LA Times Follows NY Times’ Lead? New Movie Editor With No Showbiz Experience?

COMMENTS (14)

• Newsosaurs is sooo right! They are like ancient at the times! It’s really frustrating. I have MAJOR NEWS PUBLICATION credits and when I once pitched an editor and inside Hollywood story, she literally told me to write it in as a comment on their website!
  I was like… W.T.F!?
  When one of the columnists a few years ago mentioned a RADIO SHOW in her column, my eyes bulged out of my head at their complete GEEZER irrelevance. And geezer has nothing to do with genetic age but everything to do with being plugged into relevant popular culture.

  it’s especially frustrating to all the writers out there who have bylines and film experience. What gives?

  Comment by anon — Thursday July 15, 2010 @ 2:49am PDT  Reply to this post

• Nail on the head (maybe, in the coffin). Just read a review of weekend’s big release from a major Midwest daily by a guy being paid big $ to do so, and still have no idea if it’s worth seeing, when it opens, what it does well, poorly or imaginatively. Guy basicly gives out gold stars. There’s two column feet of print plus graphics for an unreadable article.

  Comment by Joe — Thursday July 15, 2010 @ 4:53am PDT  Reply to this post

• The news room old guard is protecting its own. They all know newspaper readership is going down the drain, so what difference does it make if a clueless reporter gets the job. All they need to do is hold on until government subsidies kick in.

  Comment by DGA — Thursday July 15, 2010 @ 8:32am PDT  Reply to this post

• And the Fed Gov’t is talking about a tax on the internet to “save” newspapers.

  Save them from themselves, evidently.

  Comment by LPB — Thursday July 15, 2010 @ 8:45am PDT  Reply to this post

• actually, i believe julie worked at the hollywood reporter for a few months. as julie bowles.

  Comment by stephanie — Thursday July 15, 2010 @ 9:02am PDT  Reply to this post

• The LATimes is great for checking the weather forecast.

  Comment by esb — Thursday July 15, 2010 @ 9:19am PDT  Reply to this post

• Considering that “This American Life” has about a dozen of it’s stories optioned, not to mention two seasons on Showtime, and it just happens to be a radio program shows exactly how much you know. Also David Edelstein regularly does reviews on NPR, I’m pretty sure he’s about as irrelevant as it gets in your opinion.

  Frankly, with comments like that I wouldn’t want to work with you either regardless of your “major news publication” credits.

  Comment by JJA — Thursday July 15, 2010 @ 10:11am PDT  Reply to this post

• Who in their right mind would want a job in a dying medium? The L.A. Times let their book review be run in the ground by letting semi-literate bloggers start writing their reviews. Listen, they should be glad anyone wants to work for them.

  Comment by Chandler Hill — Thursday July 15, 2010 @ 11:48am PDT  Reply to this post

• They don’t see “Hollywood” as a real industry, and so they don’t think they need journalists with actual knowledge to cover it. As far as they’re concerned it’s just fluff articles about summer box office and celebrities. They could write nothing BUT fluff and think they’re doing a great job. It’s pathetic.

  Comment by of course — Thursday July 15, 2010 @ 12:45pm PDT  Reply to this post

• All it does is over and over and over again show the entertainment industry that they don’t care while at the same time begging for their money to support their newspapers.

  With the exception of a few reporters over there like John Horn and Claudia Eller and Joe Flint, etc., the Los Angeles Times is a big joke.

  When I worked there and wondered why an exclusive story didn’t run, he said to me, “Well, we don’t always like to be first.”

  Another entertainment editor asked me how to spell Steven Spielberg’s name and how to refer to him (“as a director or producer or writer or what?” I said “Academy Award winning filmmakers is just fine.”) The same editor wondered if the passing of Lew Wasserman was a big deal.

  Another time, we were sitting in a meeting where they tried to explain to two very seasoned marketing people at a production company that the redesign of the newspaper was being done to draw in a younger audience of readers. How young, they asked. The editor answered, “12 to 16.”

  Does anything more need to be said?

  Comment by Anita Busch — Thursday July 15, 2010 @ 5:12pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Yes, what really is needed is the hiring of people with no journalism or reporting skills, a knowledge of Worpdress, a desire to turn all newspapers in TMZ and a desperate need to be liked by movie stars.

  Comment by Hard Candy — Thursday July 15, 2010 @ 10:11pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Julie (Makinen) Bowles is a lot more seasoned than you think. Hello, she worked at The Hollywood Reporter in 2000 or 2001. Perhaps even during Anita Busch’s tenure. She probably blocked it out of her mind, as many of us have.

  Comment by Beth — Friday July 16, 2010 @ 4:06am PDT  Reply to this post

• Isn’t Julie Makinen one of the plaintiffs in the big class action lawsuit filed against Tribune?

  Comment by Steve Andrews — Saturday July 17, 2010 @ 3:32pm PDT  Reply to this post

  • http://www.scribd.com/doc/25227582/Zell-Amended-Complaint

    Comment by JacksonRAntonio — Tuesday July 20, 2010 @ 10:28pm PDT  Reply to this post