Remembering That Other Great Daily

It happened one morning in the late ‘80s as I dropped by my neighborhood Winchell’s for a cup of caffeine. Inside the news rack was a Herald-Examiner with three-deck headline that meant more to me than anybody else in Los Angeles.

The precise words, I don’t recall. The news wasn’t exactly shocking, just standard fare, something about the possibility of more cost overruns in L.A.’s brand new subway project.

But to me, the headline read more like this:

Times’ Harris

Scooped Again;

Career Doomed

Looking back, I’d have to say my reaction was entirely appropriate.

Suddenly I was hyperventilating, my heart jackhammering against my chest. Sweat erupted from every pore and soon my shirt was soaked through.

*

This ignominious moment in personal history is offered as a salute to a sad anniversary that passed this month with little notice. Nov. 2 marked the eighth anniversary of the day the Herald-Examiner died after years of hemorrhaging red ink. Much of L.A., though not the San Fernando Valley, became a one-newspaper town that day--at least as far as the English language goes.

Los Angeles, alas, had lost not just a business enterprise, but a cultural institution. A newspaper expresses the life of a community day in and day out, shaping the history it covers in ways small and large. Sizable burgs may exist without universities or museums, much less great performance halls or sports arenas. But not without a newspaper.

But the gritty, quirky, tabloid-esque Her-Ex as a cultural institution? Sure. Think first of culture not as something inside an impressive building, but the life lived in its homes, streets, offices, factories, classrooms, public places.

Billions have been given away to promote highbrow culture in this city, and millions in public money may be invested in sports arenas. But for my money, I’d rather still have the Her-Ex than a new symphony hall or an NFL franchise. If blowing up the Getty would somehow bring the Her-Ex back to life, I’d say blow up the Getty.

The fate of the Herald, as it was also known, had little to do with the quality of its journalism and plenty to do with changing times. It’s not news to say the newspaper business has been shrinking. As more people turn to TV for news, hundreds of dailies have shut down in recent decades and many others have downsized. More troubling is the fact that so many young people, raised on TV, never got into the newspaper habit. Now the industry worries about the Internet. “WILL GATES CRUSH NEWSPAPERS?” asks the latest Columbia Journalism Review, featuring Microsoft’s chairman on the cover.

Here in Greater Los Angeles, the more pressing question concerns William Dean Singleton rather than Bill Gates. Singleton is the Denver-based media mogul who this month purchased the 100-year-old Long Beach Press-Telegram from Knight-Ridder Inc. The P-T, as it is known, will “share resources,” Singleton says, with his three other local papers: the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune and Whittier Daily News.

Collectively, the circulation of those four suburban newspapers exceeds that of my second-favorite Los Angeles newspaper, the Daily News. The News is hotly rumored to be next on Singleton’s shopping list. When The Times’ George White asked him about the scuttlebutt, Singleton was quotably coy: “I only know what I read in the newspaper.”

Singleton, who owns 139 papers nationwide, the largest being the Denver Post, is known for cutting costs and squeezing profits out of this shrinking industry. The already lean P-T staff had a “Dilbert” moment when it was told that, though no layoffs were planned, employees will be required to interview for their jobs and not everyone will be rehired. It’s easy to imagine this bit of news marked with yellow highlighter and tacked on a Daily News bulletin board.

Few people, however, now think the Daily News or Singleton’s L.A. papers will go the way of the Her-Ex, at least not any time soon. But if L.A. ends up with fewer people pursuing the stories, it stands to reason that many important stories will be missed. Greater L.A. will still have its watchdogs, but the dogs may not have as many teeth.

There were a few days, of course, that I wished the Her-Ex didn’t have such bite.

*

The day the Her-Ex’s front page had sent me into a panic, I hadn’t been scooped in the conventional sense. (Not this time, anyway.) It wasn’t that my rival learned facts I had missed. It was more a matter of perception, of “spin.” And perception, of course, is as important as the reality.

That Metro Rail story emerged from a public meeting. The warning about potential cost overruns sounded very familiar, so I told the editors that the meeting produced nothing new.

The next day, the Her-Ex’s front page sent me on a search for the news I was sure--well, pretty sure--we had already published. I found nothing.

My boss called me into his office. In every line of work, I suspect, there is an art to covering your butt. Reporters typically scoff and say: “Oh, they hyped the hell out of that story. They missed this and that, and they got that other thing all wrong.”

This time, all I could mumble was I guess I blew it.

The boss, a compassionate sort, probably told his boss the Her-Ex hyped the hell out of that story, et cetera.

Days later, working on another Metro Rail story, eureka! I found three beautiful paragraphs about possible cost overruns were tucked at the end of an earlier 20-inch MTA story written by a colleague. Whether I’d read this, I couldn’t remember. But hey, we had reported it first.

Had my colleague underplayed the warnings? Didn’t look that way to me. The scenario was so iffy, so speculative that the treatment seemed appropriate. Still, the same info would later translate into fat Page 1 headlines in the Her-Ex. Same news, different spin.

Whether those iffy conditions ever came to pass and ran up subway costs, I don’t know. But we all know that Metro Rail would turn into a money pit.

So yeah, I guess I blew it. The Her-Ex didn’t hype that story at all.

*

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St. , Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.