After 10 years, hundreds of bylines and some of the best experiences of my professional life, I'm leaving the Los Angeles Times at the end of this month, along with 56 newsroom colleagues. We each have our reasons for taking the latest buyout offer from Chicago-based Tribune Company. In my case, the decision grew out of frustration with the paper's coverage of working people and organized labor, and a sad realization that the situation won't change anytime soon.

It's awkward to criticize an old friend, which I still consider the Times to be, but I think the question of how mainstream journalists deal with the working class is important and deserves debate. There may be no better setting in which to examine the issue: The Los Angeles region is defined by gaping income disparities and an enormous pool of low-wage immigrant workers, many of whom are pulled north by lousy, unstable jobs. It's also home to one of the most active and creative labor federations in the country. But you wouldn't know any of that from reading a typical issue of the L.A. Times, in print or online. Increasingly anti-union in its editorial policy, and celebrity -- and crime-focused in its news coverage, it ignores the economic discontent that is clearly reflected in ethnic publications such as La Opinion.

Of course, I realize that revenues are plummeting and newsroom staffs are being cut across the country. But even in these tough financial times, it's possible to shift priorities to make Southern California's largest newspaper more relevant to the bulk of people who live here. Here's one idea: Instead of hiring a "celebrity justice reporter," now being sought for the Times website, why not develop a beat on economic justice? It might interest some of the millions of workers who draw hourly wages and are being squeezed by soaring rents, health care costs and debt loads.

As a media worker, and knowing how many media workers are on this forum, I'd like to start a dialogue about it.

The second largest newspaper chain in the U.S., Knight Ridder, was just bought by a smaller, upcoming newspaper group, McClatchy. Several of the properties will be promptly be resold, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Jose Mercury News most predominant among them. Here is a story about the Mercury News, which is famous/infamous for their story linking the cocaine trade and the US government but also their stellar Silicon Valley coverage.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews...ss/14092249.htm


By way of full disclosure, I have a checkered history with Knight Ridder. They owned one of the papers that locked me out, and I spent four years chasing their CEO and their board members around the country trying to get justice for our workers. KR was always considered the most "just" companies, but the strikers never thought so. The decent journalism practiced by KR papers are almost a mistake - but to give them props, they were the only outlet with any interest in getting out the truth on the Iraq War. They caved on the Florida recount but whatever.

I attended several of their annual shareholder meetings and the number one question, like all corporate entities is HOW DO WE MAKE MORE MONEY? Not how can we do better journalism, how can we better serve the communities. Finally, the higher return people forced this sale, and I don't think it's going to be good for journalism or the country.

Media ownership is a smaller and smaller club. In the UK as well as here. Good or bad? Beneficial for consumers or shareholders?

I always believed in public service broadcasting, but to be honest I begin to wonder whether it’s worth defending.

The Guild today ratified its tentative agreement with The Blade. More than 85% of our members voted, and the contract was approved by a nearly two-to-one margin.

The approval means that all unions of the Toledo Council of Newspaper Unions have ratified the new agreements and that the lockout and boycott will end.

I think it's not only worth defending - it's our civic duty to defend it. As evidence, I offer the way the BBC winds up the Tories. (Worth it on those grounds alone if you ask me.) But also, don't forget that the cash isn't only spent on TV - BBC radio is absolutely superb, from the World Service to the digital channels. (With the possible exception of Radio1 which was always crap but at least it had Peel.) But the undoubted excellence of the BBC website now makes public service broad- and webcasting as essential. New developments like podcasts and listen again add up to a wide ranging and up to the minute service.

I think it's a vital part of our democracy and really is one of the few aspects of UK life that is genuinely envied everywhere.

Five or ten years ago I would have agreed with you entirely; but the BBC's new approach to political journalism (either Paxmanite confrontationalism or Nick Robinson's obsession with personality) has left me disillusioned with it.
And the constant promotion of digital TV (and CBeebies in particular - as if kids didn't spend enough time in front of telly already) annoys me.

You forgot to mention the continued employment, at greatly inflated expense, of Jonathan Ross.

If it wasn't for BBC radio and the interweb site, I might agree with you. And then again, BBC 3 and 4 are generally interesting TV stations and News 24 is a space station ahead of CNN. So, despite J. Ross, I want to defend the BBC.

I always said that when the BBC got into digital broadcasting I'd sign up. We've got freeview and it's good. And it only cost us £50 for the box. The paying for the FA cup or whatever arguments seem to have, thankfully, gone now. I think the BBC is now concentrating on improving its product. Good thing too.

I'd pay double for Planet Earth

How behind the times are you Andy - it has been for months!

Has it?

I was actually making the point to our refusenik colleague Mr JBoyd that there is some good stuff on freeview. So there.

Couldn't agree more about Ross. And then there's the appalling Graham Norton. And Jeremy Clarkson.
Don't have digital so I can't comment on BBC 3 & 4 though it annoys me that they seem to have more half-decent Telly on than the non-digital channels.

The Detroit Free Press announced today a first-of-its-kind plan in the struggling U.S. newspaper industry — emphasizing more online delivery of news and information and cutting back home delivery days.

Detroit Media Partnership CEO Dave Hunke, publisher of the Free Press, said that starting in spring 2009, both the Free Press and the Detroit News — also operated by the partnership — would deliver to homes only on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, the heaviest days for advertising and the most popular papers for readers. But the newspapers will remain available seven days a week at stores, newsstands and coin boxes across Michigan.

Hunke said the moves would allow both papers to maintain their news-gathering forces, shift resources to their Web sites, develop new ways to deliver information digitally, enhance multimedia offerings — and, for the foreseeable future, keep Detroit one of the nation’s few remaining two-newspaper towns.