Extra! Extra! Or just news you use
Re “Advice for a troubled Times,” Current, Nov. 7
I agree with Harry Chandler’s assessment, and I, for one, would be happy to buy into ownership of the paper I have loved ever since moving to California in 1967.
When I lived in Guadalajara for a year in the mid-1970s, I couldn’t afford to buy the Sunday Times, but I would walk to the newsstand outside the post office and lust over the front page. To me, the paper didn’t symbolize only news from home but home itself.
I’ve been in San Diego County for 22 years and still rely on The Times every day. Please put me down for $1,000.
MARILYN CAMPBELL
Oceanside
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Chandler’s suggestion to focus The Times more on local than on international news in the future would reduce the quality of the paper. It was already bad to drop the stock market tables. Some seniors now read just the Wall Street Journal to get their stock news and would cancel their Times’ subscriptions if it weren’t for the international information.
International news is the reason I have read The Times for 40 years. I like to know what goes on in Tibet, Africa or somewhere else. We have enough local TV news. Don’t go local; you’ll be dead, and I shall lose my beloved Los Angeles Times.
ANITA LUTT
Huntington Park
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Chandler overlooks a critical fact: Most people just don’t read anymore. I thought The Times’ series about the Kaiser Permanente organ transplant fiasco was riveting, but I couldn’t find anyone in my office to discuss this with because nobody reads the newspaper. This isn’t merely a problem with the delivery mechanism of the news (digital versus print). There has been a huge shift in how much written information people really want.
In this age, information is instant, superficial and ephemeral. Well-researched and factual articles that used to define excellence in journalism may continue to be passed over by many, and The Times will have its work cut out for it in a culture that is transforming the value of the written word.
LAURA HUGHES
Irvine
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I had the great pleasure of working for former Publisher Otis Chandler in the late 1960s and early ‘70s and watched the amazing growth and transition of the Times Mirror Co. and the Los Angeles Times. If new owners come on board, maybe the people of Los Angeles can persuade them to hire Harry Chandler as publisher and columnist Steve Lopez as editor.
The idea for the “exclusively charitable” Los Angeles Times Community Owners LLC is great. Count me in as an investor.
JOYCE WALTER
Pacific Palisades
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Chandler’s suggestion of an “a la carte newspaper” makes perfect sense. I have bought The Times at a newsstand every day for the last six months. My daily ritual is to immediately drop into my recycle bin the classifieds, Sports, comics and New Homes sections.
I would gladly subscribe to a paper that’s tailored to my interests and reduces waste. I would support legislation to require this kind of waste reduction or at least provide tax incentives to newspapers that carry out such programs.
FRANK BERNHARDT
Burbank