for 62 years and I moved to San Diego a year ago. The L.A. Times is my hometown paper and I still
ocasionaly buy a copy of it, but ever since the Chandler family sold the paper, it has deteriorated to such an extent, that it is barely recognizable.It was once a great newspaper. Sam Zell has fixed that. Eli Broad and David Geffin and other investors were willing to buy the Times in the interest of keeping the ownership local, but that didn't happen.The first responsibility of a newspaper is its constitutionally mandated role as the "fourth estate" the unofficial yet sanctioned public watch dog, in this republic. Newspapers have proven themselves to be abject failures in discharging this paramount duty. The evidence of this failure is evident when we read almost any newspaper. Applying a corporate model to a public institution is another example of the "Free Market Delusion"
You must not read the paper on a regular basis. There's staffers (still!) who write one piece a month or even less. Seriously, there's plenty of deadwood. The LAT hasn't been a great paper since the Herald closed down--having no competition has made the editors lazy and complacent. Zell's no help, but it stunk before Tribune got involved.And please, please let Joel Stein's column get dropped.