It’s the Law! : Daily Journal Checks the Pulse of L.A.’s Legal Community

Page 1 of Los Angeles’ new legal newspaper simply listed cases tried in the county’s four courtrooms--one drunk was fined $2 and another $90; a vagrant was assessed $90 for lack of a permanent address. The year was 1888.

Nearly a century later, the same newspaper still monitors the county’s more than 400 courtrooms, but front-page news now includes a crackdown on corporate crime, new rules on conflict of interest and the division of the $4.1-billion Getty trust.

The Los Angeles Daily Journal, along with the legal community it covers, has grown up.

Three years shy of its centennial anniversary, the Daily Journal, with a statewide circulation of 21,000, is the largest newspaper in the nation serving the legal community. Most observers also consider it the best.

The five-day-a-week newspaper, which sells for 25 cents, has become required reading not only for lawyers and judges but also for public officials, journalists and others who need to know about changes in law and local government.

No Other Comes Close

With an editorial staff of 15, the newspaper, with offices at 210 S. Spring St., includes about 30 pages of legal news, schedules and court opinions.

No other legal publication comes close in size or content to the Daily Journal: not the equally old New York Law Journal with 12,000 circulation, the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin with 5,500 circulation, the San Diego Daily Transcript with 8,000 or Los Angeles’ three-day-a-week Metropolitan News with 2,500.

One reason the Daily Journal has topped its field is that it is based in the middle of the largest legal community in the country. Los Angeles’ Superior Court, with 214 judges, and Municipal Court, with 64, are the largest for their jurisdictions, and the county has about 35,000 lawyers.

The number of potential readers is not the only reason the Daily Journal has outpaced others.

“It has tried to be a newspaper, and a newspaper crafted as an art form,” said publisher Robert E. Work, 57, who has degrees in government and journalism and an abiding interest in law. “Our basic policy is to serve our readers--all those interested in local government with an emphasis on law.”

Assessing readership as 97% lawyers or judges, 2% journalists and 1% lay public, editor Kenneth Jost sees the paper’s mission as twofold: to serve as a useful trade publication for lawyers and judges by publishing texts of appellate opinions and court calendars to show lawyers where they should be at what time and to provide readers “insightful reporting and analysis of the important legal issues of the day.”

“We have all the legal news in the world here, so that it is not hard for our reporters to go out and find good stories every day,” Jost said. “There are good legal stories in other cities, and the other papers might do better if they had a greater commitment to provide editorial support.”

Part of the paper’s strength, Jost said, is the strong economic base that Work has built to support his relatively large editorial staff.

Only 24% of the paper’s advertising is public notices and other legal advertising, with most of the revenue coming from ads touting a veritable shopping mart for lawyers--everything from bookcases and computers to detective or secretarial services.

Started as an Experiment

Such a newspaper was never envisioned by the printer who began the experimental Daily Court Journal in 1888. He sold his fledgling paper within five years to Warren Wilson, who, with his son, Douglas, published the Daily Journal for more than five decades. In 1951, the paper was purchased by the California Newspaper Service Bureau, a cooperative run by the county’s 60 or so community newspapers to solicit and share legal advertising.

The group’s manager, Telford Work, became publisher of the Daily Journal, and his 22-year-old son, Robert, moved overnight from cub reporter at City News Service to editor of the legal newspaper.

The editor he replaced, the sales manager and other key staffers, upset by the transfer of ownership and loyal to former colleagues who owned the rival Metropolitan News, had summarily quit and gone to work for the News.

On their way out the door, they dumped the Daily Journal’s overset (reserve stories already set in type) and cleaned out the morgue (library of past stories and research material).

“There wasn’t a scrap of paper left in the city room,” Bob Work recalled with mild humor.

Rivalry from the upstart Metropolitan News, which was founded in 1945, culminated in 1976 when attorney-politician owners of the News filed an antitrust suit against the California Newspaper Service Bureau.

The suit claimed that the organization monopolized legal advertising in Los Angeles County in violation of the state’s Cartwright Act and illegally owned the News’ chief competitor, the Daily Journal.

Key community newspapers opted to settle the case before it went to a jury, paying $1.5 million and selling both the California Newspaper Service Bureau and the Daily Journal.

Telford Work retired after a feeble attempt to buy the paper. His son stayed on as publisher for the new owners, New America Fund Inc., headed by businessman and former attorney Charles T. Munger and his chief associate, J. P. Guerin, former chairman of the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.

The company also publishes the Daily Commerce, a business-oriented newspaper, in Los Angeles, and has acquired the Sacramento Recorder and the Oakland Inter-City Express.

Shapers of Paper

The two Works as co-publishers and two editors they hired--M. R. (Russ) Jourdane, who served from 1968 to 1979 and Jost, who joined the staff in 1981--are credited with shaping the paper as it is today.

“The Work family,” Jost said, “has been the glue of this paper for decades.”

Each day the Daily Journal’s page one, whose layout resembles the Wall Street Journal, carries three major stories about court opinions or legal issues, a profile of a judge or prominent lawyer, brief summaries of appellate and Supreme Court opinions and brief legal news items.

Work and Jost say they like the rigid format but that it was Munger’s idea.

“He just loves the Wall Street Journal,” Work said.

The remainder of the first section is divided into pages for state, Washington and national news provided primarily by the paper’s news bureaus in Sacramento, San Francisco and Washington, an “Open Forum” page for guest editorials and columns and several pages of classified ads.

The second section is devoted to local government news, court calendars, legal advertising and a popular satirical column by Milt Policzer, From the Courts, which Jost considers the second best-read item in the paper after the Daily Appellate Reports.

Reprint of Key Opinions

The DAR, as it is known in the legal community, is a complete reprint of key appellate and Supreme Court opinions, which the paper publishes well ahead of formal court “advance sheets.”

Munger, 61, credited for infusing money into the paper to buy a new press and expand the editorial staff, prides himself on giving Work and Jost “almost a free hand” as to the editorial content of the paper.

His only orders, he said, have been to urge increased emphasis on legal news and never to show favoritism.

Munger, founder of the law firm Munger, Tolles & Rickershauser, said he divorced himself from the firm to go into real estate and other investing in 1965 and has received no money from the firm since then. His former connection, he insisted, has never resulted in special treatment of lawyers in the firm or a “soft” approach to lawyers in general by the Daily Journal under his ownership.

Munger also prides himself on what he describes as a “peculiar publishing philosophy” prohibiting staff-written editorials, although the paper does reprint such items from other publications.

“We don’t feel it is our business to have a newspaper view on every controversial issue,” he said, “and we like the news stories to be written in such a way that over time nobody can discern what our political opinion is.”

Added Work: “Our job is to report, not to advocate. The day we are even perceived to advocate, our role as reporters is diminished.”

Considered Fair, Accurate

Generally, the Daily Journal’s readers give it good marks for fairness, accuracy and attempts to help the working lawyer or judge.

Often quoted by the general press about legal rulings or trends, the Daily Journal was recently appraised by Village Voice syndicated columnist Nat Hentoff as an “uncommonly lively and lucid legal publication.”

Robert Lindsey, Los Angeles bureau chief for the New York Times, said he reads it daily for ideas for law-related stories for his newspaper or as a “second opinion” with detailed legal interpretations about something he has read elsewhere.

Los Angeles Superior Court Presiding Judge Thomas T. Johnson said the newspaper aids judges by providing quick reprints of appellate opinions that control their decisions. He said the paper helps judges and lawyers alike by informing lawyers of when they are to appear in court. “My impression is that it does a pretty good job on a day-in and day-out basis,” he said. “It is an asset to the court and to the local bar, and I think it is pretty accurate.”

Serves Useful Function

Patricia Phillips, attorney and current president of the 18,000-member Los Angeles County Bar Assn., joked that she sometimes reads the paper at night to lull herself to sleep, but said, “It is very good at the function it is supposed to serve--to inform lawyers of what is going on in the legal community and in court, specifically with the calendars so we know when to be where.”

Phillips criticized the profile articles, however, as “too cutesy, like People magazine” and said she would prefer a “more comprehensive and factual review of a person.”

The most critical observer, Roger M. Grace, owner, publisher and editor of the rival Metropolitan News since 1977, blasted the Daily Journal as “new journalism, a euphemism for slanted reporting.”

“We prefer the who, what, when and how. Our leads are news leads,” said Grace, a lawyer and former Daily Journal columnist under Jourdane. “When they write about an appellate opinion, chances are they will start, ‘In an opinion-setting precedent, blah, blah, blah.’ We will start with ‘The Court of Appeal ruled Thursday blah, blah, blah.’ You don’t have to tell how important it is before you even tell what the ruling is.”

Paper’s Shortcomings

Among the Daily Journal’s problems, staff members say, are its lack of a clip library or morgue, inadequate editing staff, salaries (which some consider low), long hours and high staff turnover.

The entire library consists of six three-drawer filing cabinets full of photographs and clippings maintained by a secretary with other duties. When reporters need to look at editions more than a year old, they go to the Los Angeles County Law Library.

Only one editor checks any story, looking, Jost said, “both for content and nit-picking,” increasing the risk of error.

About half the Daily Journal’s reporters are lawyers, and Work requires all employees to have a “demonstrated background” in law, despite the fact that salaries, according to Jost, are “in the 20s.”

“I do it because I enjoy writing rather than practicing law,” said Phil Carrizosa, an attorney and the San Francisco bureau chief, who covers the state Supreme Court, State Bar and federal appellate courts. “I like my beat, and money has never been that important to me. I tend to be thrifty.”

‘Glut of Lawyers’

“In California you have an absolute glut of lawyers, and there is a great misperception that lawyers make a lot of money,” said Policzer, also a lawyer. “Many of us would simply rather write than practice law. If you are a writer and have that legal background, the Daily Journal is one of the best places to go to work.”

Editor, publisher and owner alike staunchly defend the salaries as competitive in both journalism and law, except for top law firms.

Jost and Work attribute the staff turnover, which they believe is normal for the size of the paper, to advancing or changing careers, with reporters going to larger, higher-paying publications or into the practice of law.

Gail Diane Cox, 39, a Daily Journal reporter for six years given to working 10- to 12-hour days, said one reason for the turnover may simply be burnout. Reporters, she said, face enormous demands and must choose between doing inadequate stories during regular shifts or working extra hours to do articles well.

Staff members add that a major reason for some departures has been Jost’s occasional tendency to scream at reporters, although Cox is quick to say that she and several other reporters think so highly of Jost’s editing ability that they would leave the paper if he moved on.

Deadline Pressures

“He is not a malicious, malevolent person, but you get him around deadline time and the pressure is building, and some people don’t take that well,” said Policzer, who plays down reported clashes he had with Jost when he was a full-time reporter.

“The real credit for making the paper what it is now has to go to Ken,” Policzer said. “He is hard on people, but he insists on quality and a job in some depth.”

Well prepared for his role in legal journalism, Jost, 37, was a court reporter for six years on the Nashville Tennessean. He was press secretary when a friend, Albert Gore Jr., ran for Congress, and he followed Gore to Washington as chief legislative assistant. He earned a law degree at night at Georgetown University and edited its law review.

Jost is proud of what he has done with the Daily Journal--adding a Washington bureau, opening closed meetings of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. to press coverage and pushing his staff to produce informative articles on such topics as legal services for the poor and appellate courts’ handling of tricky initiative legislation.

Describing Jost as “colorful, intense, demanding, irascible and intelligent,” Munger said, “He succeeds because people see that he is working so hard and knows what he is doing.”

Although he is quick to insist that no newspaper--or business--is ever in its final form, Munger is generally pleased with the Daily Journal, and he plans no major changes.

“I like,” the lawyer-turned-businessman said proudly, “the fact that we deliver a hell of a lot of information at a modest price.”