Jamie Court - Eastie Editors Are Colonizing L.A.

[realFedUp]

(of course the Times has looked like the Catholic Reporter
lately...)

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-tent24apr24,1,6991704.story

Eastie Editors Are Colonizing L.A.
By Jamie Court
Jamie Court, president of the Santa Monica-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, is author of "Corporateering."

April 24, 2005

Outside the Tent is an occasional feature in which the Los Angeles Times invites an outside critic to lament as deplorable some aspect of a Southern California newspaper whose book fest is bigger than any on that other coast.

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The Los Angeles Times suffers from the same syndrome. The newspaper's East Coast focus increasingly comes at the expense of Western voices and perspectives. Looking east for direction may be natural for the former New York Times managers now in charge in Los Angeles. Transplants include Managing Editor Dean Baquet, Deputy Managing Editor John Montorio and Editorial Page Editor Andrés Martinez. Editor John Carroll is also an East Coaster, from the Baltimore Sun. But the L.A. Times should strive to be more than the "New York Times West."

Pursuing the ghost of the Gray Lady — the Eastern icon of newspapers — could be a worthy endeavor if it simply meant giving reporters the time and money to do stories right at a time when the newsroom budget is under fire from its Chicago-based owners. The East Coast editorial mentality I take issue with is a high-brow view that caters to an elite intelligentsia, as opposed to the more populist Western view that life and news center on real people and everyday concerns. In the hard-news arena, for instance, it seems to me that the eastward view of editors has resulted in national and international news displacing local and California stories.

The first change came years ago with the disappearance of the Page 3 state section in favor of international news — the New York Times model. Even now, with the world watching Arnold Schwarzenegger, state news is increasingly relegated to the paper's bowels. Despite having the fifth-largest economy in the world, California isn't the leading character on Page 1. On most days, as I count, only one local or state story appears on A1. Often that Metro story appears below the fold. Column One stories — those features that usually run along the left side of A1 — also show the disproportionate emphasis on national and international issues and events.

snip

And the editorial and opinion pages are dominated by East Coast thinkers. Op-Ed Editor Nick Goldberg is from New York. He and Martinez report to Michael Kinsley, who was dean of East Coast liberal political cognoscenti as editor of the New Republic and Harper's and now commutes from his home in Seattle. Their problem is over-relying on Eastern viewpoints on the opinion pages that are the only places in the newspaper where Angelenos and Californians can speak in essays.

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