Another Newsroom Martyr

...Since 2000, the Times has been owned by the Tribune Company of Chicago...

...The Times newsroom was a quiet, comfortable sinecure—the Velvet Coffin, in local parlance—for correspondents at work on long-term "projects" and writers who produced annual, or semi-annual, stories...

...There have been quite a few lately, and with the crisis of the newspaper business, there will be more...

...Then there is ideology...

...Or, if he prefers, there are dozens of agreeable institutions—the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, the Poynter Institute for journalists in sunny Florida, the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Govern-ment—where the Al Hunts, Geneva Overholsers, and Ted Koppels of the world meet to discuss the future of the press, and sip Kool-Aid...

...This does not, of course, apply to every Times staffer—there are plenty of excellent writers and edi-tors—but it is a fair generalization...

...I suspect he has been deluged with offers to edit elsewhere...

...While the Times built its reputation on long, self-indulgent, prize-minded series and "stories behind the news," the Tribune prospered by emphasizing comprehensive local coverage...

...I was a member of the Times editorial staff in the 1980s, and still recall with wonder my first day on the job, when then-publisher Tom Johnson announced a six-month moratorium on first-class—I repeat, first-class—air travel for reporters...

...But the version of the story presented in the media—idealistic Times editorial staff struggling to maintain quality in defiance of philistine bean counters at the Tribune Company—is standard, and deeply misleading, press mythology...

...The most recent episode involves Dean Baquet, editor of the Los Angeles Times for the past year...

...As with most giant metropolitan newspapers, the Times regarded the suburbs of Los Angeles as benighted appendages to the city—roughly the equivalent of flyover country—and its condescension, not to say contempt, did not go unnoticed...

...Whether this is a Good or Bad Thing depends on your point of view...

...Whether FitzSimons is a corporate visionary or a dumb businessman we may never know...

...and it is probable that, by the end of the year, the Tribune, the Times, and other properties—including several newspapers and television stations—will have new owners...

...The reflexive leftism of the Los Angeles Times is typical of American newspapers, and Southern California is politically Democratic...

...Attend the annual meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (I am a former member) and there are two persistent, equally suicidal, themes: how to compete with television and the Internet, and how to promote racial quotas in the newsroom...

...by Philip Terzian Apart from the death of a journalist, the saddest story for anyone in the news business— and the one most likely to waste expensive newsprint—is the martyrdom of an editor at the hands of his proprietor...

...In effect, the Tribune Company has sought to instill some consumer-minded habits at the Times, which could never successfully penetrate the San Fernando Valley or neighboring Orange County...

...Dean Baquet lost his job this month because he and his publisher, who was also fired, publicly defied the instructions of the Tribune Company chairman, Dennis FitzSimons, to trim costs by cutting staff...

...were bound to collide...

...As for Dean Baquet, not to worry: Defenestration at the hands of Dennis FitzSimons is a shrewd career move...

...and those readers who might actually purchase a newspaper—perhaps even subscribe to one—are routinely derided, upbraided, and ignored...

...but his presumption that the Times editorial staff is bloated and chronically oblivious to the needs of its customers is a reasonable presumption, and has been for years...

...The problem is that the newspaper business—and "business" here is emphasized—is largely in the thrall of editorial departments: Publishers dare not contradict the wisdom of editors, and newsrooms should never be polluted by the presence of advertising or marketing staffers...

...But the fact that 56 percent of potential subscribers are liberals (for want of a better term) means that 44 percent are not—and in a metropolitan area of 13 million people, that's a lot of potential subscribers to exasperate and drive into the welcoming arms of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the blogs...

...If the long-term survival of newspapers is at stake, it will not be secured by fat and happy newsrooms, or writers and editors incessantly addressing themselves to other writers and editors...

...Now, shareholders are demanding the sale of the company, in whole or in part...

...and while that merger/acquisition was widely hailed at the time, it came at the height of the dot-com bubble and has suffered from the subsequent travails of American newspapers...

...So while it may be poignant to read about the editor of the Times standing up to those profit-minded meanies in Chicago, the Tribune Company is on to something...

...The Los Angeles Times , I was told, was a writer's newspaper—the very antithesis, logic would suggest, of a reader's newspaper...

...The level of anger and indignation in the newsroom could not have been deeper had he instituted a drastic pay cut...

...Both the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times have lost circulation and advertising revenue, and the Tribune Company stock price has been anemic...

...But as circulation plummets and advertisers flee, the front pages of America's dailies are modeled on the chaos of USA Today...

...In retrospect, it is apparent that the corporate cultures of the two empires were ill-suited to one another, and that Chicago and L.A...

...Philip Terzian is the Books & Arts editor of The Weekly Standard...

...This was a frustration to Times management, but hardly a mystery...

...A half-century after the death of afternoon newspapers, and one decade into the Internet, we may locate the future of daily print journalism roughly halfway between the Times and the Tribune: leaner products, appealing to older, more affluent readers, emphasizing local news but with quality national and foreign coverage, and culture and features, to prevent a wholesale exodus to the Internet...

...The first, of course, is impossible, and the second is irrelevant...