Whats eating the L.A. Times?

Discuss round one of this week's Dust-Up.

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From the Los Angeles Times

Anyone who wants to point the greed finger should look not to Zell, but to Tribune's previous management, Dennis Fitzsimons & Co. After flying the company into the ground, they walked off with, in Fitzsimon's case, about $41 million -- unconscionable profits that could have kept an awful lot of good journalists working on everyone's behalf. History may record that Zell foolishly bought into the Tributanic after it hit the iceberg but before it began to list.

Oddsox @ 9:35 AM PDT, Jul 9, 2008
America has a deeply troubled population - they're facing an economic worse than we've had since the '30s, and all they know is the ignorant, selfish, greed-driven culture of the '80s, '90s and '00s. That's a bad combination. When professionally gathered news should be the most important information in our lives, we're turning against it in favor of O'Reilly, Baywatch returns, Survivor, Biggest Loser, MTV Spring Break specials and every other kind of mindless crap that Madison Avenue can spew at us. This country has no one but itself to blame when its systems and structures implode.

Watching Democracy Eroding @ 6:09 PM PDT, Jul 8, 2008
Reality check: Zell is a ruthless right-wing capitalist who has leveraged his way into a business that's largely about public service. He will gladly destroy all of that business if he and his arch-conservative GOP apologists from Clear Channel can loot the place before it goes into bankruptcy.

Watching Democracy Eroding @ 6:08 PM PDT, Jul 8, 2008
It's the editorial content. Most people expect reporting that is complete and unbiased. The LA Times is neither. From the unabashed pro and sympathetic Illegal alien slant to stories to the inaccurate and factually incomplete political stories people have finally gotten fed up with the newspaper and won't pay for it anymore. I've read the Times for 50 years and I'm fed up with it's agenda too. Take a look around and see who your target market is or was.

rays @ 4:56 PM PDT, Jul 8, 2008
The LAT editorial position is so pro-illegal alien as to call into question weather it is published in Mexico City or Los Angeles. Together with its paper Hoy, the Tribune Co. has determined that L.A. is no longer an American city but a part of Mexico. Most legal citizens are sickened by this and throw away everything but the calendar and sports section and are mystified as to how left wing socialists and pro illegal alien ethnocentric forces have gained control of the once great LAT! Sam Zell ....Save Yourself!

M A Andrews @ 1:56 PM PDT, Jul 8, 2008
The blame for this resides with the Chandler family and their desire to maximize their return while offering little or nothing to the company. The members of the Chandler family trust that sold the Times to the Tribune and then forced the sale of the Tribune are solely to blame. Newsday's circulation scandal, lack of investment in the LA Times and convincing the Tribune to pay its 600 million tax bill are to blame. If you think David Hiller is a liberal and that the Tribune is liberal your crazy. They are old school republicans with the new management from Clear Channel, the Fox of radio.

jimmychicago @ 10:48 AM PDT, Jul 8, 2008
Any other business would be a success with the kind of revenue that the LA Times generates. Expectations of big growth are unnecessary to any normal busines that serves a community. The business grows in a small way as it continues to serve the community. Big multinational corporations are sucking the autonomy out of communitiy news sources. By constantly firing the editors of the Times there is no oversight into what the paper publishes and it often seems to just be taking dictation from one or another Bush disinformation campaigns.

Justeen Ward @ 10:44 AM PDT, Jul 8, 2008
Meh, Why's it always the brokest poor boys around (read, journalists and talking heads) who have such lofty ideas for how newspapers can be saved? These very anti-business yahoos are the same ones who sat on their laurels in the 1990s and set the demise in motion in the first place.

Michel @ 10:31 AM PDT, Jul 8, 2008
A few years ago the Times posted an incorrect story and got called on it by Neil Cavuto. I sent in a comment that Cavuto read on the air, "I wouldn't use the Times as cat box liner because my cats would think the box was full and soil my carpets." That is how bad the Times is, and who wants to pay for propaganda and lies?

PCD @ 10:26 AM PDT, Jul 8, 2008
I read CalNews.com every day. It makes sense.

CaptG2 @ 9:46 AM PDT, Jul 8, 2008
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