Editor John Carroll has “resigned,” according to Editor & Publisher. No surprise if you read this paragraph:
But in recent years, the paper has taken a financial drubbing. Even when it won five Pulitzer Prizes in 2004, the second-most ever for a single paper in one year, the accolades were somewhat overshadowed. Two months after the Pulitzer sweep, Tribune Co. announced mandated layoffs of 200 employees, with the Times bearing the brunt. One hundred and sixty jobs were eliminated at the paper, including 60 editorial positions. Two-thirds of the departing journalists took voluntary buyouts.
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22 Comments
1. PJ:Capitalism has defeated socialism once again.
I hope now he can feel the pain of all the other employees whose jobs were sacrificed on the altar of ideology.
Jul 20, 2005 - 12:34 pm 2. Charlie (Colorado):… and if you listen closely, you can hear Patterico singing “Ding Dong the witch is dead!”
Jul 20, 2005 - 12:39 pm 3. dougf:Were I not so totally fed-up with the media and all it represents, I would surely restrain myself, not gloat at others misfortunes, and in the process be a ‘better’ person.
Regrettably, I cannot abide the MSM in any of its incarnations, and can only feel happy at hearing this news. Happy,happy,happy !!
One almost down and many more to go. I sincerely hope that this is not the end of the pain at the Times. Perhaps it is the harbinger of things to come in other MSM outlets.
Fingers crossed anyway.
Jul 20, 2005 - 12:56 pm 4. Ray Zacek:A Pulitzer isn’t what it used to be. I suppose neither is an Oscar. Or a Nobel. Sic transit gloria mundae.
Jul 20, 2005 - 1:05 pm 5. Jamie Irons:Ray
(Take cover!! Irritating Latin Pedant Alert!!!)
Sic transit gloria mundi.
But I fully agree with your observation.
Jamie Irons
Jul 20, 2005 - 1:40 pm 6. Lonewacko:Later on in the article, they say that the L.A. Times has regained its respectability. Here’s a counter-example.
Jul 20, 2005 - 1:49 pm 7. Ray Zacek:Mea culpa. Cedo maiori.
Jul 20, 2005 - 1:57 pm 8. Kevin P:Roger;
I still get the dead tree version of the LAT but it is more out of habit and nostalgia then anything else. They are trying to get a little more balanced on the op-ed pages but there news coverage is still chock full of agenda journalism. The Times and coffee used to be the first thing I reached for every morning. I still get to the paper but not untill I have searched the blogs and usually later in the day.
Jul 20, 2005 - 1:58 pm 9. Kyda Sylvester:“My goal is simple,” Baquet said, “I want the Los Angeles times to be the best paper in America.”
Well, you have a hard row to hoe, my friend (not that your competition is any great shakes). Good luck.
Jul 20, 2005 - 1:59 pm 10. KarmiCommunist:“But in recent years, the paper has taken a financial drubbing.”
MSM papers like the LA Times have been hammering W since at least late 2000, and they still don’t understand?!? Get a clue, Liberal dudes…
Jul 20, 2005 - 2:18 pm 11. Ray Zacek:My goal is simple,” Baquet said, “I want the Los Angeles times to be the best paper in America.”
For complete absurdism, a line worthy of Ionesco, Donald Barthelme, or Woody Allen.
Jul 20, 2005 - 3:33 pm 12. Mr. Davis:Firing Carroll is merely a cost cutting move and a prelude to a full scale rearrangement of the deck chairs. It will make no difference, to the product or performance. Legacy media are in trouble everywhere and they are too encrusted with liberals to change. Send out the May Day.
Jul 20, 2005 - 3:52 pm 13. richard mcenroe:I think that’s sic transit gloria muckraker, actually…
OK, everybody _ Cabbage Patch! (The victory dance of the large white man)
Now if the new guy just gives Ted Rall the boot…
Jul 20, 2005 - 4:33 pm 14. richard mcenroe:So they sold out to buy in,in the first place, now they take a buy out to…?
Jul 20, 2005 - 5:06 pm 15. richard mcenroe:Maybe we can feed Carroll to the same Komodo dragon that almost got the Chronicle’s publisher…
Jul 20, 2005 - 5:25 pm 16. Knucklehead:I’ll join the world’s smallest violin crowd on this one. The MSM has earned whatever misery its members suffer.
Jul 20, 2005 - 5:49 pm 17. richard mcenroe:Congratulations on the LA Times for appointing the first African-American editor in the paper’s history. The poor bastard.
Now when the paper has its inevitable Jayson Blairish scandal, the fat white guys have their gallguy in place, just like Raines and Little Pinch Sulzberger did…
Jul 20, 2005 - 5:54 pm 18. richard mcenroe:Let’s see, 200 fired LAT journalists equals, what, 170 Bush/Rove exposÈ proposals FedEx’d to NY publishers,,, ?
Jul 20, 2005 - 9:46 pm 19. Katherine:You lost me, Richard. Why only 170?
Jul 21, 2005 - 12:16 am 20. David Thomson:ìLegacy media are in trouble everywhere and they are too encrusted with liberals to change.î
Such accusations bewilder them to no end. These credentialled elites are convinced of their objectivity and accuracy. In some respects, they are similar to an alcoholic who refuses to admit having a serious problem. There is little hope for them. This is especially true for those who are now middle-aged. They are too far behind the curve to ever catch up.
Jul 21, 2005 - 2:07 am 21. richard mcenroe:Katherine ó Some of them had to be janitors and people who actually work for a living…
Jul 21, 2005 - 6:21 am 22. JohnH:I don’t think MSM WANT to “get it” any more than academics do. They are believers in a worldview that is only reinforced by everything they see, and balance sheet issues are just someone else’s crass commercial problem. Over the weekend I spoke with a friend’s daughter who just finished J School and was thrilled to be hired by AP. Now she is calling “sources” to get statements and in other ways contributing to the quality of AP’s stories. Her J School thesis was on the vast religious right conspiracy, which she believes is one of the major problems threatening our democracy. Great. If MSM want to hire kids with these views, they are just going to lose more readers.
BTW, John Carroll lives a few blocks from me. I hope to see him in his pajamas when I jog by. I’m trying to compose a sufficiently ironic greeting.
Jul 21, 2005 - 9:57 am