Rachel Maddow, the likable blazer-loving MSNBC host, is enjoying the honeymoon stage with media critics as her Rachel Maddow Show delivers impressive ratings — better than Keith Olbermann's! sometimes! — and makes one small step for lady/gay-punditry kind. Just how big is the press suckling at her teet (for the time being)? After the NYT and American Prospect last week delivered puff pieces on Maddow, the LAT joins the fun. CONTINUED »
Congratumalations, Los Angeles Times! Just like some NYC tabloids, after weeks of all but ignoring the John Edwards scandal — and explicitly doing so — you've finally made your first public comment on the matter. And then you blogged about it. You're so on top of Web 2.0, and doing your jobs, it's making us dizzy. CONTINUED »
Sorry journalism ethicists and angry Tribune Co. employees: The Los Angeles Times' magazine LA is going ahead as planned, by which we mean "controlled by the paper's business unit," and will debut Sept. 7. The decision to move the magazine to the publishing side of the newspaper, and remove any editorial department involvement, is the clearest sign yet that these glossy titles exist solely to serve advertiser interests, which will come as a surprise to anybody who has never picked up, say, The New York Times Magazine. [Folio]
Good luck trying to access NationalEnqurier.com; the site is down, as is AMI cousin StarMagazine.com. Drudge hints it has to do with a legal action against the tabloid related to John Edwards, but provides no details.
Not that reporters or bloggers at the Los Angeles Times will be affected much: They've been banned from even mentioning the Edwards/love child story, even if they're interested in debunking the Enquirer's report. (Except, um, oops.) Just as Enquirer editor David Perel suggested would happen.
Nevermind that at least one other media outlet, Fox News, has gone and confirmed that Edwards was at the Beverly Hilton Hotel just like the Enquirer said. And that others are moving quickly to score themselves some Edwards nuggets.
Chuck Philips, the Pulitzer-winning Los Angeles Times reporter who has devoted the latter part of his career to investigating the deaths of Tupac and Notorious B.I.G., has been let go by the paper.
If the Los Angeles Times is Sam Zell's nerdy eldest daughter who never has a date and stays home watching Friends re-runs, then Metromix.com — the online city guide the paper launched last year — is its cooler younger sister who's already doing keg stands with her friends. How to tell? By the way they market themselves. CONTINUED »
One hundred fifty of the Los Angeles Times Media Group's 250 total job cuts will happen at the namesake paper, with more than one-sixth of the staff being shown the door. And the newspaper will trim its pages by 15 percent, resulting in an even thinner newspaper. This is a much larger bloodletting than execs previously let on; a few months back they were only expected about 50 positions to be lost. Then Sam Zell's blood sugar dropped, and he got much more vicious. [NYT]
"As the company prepares to shed more reporters, it has measured writers' performances by the number of column inches of stories they ground out. It found, said one Zell executive, that the number of pages per reporter at one of Zell's smaller papers, The Hartford Courant (about 300), greatly exceeded that at the Times (about 50). As one of the handful of major national papers, however, the Times employs the kind of investigative and expert beat reporters not found at most smaller papers. I could name a number of Times writers who laboured for months on stories that went on to win Pulitzers and other prizes, and whose column-inch production, accordingly, was relatively light. Doing so, I fear, would only put their necks on Zell's chopping block." [The Age]
Sam Zell, who continues to ruin all that remains good and honest with the beleaguered newspaper industry – a list that includes just the comics page, and those Best Buy circulars, at this point – is taking out one more strand of fishing wire and tying it around the neck of the Los Angeles Times, one of the Tribune Co.'s flagship newspapers that Zell has taken a liking for abusing. Rather than letting the editorial team there, led by editor Russ Stanton, operate the paper's Sunday magazine as it always has, Zell sneakily hired an entire new staff for the weekly LAT Magazine without telling anyone. And that staff, it turns out, is part of the business side of the newspaper, not the editorial unit. CONTINUED »
Can we fault the world's worst entertainment blogger, Liz Snead, for merely living up to what her Los Angeles Times paycheck asks her to do, which is to publish on the Internet whatever thoughtless rants run through her head? Or is she culpable for trying to take the struggling Tribune paper into generation Web 2.No by leading them down a path of bumptious observation?
It didn't take long for Snead's Angelina Jolie items to paint her as a bottom-feeding gossip hound. Now, she's taking great joy in calling Liv Tyler, who is in the middle of trying to save her marriage fat — directing this bit of advice her way: "Even if you're wearing a very loose dress, suck that tummy in, girls!" CONTINUED »
It's not like Sam Zell ever promised to keep anyone around at the Los Angeles Times. He's got billions in debt he needs to keep stable, which means he's got a couple plans up his sleeve. Obvious first choice: job cuts. Except Zell calls this down-sizing "right-sizing," because, based on his calculations that the average LAT journo produces the equivalent of 51 pages a year, while competitors in Hartford and Baltimore spit out 300 pages, the current staff overload is just waste. And so all of this will bring into focus his other big task, which is evening out the editorial:advertising ratio to 1:1, which will also allow him to shrink the actual size of the paper and the number of pages printed per year. And finally, Zell has taken to addressing his thousands of employees as "partners," if only because the future of the Times, and its debt load, depend on their stock-option plan.
Tribune Co.'s chief innovation officer Lee Abrams, who carries quite possibly the most obnoxious title in newspaper land, and who should generally place a moratorium on delivering soundbites about his company, says the "beehive of hostility and rage" he expected during a visit to the Los Angeles Times was anything but uncomfortable. Instead, he found the place "loaded with people that are smart, passionate and ready to fight the war." Now, would that be the war in Iraq, the war on newspapers ad revenue, or the war Sam Zell is launching against his own company?
Is David Geffen making a third try for the Los Angeles Times? Nikki Finke's gossips say yes, though Geffen has been yachting in the South Pacific for a few weeks, and it's possible he never had those super secret talks with Sam Zell that have been reported. [DHD]
As a reward for needlessly sullying Diddy's reputation, Los Angeles Times reporter Chuck Philips will keep his day job. [NYT]
The Los Angeles Times has officially retracted its "Diddy knew about that attack on Tupac" story from Chuck Philips, admitting it got duped by imprisoned conman James Sabatino, hoping to save itself from a lawsuit, and making clear its reporting standards do not deserve Pulitzer Prizes. [LAT]
Editorial Director
