In the Dark Age of Zell, you hold onto the hope that the rot won’t creep.
I’ve tried to stick by the LA Times during my five years in Los Angeles, because, mainly, what else have I got? (No, the answer is not this or any other LA blog.) So far I’ve succeeded. I still get daily delivery of the print edition because that’s how I like my first dose of news in the morning.
Always a fan of the tactile experience of newsprint, it provides an effective filtering device as my eyes dart around the page. From headlines to articles that I begin to read, then skim and finally abandon as my eyes dart to the left or right and glance at an ad that all of a sudden seems more interesting, then back again to the last paragraph or maybe to another headline or article, it’s my brain’s process for sorting through information that is poorly mimicked by internet search engines. Some may recognize this as ADD but it’s not, really. I am my own Google.
I’ve stood by, fumed and adjusted as the print LAT has been chipped away and shaved down to reflect corporate overlords’ profit/loss projections. Maybe I don’t really need a TV guide, Sunday magazine, book review, opinion section, weekend guide and a slew of their best writers, all cast aside in the last few years during the Dark Age of Zell.
Apparently I still need many, many advice columns, horoscopes, comics, celebrity real estate coverage, willy-nilly movement of sections to different days of the week for undecipherable reasons and numerous little reminders that there is stuff in the online version that’s not in print. Aside from a rare glance at two or three of their “blogs” (I’ll play nice and use their term here and not, say, “online articles,”) I’ve never given much of it a look. Once I’ve read the print edition, that completes my daily LAT experience.
Still, LAT has topnotch hard news writers, but lately, whenever I read their stories, I wonder if their days are numbered too. It’s like watching a sick plant die, one leaf at a time. You hold onto the hope that the rot won’t creep; you enjoy the greenery while you can. Continue reading LA Times print cutbacks AGAIN →