Comments (8)

• Is entertainment coverage at newspapers immune? Not in its current incarnation. As a 25-year member of the industry who works with media nationally,is a lifelong newsaholic and longtime LA Times/NY Times reader, I’ve never understood why newspapers cover entertainment in a perfunctory – rather than creative – way, particularly as online entertainment outlets are now mainstream. Newspapers all rewrite the same wire story about Leno’s ratings decline, Paranormal Activity’s box office, etc. Version of these same stories can be found anywhere on TV and online – always faster and often better, particularly when the online writer is a longtime entertainment journalist and the newspaper writer just moved over from the parenting beat. The other problem: irrelevance of reviews. Not that we don’t want a decent-sized take on whether the tv show or film is good or bad. But the public isn’t interested in a critic spending 25 column inches on a project that’s going to vanish shortly…existentially rambling on about the film’s relevance to his/her life, the mood of the audience in the screening, the complicated real-life relationship between the producers. It’s masturbatory journalism and while it’s a great vanity outlet for the writer, it no longer appeals to the audience. Particularly since we’ve long ago IDed the critics who matter to us, and they may be across the country. As we’ve all learned by now, original reporting and creative writing are what attract readers, whether on a tiny website or the NY Times. People search for it, follow word of mouth to it and if the outlet’s smart, the readers will return often. Newspapers have to give up the me-too approach in the entertainment section and start enterprising work that will keep us dying to read what’s next.

  Comment by Lynnie — October 20, 2009 @ 2:29 pm  Reply to this post

• I’ve been reading the LA Times since I was a boy back in the early 1960s.

  The Times has become so bad I doubt it could become even worse. The movie reviews are a trainwreck; they now play musical chairs & whoever’s available gets the job. (I must have counted over TWELVE new reviewers in the last year! Each worse than the one before). Company Town is wholly biased reporting (see what they wrote about SAG’s National Board of Directors appointing David White as National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator, in yesterday’s paper).

  Even on the Front Page – the Photo Editor shows his contempt & bias by the pics he chooses to run. Notice how 99% of the photos of the president show him in an awkward moment…with mouth open, etc.?

  The Front Page piece on Letterman was so bad it that a Fact Checker would have yanked a quarter of the piece, with it’s wild assertions & assumptions.

  The Time is really Bird Cage Filler. It would be so nice if they would just fold up shop and leave the street corners free of their vending machines…

  - totally one-sided.

  Comment by Larry Brooks — October 20, 2009 @ 2:41 pm  Reply to this post

• I am sad to see anyone lose a job especially in journalism – but while I am sorry for Tina Daunt I won’t be sorry to see the end of Cause Celebre a piece of appalling suck up journalism – the newspaper equivalent of personality laundering.

  But while they are at it what about Betsy Sharkey the shockingly terrible film critic whose attack on Vince Vaughn today seemed to be based entirely on the fact that he was popular for things she didn’t like. The sad thing is, a really thoughtful piece on Vaughn and what the popularity of his persona signifies in current culture could have been very interesting. What Sharkey wrote should have been spiked as she was shown the door. So despite what I said above about people losing jobs Sharkey is a disaster and doesn’t deserve such a notable spot.

  By the way what about Vince Vaughn as the new Oscar host – surely he’s really the Bob Hop of our times.

  Comment by TJ — October 20, 2009 @ 5:40 pm  Reply to this post

  • Read the Betsy Sharkey column about Vince Vaughn and thought it was really USA TODAY-ish. Not saying that in a positive way.

    Diane Haithmann (hope I spelled correctly) is another Calendar section veteran who has been let go at the TIMES.

    Comment by Terry McCarty — October 20, 2009 @ 11:11 pm  Reply to this post

• Ironically I’ve blogged about this, the slow lingering death of the LA Times, in my blog. In 1988, the LAT peaked at 1.1 million copies circulation (daily). It is now around 700K or so. The Census Quickfacts on LA County has the population of LA County at 9.8 million (2008 estimate) and the White population at 75% (Hispanics don’t read English language newspapers, Blacks have their own historic newspapers). This equates to about 7.35 million in LA County alone, let alone the five county Metro Area (add Ventura, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernadino Counties). Temecula, Simi Valley, and other long-commute bedroom communities should be easy pickings for the LAT. As the potential readership has grown, the LAT has declined in readers. Meanwhile the WSJ continues to grow nationally.

  The LAT specifically passed on five major stories: the John Edwards story (Mickey Kaus scooped them — including a memo from a Times editor forbidding coverage of the story), the Tony Villaraigosa story including the sweetheart deal on the condo the Mayor’s squeeze got from a developer who was also a campaign backer, and the history of attractive female lobbyists and business owners having private meetings or junkets with the Mayor. Local blogger Luke Ford scooped the LAT on this, which refused to cover the story. Add to this the suppression of the video of then-Senator Obama and Wife at the Rashid Khalidi testimonial dinner (allegations of anti-Semitic remarks and reactions by the Obamas) and the lack of any coverage on the NEA and ACORN scandals, and its clear the LAT is in the propaganda not news business.

  The WSJ based in NYC routinely out-performs the LAT in business coverage of Hollywood, and analysis, and Deadline Hollywood Daily scoops the LAT in breaking news. The LAT is the mouthpiece of polite, moneyed, (but I repeat myself) private-jet liberal society of Malibu and West Hollywood. It actively suppresses news. No wonder its dying and its coverage will not be missed.

  Comment by whiskey — October 20, 2009 @ 5:59 pm  Reply to this post

• Newspapers did themselves in by refusing to adapt to progress. Hollywood is next.

  Comment by HGWells — October 20, 2009 @ 9:54 pm  Reply to this post

• Outside of NY and LA, entertainment coverage at news organizations has been gutted if not eliminated altogether, from local TV to dailies to alt weeklies. The whole country gets the same handful of wire reports or otherwise follows bloggers.

  Comment by Anonymous — October 21, 2009 @ 7:51 am  Reply to this post

• When the Los Angeles Times reduces employee headcount, it is taking one of the two major cost cutting actions used by the long term incompetent news executives who mismanage this newspaper. The other big cost cutter is to reduce the number of pages in the newspaper, to save on newsprint costs. Until 3 years ago, investors in newspapers like the Times expected the paper to generate 30% business profits. Those days are gone for good, between the advertising declines and Internet competition that has slashed income from high profit areas like help wanted ads and for sale items like used cars.

  When Sam Zell bought the Times and other Tribune newspapers for the equivalent of a near no money down home mortgage, he jammed the Times by overloading its parent company with debt, forcing the Tribune Company to file for bankruptcy. Businesses in bankruptcy have a habit of laying off employees. There is no talk now about the Employee Stock Ownership Plan CEO Zell set up to unload the Tribune Company onto its employees down the line. Zell is now a larger version of the homeowner with a home mortgage much higher than the current value of his home who walks away, mailing the house keys to the bank holding the mortgage.

  The article below describes in greater detail why almost all American newspapers are in a bad way now.

  http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/10/fat-newspaper-profits-are-history.html

  Comment by Anonymous — October 22, 2009 @ 6:09 am  Reply to this post