Turmoil at The Times

Re “For 50 cents, we’re yours,” column, July 16

Steve Lopez nails the absurdity (as he usually does) of The Times owners’ apparent business plan to save the paper by continuously cutting back on staff and resources, and thus the scope and depth of its content. Readers will indeed “flee in droves if the paper shrinks to the size of a bubble gum wrapper.”

If Tribune Co. Chief Executive Sam Zell has a genuine interest in saving this tremendously important civic enterprise, he might take the advice of Pixar’s John Lasseter in a recent Times article extolling that company’s unparalleled Hollywood success story: “Quality is the best business plan of all.”

Kent Wilson

Hollywood

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I am not sure what planet Lopez lives on, but anyone who has read The Times for the last 19 years knows its reporters are politically biased. So just saying, “It’s also the most objective, despite competing claims from the chatter-happy fringes that the paper is either too liberal or too conservative,” does not make it true.

I am not happy to see people lose their jobs no matter their political beliefs. So please take your head out of the clouds and really read the paper objectively -- it still has a political bias. Your remaining readers are too smart for you to try and blow that one by them.

Joel Mascitelli

Corona Del Mar

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It was with deep anger and sadness that I read Lopez’s tribute to the newspaper business in general and The Times in particular -- anger at the Chandler family, Tribune and Zell for creating the current sorry state of affairs at The Times, and sadness for the fine journalists who are now losing their jobs.

Steve Harvey, Donna Deane and all the others will be sorely missed by readers who still value the printed word and like to get their news delivered to their door, and we are many.

A bargain at 50 cents indeed. Sam Zell, are you listening?

Kathy Barreto

Culver City