Talk:Los Angeles Times

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This article still needs to cover some of the ill-fated expansion attempt (e.g. San Diego, East Coast editions). gK 12:17, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Liberal/Conservative

I think that the liberal/conservative opinions on this article really reflect the paper's history and current position. Anyone more knowlegable about it that can clean this up? --Mr Anthem 03:16, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand. What needs cleaning up? -Willmcw 03:51, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
I have been following the LAT for many years. It was once an extreme-rightwing paper, but in the 60's swung over to the extreme left. Former columnist Robert Scheer is described as a "liberal," but is fact a marxist. The paper's poor relationship with the local Jewish community and its aggressive attacks against community leaders during the al-Marayati campaign have contributed to its decline. Few on the Westside of the San Fernando Valley trust the paper any more and see little reason to subscribe.Scott Adler 02:25, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Many articles on newspapers now have a "Political leaning" section. It'd be great if that could be placed here as well. Xiner (talk) 01:37, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup issues

I find this article to be horribly written and poorly organized. I tried my hand at cleanup by merging sections together, but it still need a lot of work. For instance, I'm not quite sure what info needs to be put in under History. Since I've grown up with the LA Times, I'm concerned about my new age" bias; you know, including things that may be trivial in the entire scope of its history. But among the things that I think should be expanded:

  1. Putilzers. I know that the LA Times won some for their King/Drew coverage, and that they've been generally good at raising outrage and leading to action (such as the recent UCI furor and Skid Row)
  2. Writers. Bill Plackate mentioned, should there be more (like Steve Lopez), or should they be deleted
  3. "Decline." I know there's a lot more important stuff that I am unaware of.

There's a lot more but I can't think about it now. Hbdragon88 03:43, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm all for expanding the article, and those sound like good topics. Try to avoid deleting information if you can. Otherwise, be bold! Cheers, -Willmcw 08:31, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Here are some topics I'd like to see expanded, along with some supporting sources I'd like to mine. I'll try to chip them down a bit in the coming weeks, but anyone is welcome to join in.

  1. The Times coverage of Gov. Schwarzenegger.
    1. The Kennedy School of Government has nice write-up.
  2. How the purchase of Times-Mirror by Tribune Company has affected The Times
    1. The American Journalism Review wrote this up in length
  3. The internal turmoil during the Carroll-Baquet controversies
    1. This was recorded in pretty good detail by Frontline's News War
  4. The paper's future business strategy, at least pending any shakeups from Sam Zell
    1. It's not authoritative, but David Hiller's recent panel discussion on CSPAN might be informative.
  5. What is up with the likely new owner, Sam Zell?
    1. There's a Washington Post article about his opinions of online news.
    2. The New Yorker recently profiled him.
    3. A New York Times article about what the new owner means for the LAT, especially with the preceeding turmoil over Carroll and Baquet.
  6. The internal "Spring Street Project" that critiqued the paper's online efforts
    1. It looks like you can read a lot of it online at LAObserved.

I'd also like to suggest that the history section be reorganized so that it's divided by the different ownership teams (Chandlers->TribuneCo.->SamZell), with the lengthy Chandler era divided up by management teams (ex. publishers, generations of the Chandler family).

Then, if that's done chronologically, it might, or might not, make sense to work the controversies and other events into the timeline, rather than break them off into a different section.

Finally, it would be nice at some point in the future to flesh out the biography pages of many of the paper's big players, especially the current ones, like David Hiller and Jim O'Shea.Hollis I. Mulwray (talk) 02:39, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "The Times"

The Times is either the British paper (The Times) or on a national level, the New York Times.

I don't think that anyone would argue those points. However in California, "The Times" is the L.A. Times, and in the context of this article it is entirely appropriate to refer to the paper as "The Times" as a shortened version of its formal name. -Will Beback 22:13, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Of course. Why would anybody think otherwise? Shorthand terms are often used after the first use of the long version. GeorgeLouis 10:53, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spring Street Project

I've taken the liberty of adding the Spring Street Project paragraphs in the modern history section. I see that someone has disagreed with my decision to break off the authors into a separate page/list and dumped it at the bottom there. I'll defer to their judgement on whether or not the name list deserves its own page. Though now I wonder if perhaps the Spring Street Project itself should be broken off into another page, which would perhaps be a better home for that list. Is that a dumb idea? What I'm thinking is that maybe it would work to distill the three or four graphs I drafted into three or four sentences, and then refer the reader to a more detailed page on the Spring Street Project if they want more detailed information.Hollis I. Mulwray (talk) 07:35, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and made those changes. I distilled what I'd written yesterday about the Spring Street Project into one brief paragraph, and moved all the detailed stuff into a new page. Everybody cool with that? Hollis I. Mulwray (talk) 21:40, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Gropegate"

I created a new "Gropegate" sub-section, as I had a "scandal" to move in from United States journalism scandals - I have just pretty-much duplicated the text. Clearly the story needed to be mentioned here if it is mentioned there, and if it actually is a proper "scandal" (also I notice it has been requested above). I directly moved all the text, as, per an AfD, that longer-list "article" may be merged into the simpler list of linked scandal-titles here: List of United States journalism scandals. This new text will no-doubt need editing. --Matt Lewis (talk) 21:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)