Bad signs of The Times
Yesterday, the LA Times ran a front-page obit headlined “Milton Wexler: 1908-2000.” I thought, “Why is the Times profiling people who died seven years ago? What’s the news angle?” The lead channeled the quintesssenial New Yorker-type lead, i.e., you had no idea where you were or what the story was (it was an anecdote about the dead man’s wife, 40 years ago). The kicker on the jump page (A14) read, again, “Milton Wexler: 1908-2000.” Finally, in graf 5, I learned that Mr. Wexler had died on Friday.
Shout out to the LA Times: Guys, it’s 2007.
I understand that, well, this is a typo. But it’s on your front page. And if Mr. Wexler was indeed “a towering figure in disease research,” as you say, a man whose death warrants a front-page story, then I would assume that someone had read this story and at least the on-screen mockups before sending it to print. I also doubt this was a last-minute drop-in, given that the great man had perished almost a full week before.
And before I go on, let me state again: I love newspapers. This is why this is so distressing and why it seems I keep kicking the cripple.
This sad affair reminded me of the time that Allen Ginsberg died and the Times, on its front-page obit, misspelled his name. Rule number one of journalism: Get people’s names right.
In today’s Times the sad saga continues in a different way. The paper’s editor and its publisher killed a much-ballyhooed guest-edited opinion section scheduled to run this Sunday because they now decided that a perceived conflict of interest might exist; the would-have-been guest editor, film producer Brian Grazer, is represented by the publicity firm headed by the girlfriend of the Times’ heretofore opinion editor. Here’s the story, which covers the resignation of that editor, Andres Martinez, in response.
I’m not interested in the romantic lives of newspaper editors (various 1940’s screwball comedies be damned), but I am greatly interested in the health of newspapers, especially with regard to conflict of interest. The (Los Angeles) Daily News has what I call a “roll your own” section in which people online “report” their own “events,” with many of them selected for a special print edition delivered with the paper. (Which we also get.) I don’t want people reporting on themselves in what I can only imagine would be a relentlessly positive light. Even at this stage of the decline of newspapers I hold some hope that a true reporter would at least try to report objectively. (As part of full disclosure, the Daily News section editor called me no fewer than six times last year asking me to write pieces related to my own local political activity for the paper. I demurred. Would our political club have benefited from the coverage? Sure. But I was part of forming the club because I was distressed by the ethical breaches of various government officials; to me that precludes my involving the club itself in ethical breaches. Others may disagree and plan their own route; I stuck to my preferred path.)
With regard to the LA Times opinion-section story, I’m with the editor and the publisher on this one. The Times can’t afford even the perception of conflict of interest with the business community. It took the paper years to recover from the Staples “advertising section scandal,” in which advertorial was presented as editorial in a special section devoted utterly to the arena, in a deal that included profit sharing between a newspaper and a major advertiser (!). And actually, some of us would argue that the paper has never recovered.
Last September in Fast Company, a columnist extolled the virtues of newspapers and forecast a robust future, albeit in a different delivery format. (And I think that’s probably right, at least short-term.) In the current issue (no link available yet), someone lays out an entirely different prescription: public non-profit status.
Whatever is going to happen with newspapers, they aren’t going to much resemble what’s currently landing on my doorstep. Given the recent error-prone Los Angeles Times, that may be a good thing. Or it may just be far, far worse.
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:18 am
You READ newspapers?
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:30 am
It’s even worse. Many of my early plays actually revolve around newspapers. Which means they’re now period pieces.
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:59 am
My husband and I have been noticing the frequent typos in the LA Times over the last few months. I’m so incensed when I see them, I’ve been tempted a number of times to start keeping track and send them a list of silly mistakes: photos with incorrect captions, misspelled words, misuse of words, etc. I wonder what has been happening to the proofreading of this newspaper lately.
Also, the problem of buried leads has been endemic for years. I know whenever I read that paper that I’m going to have to skim about one-third the article before I get to the lead. It seems that a lot of those writers are frustrated novelists. I prefer the New York Times, but don’t have time to read two newspapers a day and I do like getting the local news in the LA Times.
So, for now, since it’s the only game in town, I’ll continue to read the LA Times. But they might be able to use a little competition to keep them on their toes.
(And yes, I too am one of those people who still likes to drink my cup of coffee and read the morning paper at the dining room table with my family. Can’t do that with my computer – yet.)
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:21 pm
It’s not only newspapers that have been having error issues. I read This Old House magazine and have noticed that the corrections area has had two or three items each month. A long while ago I had a subscription to Sports Illustrated and noticed then there were factual errors posted each month.
I understand that in some stories the writer can get a technical point wrong. After all, the writer may be knowledgeable in a subject but not an expert. But being wrong about the year a person died or having typos is to me a sign of sloppiness and an uncaring atmosphere at the work place.
Paul
March 23rd, 2007 at 2:44 pm
A couple of months ago my local gas station quit carrying the San Diego Union Tribune. It had been fun keeping tabs on far away San Diego, but it was too good to last, being as we now are on the absolute fringe of that metro area’s influence.
So, what to do for the visceral newspaper and lunch ritual addiction? I tried a few issues each of the Press Enterprise and the local version of the North County Times but found them too provincial for even my tastes. At last I turned to the LA Times, flagship of the West and voice of the Promised Land.
I’ve been reading it most days since and I’ve got to tell you, it’s amazing, and I use that word in its full import, not the watered down colloquial version, that any major metropolitan daily on this planet has shrunk and shriveled to this level of editorial incompetence.
The international and national reporting is so predictable you don’t need to read past the byline to know the perspective of the content. The level, or I should say, paucity, of depth and development is comparable to the student newspapers of my youth. Even the local coverage, the bread and butter of a daily’s reason for existence, as reflected in the previous posts, reads like the output of first month interns.
I think there’s a solid business model out there for an .alt cut at most things retail, including news. It has to be old school, full-touch and over the top service centric, but it is viable as an alternative to the dumbed-down big box materialism delivery platform. A maximum service oriented news delivery platform, retaining the newsprint model, may be possible, even profitable.
But you’d need to get the death year correct.
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:59 pm
The gist of a story being buried surprises me. When I used to write freelance for The Burlington County Times, my editor’s main piece of advice was “Save the best for first”. That was partly because, if a last minute ad came in and they needed the space, my column would get cut from the bottom up. But he also explained that the rule applied to news because many readers didn’t finish the entire article.
As far as language being misused, I can only echo the response of a schoolchild on the Simpsons who failed English and said in disbelief, “That’s unpossible!”
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:12 pm
This from today’s LA Times story on Andres Martinez’s resignation:
“Much of the paper’s staff focused on Martinez’s actions and worried about the paper’s reputation. But Martinez said others were not beyond reproach.
In his parting blog, Martinez protested against “some ostensibly objective news reporters and editors who lobby for editorials to be written on certain subjects, or who have suggested that our editorial page coordinate more closely with the newsroom’s agenda.”
He said that editors from the newspaper’s California section had attempted to interest him in writing editorials about subjects that their reporters had covered. Martinez, who previously worked for the New York Times editorial pages, called that a shocking transgression that would not have happened at other major newspapers.
The news editors said they were simply trying to direct the editorial pages to subjects of interest to readers. They said they understood that the actual content of the pieces would have been left to the opinion writers.”
Perhaps this lies at the heart of the dilemma of newspapers in today’s society. On one hand, they’d love to hold high the mantle of protectors and defenders of a sacred public trust – the truth. On the other hand, as my former journalist friends like to remind me, “it’s a business and always has been.”
I can’t help but smile at the “shocking transgression” of news editors and reporters lobbying for editorials more closely aligned with the newsroom agenda. A transgression, Mr. Martinez maintains, “that would not have happened at other major newspapers.”
I can’t imagine it not happening at any other major newspaper. Every single newspaper I’ve ever read in this country and overseas, big and small, reflects a nearly perfect symmetry between the focus of the news crew and the editorial team, to say nothing of the advertising sales department. The biggest shock is when the editorial page content is out of sync by a day or two with the content stream of the news room.
And isn’t it refreshing that the LA Times has finally come out of the closet and admitted that the news room has an agenda?
What’s next, the New York Times admitting to bias?
March 24th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
Wait. It’s not 2000? Uh-oh, I got some ‘splainin’ to do.
March 24th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
[…] The LA Times’ Tim Rutten lauds the decision to kill the questionable edition of Opinion to have been guest-edited by Brian Grazer, which we talked about here. The gist of Rutten’s piece: […]