LAT Switching from Covering Working Issues to Celebrities and Style

The Los Angeles Times is systematically moving away from coverage of labor, work and class issues and putting more resources into following celebrities and style. Apparently, the editors see no room at the paper for covering issues specifically effecting working Californians, unless they "work" like Paris Hilton. The paper is in turmoil and in the wrong direction. The LA Observer has done an excellent job charting the departures from the paper and the individual reporters motivations.

Budget pressures are the stated reason for ending Rick Wartzman's weekly California & Co. column in the Business section. But as usual with the L.A. Times these days, there's a backstory or two going around. Wartzman, you may recall, got the column when he left the paper abruptly in December to become a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. Until then, he was viewed as a rising star, the former editor in charge of the Business staff who was tapped to reinvent the paper's Sunday magazine as West. Friends say he left ten months into the new magazine's run because it was clear that, after LAT editor in chief Dean Baquet left for the New York Times, West would be gutted by associate editor John Montorio. The column was apparently a negotiated part of Wartzman's departure.

No longer will we have Wartzman to advocate for a "real, honest debate about implementing a citywide living wage." Not only are we losing his weekly column, but the Sunday magazine is going in the opposite direction from Wartzman's revamping attempts.

Now newsroom gossip says the Montorio plan for West is to ditch the literary California-centric format and re-invent yet again as a style and celebrity-driven magazine, perhaps with less-than-weekly frequency. Lennie Laguire, the former Calendar editor who took the buyout, is said to be working on the redesign on a contract. All the staff writers, including Pulitzer winner J.R. Moehringer, and many of the editors who used to work for West left last week on the buyout or were reassigned. Top Times editors might also have seen a third strike on Wartzman's resume: he co-authored a book with Mark Arax, the Armenian American reporter who has engaged in a public difference of opinion with managing editor Doug Frantz.

The new managing editor is the source of this problem. He has systematically moved away from coverage of hard news and towards infotainment. The paper is losing Pulitzer prize winners and substituting gossip writers. The biggest losers are working Californians who now have one less news source for coverage of issues that effect their daily lives.

They can't be entertained, if they can't afford the newspaper subscription.