One Last Note About the L.A. Times: Contrary to what it might seem, I don’t think the Times is a terrible newspaper. I spend time every day reading the thing, because it’s filled with interesting facts. The problem for me, and many other readers, is that these facts are routinely cloaked in a writing style -- melodramatic, meandering, ultimately misleading -- that manages to spoil my interest. To the extent that this type of writing is ubiquitous among U.S. mono-dailies that dream of being the New York Times, I thought it might be half-interesting to explain what I mean by this, to the three of you who might be interested.

Take a front-page story from Thursday, a profile of downtown developer Ira Yellin, a man who has helped bring forgotten treasures like Grand Central Market back to life. I am very interested in the downtown renaissance, in restoration/architecture issues, in the public policy questions they provoke, and in Grand Central. I am, in other words, the ideal audience. And even before the jump, I threw down the paper in anger. Here is how the story starts:

He works amid ghosts. Downtown ghosts. Buildings and streets that once held a city together. For two decades he has dedicated himself to bringing the downtown ghosts back to life.

Others have written volumes about how Los Angeles lacks a core. But this shy, driven man felt the heart of the city was always there, just waiting to be revealed.

He saw it in the decayed iron lattice of the Bradbury Building, sensed it at the dilapidated Union Station train depot and felt its pull from the shopworn Grand Central Market.

Ira Yellin moved his work from Beverly Hills to be among these buildings. He restored them, helped make them whole again, and then, ever the dreamer, he asked the rest of the city to embrace his vision.

It has happened slowly. Too slowly, some complain, and at too great a cost in public money. But years after he first arrived there, downtown stirs.

Every day, the 61-year-old Yellin reminds himself how far downtown has come. And every day, as he fights through anxiety and incessant fatigue, he is reminded of life’s uncertainties -- that he might not be able to see his vision through.

“It’s more than a little ironic. It feels like I’m hitting my stride … “

His voice trails. A moment later, he coughs.

In August, after Yellin complained about a persistent cough, his doctor sent X-rays to a specialist. The doctor rushed to call Yellin back.

Ira, he said, it doesn’t look good.

Lung cancer.

It made no sense.

04/27/2002 11:37 PM  |  Comment (7)

The L.A. Times –- 12 Days Late, But Shallow! Sorry, I was forced to read off-line for most the last two days, so ….

My hometown paper Friday finally deigned to acknowledge that the city’s former mayor plans on starting a competing daily -- 12 days after the Daily News’ Rick Orlov broke the story, nine after the Associated Press beamed it to publications around the globe, six after the L.A. Business Journal weighed in with a chunky analysis, and two after the New Times added its two cents.

What did the Spring Street kids do with all that extra time? Uh, interview two other people -- former Times city editor Bill Boyarsky, who is paraphrased as saying he may contribute some articles; and longtime Riordan adviser (that’s with an “e,” copy desk!) Arnold Steinberg. Oh, and they also print a completely unsubstantiated rumor:

One name investment bankers have linked with Riordan’s project is Rupert Murdoch, whose extensive local holdings include Fox Studios and Broadcasting as well as the Dodgers. Riordan declined to discuss Murdoch or any other potential investor by name.

The story is notable mostly for a goofy photo of Riordan wearing Terminator-style sunglasses, and for a series of good and funny quotes:

“This town needs a paper that has an intellectually honest perspective on local news and respects its readers.” […]

“I don’t think any paper should have a monopoly, and The Times has a death wish for Los Angeles,” he said. “It would like to see the city destroyed […]”

“I’m not suggesting that The Times ought to engage in boosterism or dishonest reporting … I’m just against the paper’s intellectual dishonesty and political correctness.”

04/27/2002 11:13 PM  | 

Howard Rosenberg, the L.A. Times, and the Riots: One of the pleasures of growing up in Southern California was reading the sharp wit of L.A. Times TV critic Howard Rosenberg. But like many once-celebrated Times critics (Robert Hilburn, David Shaw), Rosenberg was rewarded with something akin to tenure, and has become a surly prisoner of his own job description -- watching television news, all the time. As I’ve written several times previously, this has inevitably warped his view, causing him to grossly exaggerate the influence of cable news networks, and to apparently lose his once-vaunted sense of humor. In the process, like many media critics employed by monopolist dailies, he has become downright hostile to media organizations that don’t share his own company’s approach to the news.

Yesterday’s column starts with a riff on the recent fatal train crash here in Placentia (which the Times played slightly bigger than the Pope’s announcement on pedophile priests), and how Angelenos naturally turned to the TV for news of the tragedy (knowing, as we do, that the local TV stations actually cover breaking news, unlike certain newspapers). Then comes the nut graf:

TV news is also the caboose on its own runaway freight train of action and violence, one doomed by its own devices, unfortunately, never to catch up or see beyond the next blind curve. It’s usually first to arrive and react. When it comes to providing context and locating connections that enhance understanding, though, it’s pretty much a dismal flop.

Rosenberg’s main purpose in this column is to bemoan the live TV coverage of the L.A. riots 10 years ago. After acknowledging that KCOP reporter Bob Tur’s helicopter coverage of Reginald Denny being gang-stomped probably helped save the trucker’s life, rancid Howie bares his bile:

If Tur’s chopper footage was Denny’s savior, live, knee-jerk coverage also was a big chunk of the problem, as stations, after talking nonstop legalese during the televised trial, went back to doing what they always did.

Chasing crime.

But what happens when, in the name of eschewing sensationalism, you don’t cover crime? What happens when you judge breaking news by potential “context,” not news value? John Lee, writing in the LA Weekly’s 10th anniversary special this week, tells this story about being a cub reporter at the Times when the riots broke out:

Before anyone had a handle on how widespread the rioting had become, merchants began calling Radio Korea, which responded to these distress calls by opening the airwaves and beseeching good Samaritans to help defend businesses that were being attacked. Even with my dodgy command of Korean, I could make out where the calls for help were coming from. If you were tuned in to Korean news, you knew Koreans were being hit all over town.

I relayed this information to the Times’ city desk, but my comment was dismissed, if it registered with anyone at all. “Everyone in the city is affected,” was the editors’ pat response. For a long time, that answer stood as the reason why there was no point in pursuing a story angle that focused solely on Koreans.

Ten years later, of course, we know that the Korean experience was one of the single biggest story lines of the L.A. riots, not to mention landmark event in the history of Korean assimilation in the U.S. In fact, just today the Times filled its Column One slot with a 3,358-word story about the state of Korean-black relations a decade later.

John Lee tells another story about context, crime, and the L.A. Times. A year ago, at an anniversary event, I saw him describe how he and some other minority reporters approached the city desk with a proposal to write a series of 20 stories that explored the growing complaints they’d been hearing the past two years of police brutality in black, Latino and poor neighborhoods.

In the end, the 20 ideas "were consolidated into one story by a national writer based in Los Angeles," Lee said. "I believe it was half a year in the works; it was how the War on Drugs became a war on African-Americans."

In Dallas, however, the Morning News decided to examine the problem. Morning News reporters spent two years investigating the “abuse of authority” by police in Texas, and last year the paper published a 17-part series, spread over nine months, documenting that police in that state had been “investigated and prosecuted more frequently for beatings, torture, coerced confessions, rapes and needless deaths than police in any other state.” The Morning News was awarded a Pulitzer Prize last month for that series. Michael Gartner, chairman of the Pulitzer Prize board said: “One thing that impressed the board was that it began before Rodney King.”

So, did local TV news do a poor job covering the riots? I don’t know! I was in Prague, watching CNN at the American Hospitality Center. Lord knows they get silly yammering on about how the way you suck through a straw reveals personality traits, or how some new bogus study proves whatever. It’s entirely possible they performed badly, and it’s entirely possible that media critics loathe live TV news.

Rosenberg, as has become formula, uses his latest column to A) spit bile at the latest televised scandal, B) ignore his own newspaper’s culpability while defending its news values, and C) wildly exaggerate the fallout from the coverage he criticizes:

How would stations respond if there were similar riots today? Would they be less impulsive and more responsible? One can only speculate, but watching them go berserk over Robert Blake’s recent arrest in connection with the murder of his wife bred no optimism.

As it turned out, many of the media were buried by the wreckage of their own performance 10 years ago, smoky ruins that have proved harder to clean up than the pockets of L.A. that came under attack.

04/27/2002 09:01 PM  |  Comment (3)

Outages: I wasn't able to connect to the Internet for 40 hours, and it hasn't been that pretty since then. During the outage yesterday, I typed up some screedy posts having to do with Los Angeles journalism, and I will cut & paste them as time and taste permits. Later, you'll get some fresh eyewitness dish from the L.A. Times Book Festival.

04/27/2002 07:34 PM  |  Comment (1)

More New Times Smack on the Riordan Project: Rick Barrs slams the idea up, down, and sideways!

A little anecdote – when I was living in Budapest in the mid-‘90s, my pal Amy Langfield sent me an e-mail with a long story about how the New-New Journalism New Times chain was moving into Los Angeles. I was so excited! Another newspaper! More reporters covering Los Angeles! Competition for the sex classifieds and non-conservative music fans! I got even more excited when I learned they hired my pal Jill Stewart, a hard-nosed reporter, to be the star metro columnist. I demanded the first available issue in the mail.

It came. And there was no news. Just some columns up front, and a single 6,527-word feature about -- wait for it -- a minor league baseball team in Long Beach.

As is it turns out, I had three special reasons to be partial to this story: 1) It was the main feature in a brand new newspaper, and I like brand new newspapers, 2) I’m from Long Beach, and 3), I’m a baseball fanatic, and have played scores of games in the team’s stadium (the wonderful Blair Field), and watched hundreds of others. Like Rick Barrs on East Coast coverage of the Rampart scandal, you couldn’t have found a more ideal reader than me. How was it? Well, I dare you to read it. Barring that, try this sample paragraph:

Long Beach, meanwhile, is the 31st-largest city in the United States, situated in the heart of Southern California, equidistant to Hollywood and Disneyland -- not to mention the Dodgers and the Angels. Its famous Midwestern roots and its notorious inferiority complex sometimes give it the feel of a minor-league burg, but they actually make the city even less willing to be Mudville-by-the-Sea.

Baseball remains the most melancholy game, the sport of line-drive outs and bloop singles, bad hops and snow-cone catches, the long-and-winding law of averages, all of it abetted by too much time to think. It is the home of the stewing resentment, the snappy comeback, the meticulously crafted prank, the cruel nickname, the subtle sarcasm. This is baseball's beauty, though not necessarily its poetry. Those who try to interpret the deeper meaning of baseball are usually those who know it least. It's not a metaphor for anything -- except how life might be without metaphor. Baseball always is as-is, eternally in the moment. It's not a page of soulful prose, it's blips on a heart monitor: It's just the terrifying facts. In baseball, you're hitting or you're missing.

But it would be unfair as well as unkind to judge a newspaper on one early issue (though I hope & am more than confident that the Riordan paper will be raked over the coals from day one). I like the New Times fine. The no-news, smart-columns, one-long-feature style is its cookie cutter formula, handed down from corporate HQ in Phoenix. Barrs has some top-quality talent over there. I wish him well.

04/25/2002 02:55 PM  |  Comment (2)

History of the Present Web-Writing: Eric Olsen, the Timothy Garton Ash of the post-9/11 blogging phenomenon, clocks in with part three of his “New Media in the Old” series. If you haven’t checked out his profiles of various webloggers, go down on the right-hand side of his site and start reading.

04/25/2002 01:49 PM  | 

He Must Know Volokh: Henry Copeland writes a little bisected column today about Super Bowls, piranhas, and blogging. You’ll need to read it slowly. The conclusion?

Force = Mass X Acceleration. Blogs are gaining both M and A, Journalism is gaining neither.

04/25/2002 12:57 PM  | 

More Pessimism About ‘The Daily Dick’: The New Times weighs in with its story. Subhed: “Will happy news and conservative politics sell in the Big Orange? Don't hold your breath, experts say.” The first thing you should do is skip down to the last paragraph, because it’s funny.

Next, if you’re me, get a load of the outrageous pessimism, duly supplied by the usual suspects at journalism schools:

Riordan has turned his sights on another project few people think he's got a prayer in succeeding at: starting a newspaper in Los Angeles, a city with a history of crushing wannabe publishers.

"I expect this to be as successful as his gubernatorial campaign," cracked Bryce Nelson, a USC journalism professor and former reporter for the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times and Science magazine. Nelson said that for decades the trend has been toward fewer newspapers in American cities, not more. On top of that, he says, the paper's limited focus on the city of Los Angeles will turn off sophisticated readers who also want regional, state, national and international news.

Next up, is Lawrence Wenner, communications professor and a “specialist in media ethics” at Loyola Marymount University:

"The Los Angeles Times has crushed every one of its competitors in the past 30 years. There is a place for a conservative voice, and people talk about how liberal the Times is, but to be honest, the Times isn't all that damned liberal."

I’m just having fun. Thanks, journalism schools everywhere, for providing that extra kick even caffeine can’t match!

04/24/2002 05:42 PM  |  Comment (8)

My NPR Interview: Will be aired in a market near you over the weekend, and available in some fashion at this link, by early next week. Tune in, and listen to my ungrammatical blurted nonsense!

I was a guest on the On the Media program, just after the New York Sun/SmarterTimes’ Ira Stoll. I won’t give much away, but the new Riordan project was described, in the intro, as “conservative.” I pointed out that the proposed paper will not be as overtly ideological as the Sun (unless actually caring about Los Angeles is an ideology), because the Sun is entering an incredibly crowded newspaper market where two other tabloids are busy covering the city; compared to L.A., where the Times is basically a monopoly, and the slot for covering local news smartly and with humor is currently empty. Well certainly Riordan has a “conservative” agenda, I was asked to agree. I pointed out that, well, some conservatives aren’t convinced of that characterization. But surely, it was put to me, there’s an important market niche for a conservative voice in L.A.?

Later, I was asked whether the problem with the L.A. Times was that it was “too liberal.” … What’s great is that I probably come off sounding evasive, as if I’m just unwilling to admit that I'm on Richard Scaife's payroll. But that was all only a brief portion of the interview; have a listen and tell me what you think, on the little comments section below.

04/24/2002 04:20 PM  |  Comment (1)

L.A. Times Can’t Find a Critic of Robert Fisk: Finally got around to reading this profile of La Fisk, who swung through town recently on a mini-lecture tour. You would think, by reading it, that the most hostile critic of the famous war correspondent was a woman who goes to Stanley Sheinbaum parties and wonders if maybe Fisk isn’t a wee bit anti-Israel. Oh well. Here’s a telling quote, one which refers to his infamous column about being beaten in Pakistan:

"I hate the 'what' and 'where' stories that leave out the 'why.'"

04/23/2002 09:19 AM  |  Comment (6)

Long Interview With Me About Blogs, Newspapers, Journalism, and Sept. 11: It was conducted before the current paper-launching frenzy.

04/23/2002 08:21 AM  |  Comment (1)

Speaking Lies to Power -- Ralph Nader Fudges the Truth Just Like a Real Politician: Here’s my Reason review of Nader’s campaign memoir.

04/21/2002 06:28 PM  |  Comment (3)

Meanwhile, Socialists Eke out Victory in Hungary: The Socialist/Free Democrat coalition will have 198 seats in the 386-seat Parliament, while the Young Democrat/Hungarian Democratic Forum bloc gets 188. Lest you assume that the ex-commie Socialists are going to raise the red flag over Hero’s Square: the new prime minister-to-be, Peter Medgyessy, is a 59-year-old banker who ran the finance ministry from 1996-98, helped restructure Hungary’s once-ailing banking sector, and somehow is not even a member of the Socialist Party. Defeated Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Fidesz, meanwhile, “gambled all with a dramatic lurch to the nationalist right in a bid to shore up support through a divisive and bitter campaign,” according to Reuters’ Tom Mulligan (the foreign press corps, living as they do in cosmopolitan Budapest, where Orban is despised, are not exactly fans of the one-time anti-communist darling, who is generally a big hit in the anti-Budapest countryside … but that’s a story for another time).

As I mentioned below, (in a post quoted by today’s Omaha World-Herald editorial page!), the best news here is probably just that the governing party was cycled out, as opposed to being given another four years’ worth of temptation to become corrupt.

04/21/2002 06:07 PM  | 

The Hidden Potentially Good News Behind the Le Pen Fiasco: People in France and the rest of Europe are freaking out about the nationalist’s shocking second-place finish, but here are five reasons why I am not overly alarmed: 1) He got 17 percent, which is just a few notches above his usual 12-15 showing. 2) The real shocker is how Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin couldn’t even top that, limping home at 16 percent. If you believe, like I believe, that France isn’t going to get better until it starts electing leaders that don’t have a Triangle Shirtwaist-era worldview about Workers vs. Capital, then it is certainly good news that French voters chose Jacques Chirac over Jospin. 3) Le Pen has no freakin’ prayer against Chirac in the run-off election. 4) There is a chance that the horror of sending a Buchanaite nut-job with a history of unfriendliness toward France’s sizable Arab and Jewish minorities will spur some kind of useful and interesting debate and self-examination within the country. There is a chance that this will galvanize public opinion to be more aggressively rejectionist of the anti-Semitic violence that has plagued the country recently. There is a chance that this will spark a healthy debate about the fatalistic policies toward France’s crime-ridden Arab suburbs (where the cops have long since given up trying to police)…. Of course, there is a chance, too, that the election will be blamed somehow on the U.S.’ Mideast policy … 5) With Jospin’s routing, the French Left is now cloven between democratic Socialists, and a variety of Communist & Trotskyite dang-fotches. I’d love to see the dang-fotches pushed to the margins, though this is way optimistic. (DISCLOSURE: This post-election "analysis" has not been sanctioned in any way by my alarmed French wife.)

04/21/2002 05:47 PM  |  Comment (14)

Hi! What are you doing down here?