Joe Scott 3: The Body Politic

Dean Baquet and the Big Squeeze

04 November 2005 |permalink | email article

Dean Baquet, the formidable new Los Angeles Times editor, spoke with refreshing candor this week at a Zocalo forum in Little Tokyo about guiding one of the nationís most influential dailies, and struggling to maintain editorial content while coping with the Tribune Company, its Chicago-based owner and most prestigious asset.

(Ken Auletta, in the Oct. 10 issue of The New Yorker, wrote a prescient piece, ìFault Line,î asking whether the Times can survive its owners.)

Baquet, interviewed by the writer Kevin Roderick, a former Times editor whose blog, L.A. Observed, best chronicles the pulse beat of the city, appeared at first downbeat concerning ìanxiety in the newsroomî and tension about another round of mandated layoffs, rumored to be imminent.

It was incessant cost-cutting by the business side of the Tribune Company which led to the resignation in July of John S. Carroll, the newspaperís editor for five years. He hired Baquet, then the New York Timesí national editor, as managing editor soon after his own arrival. Under their leadership, LAT won 13 Pulitzer Prizes.

Baquet, 49, who is African-American, was raised in a working class New Orleans neighborhood, worked in that city for seven years as a journalist and was hired in 1984 by the Chicago Tribune where he won a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering City Hall corruption. In 1990 he joined The New York Times.

He almost left with Carroll who urged him to consider his obligations to the people they both had hired. He recalled, ìCarroll was right. I stayed partly because I love the paperÖitís worth fighting for. Ultimately, itís a winnable fight.î

ìThe Times is the great test case,î Baquet said, echoing a belief expressed by Carroll to Auletta that the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are Americaís best newspapers because they are controlled by families ñ the Sulzbergers, the Grahams, and the Bancrofts, respectively ñ who value the quality of their papers above short-term financial performance.

(Ironically, the Tribune Company paid $8.3 billion to buy the 116-year-old Times Mirror Company - including the Times, its crown jewel - in 2000 from its controlling shareholders, the Chandler family. Until then, the Chandlers rounded out the publishing dynasties described by Carroll. That sale caused the Times’ current problem.)

Sidestepping the paperís circulation and advertising difficulties ñ and ignoring often churlish sniping by a handful of bloggers - Baquet said ìwe want to talk to the city about how much we care ñ we can do this.î He cited a recent series of unexpected front-page stories on homelessness by the columnist Steve Lopez as the kind of enterprise reporting that will make compelling reads.

With a reputation for being involved in every aspect of coverage and well respected by the staff, Baquet said subjects high on his reporting budget include immigration and education.

Asked about a serous loss of of institutional memory at the paper through attrition, layoffs and buyouts, Baquet did not really address the issue. But he told Auletta that when he and Carroll arrived, the paper lost a whole generation of talent ñ maybe thirty people in all.î (Some veteran staffers complain that a few recent hires, both mid-level editors and reporters, were insufficiently vetted and lack any real knowledge of the city or the issues.)

Investigative reporting, Baquetís passion, is a priority and several ìIî teams are in play. He cited ongoing major series on the Getty Museum and Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, which won a Pulitzer Prize, as examples. ìYou will see more,î noting a big work in progress on the L.A. County budget which he said the Board of Supervisors “may not like.î

After the forum, I asked Baquet why the old ìMetroî section, the heart of local L.A. coverage in the past, was renamed ìCaliforniaî ever since Carroll arrived. ìWe talked about it and decided that, since the Times circulates in counties all around Los Angeles, the new name seemed more appropriate.î

But he candidly told Auletta, ìwe havenít mastered making the paper feel like it is edited in Los Angeles.î My impression is that if anyone can restore the daunting balance between the goals of journalism at the Times and the financial needs of the corporate bosses in Chicago, it is Dean Baquet.

Ask Scott McClellan

03 November 2005 |permalink | email article

Significantly missing in the Bush administrationís long awaited plan to deal with the threat of avian pandemic flu is any suggestion of a much broader role for the armed forces.

The president first ominously hinted at such a role in his Sept. 15 televised speech from New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But three weeks later in a news conference he surfaced the subject in asking Congress to let the U.S. military play a broader role in enforcing quarantines and other emergency measures.

That W. might be considering revision or repeal of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, a Civil War-era law which bars federal troops from carrying out law enforcement-duties inside the U. S. during peacetime, short of insurrection, immediately drew fire from both ends of the political spectrum ñ from the ACLU to the Paul Weyrichís Free Congress Foundation.

But Scott McClellan, Bushís spokesman, made clear soon after the New Orleans speech that Posse Comitatus ìwas an issueî that the administration was in the early stages of discussing.

Yet, as The Washington Post noted today, the plan ìoutlines no role for the militaryî as raised by the president a month ago.

Did the White House decide any reference to Posse Comitatus was really a bad idea or, given its current major problems - and mixed reception to the flu plan - decide tinkering with the act now was sufficient reason to quietly down periscope?

Itís a pertinent question for McClellan in the daily White House press gaggle. Who will ask it?

The Pandemic Problem (October 8)

Senate Rule 21

02 November 2005 |permalink | email article

The Democrats finally got their act together yesterday and administered a surprise spanking to hubris-crazed Republicans and a White House in disarray. It took a bold move by Harry Reid of Nevada, the normally soft-spoken Senate minority leader.

Reid aroused long somnolent Democrat colleagues on a festering subject which has roiled the country and forced the Republican majority to address the Bush administrationís use of intelligence to justify the Iraq war and jump start the Senateís willingness to examine it.

The successful Democratic maneuver, condemned by the Republicans, was the first time in 25 years that one party invoked little used Senate Rule 21, a closed session without consulting the other party.

Majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, initially outraged after losing control of the chamber of two hours, agreed to a six-senator bipartisan task force to report by Nov. 14 on the ìintelligence committeeís progress of the phase two review of the prewar intelligence and its schedule for completion.î

Partisan fireworks aside, the closed session was a mini-exorcism for liberals and many Democratic lawmakers who in 2003 were lured into support for the war: allegations that President Bush and his aides exaggerated Iraqís intelligence capacities and terrorism connections with Al Qaeda and then resisted inquiries into intelligence failures.

The Democrats have clearly been emboldened by Fridayís indictment of I. Lewis ìScooterî Libby, an architect of the war and alter ego of Vice President Dick Cheney, on perjury and obstruction of justice charges.

Karl Rove, still twisting in the wind, masterminded President Bushís decision to nominate Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court just four days after the Harriet Miers debacle. It was a clever attempt to divert attention from 2000 dead American soldiers and quickly change the subject.

But Reidís adroit maneuver checkmated the White House and put the Democrats back in the game on Iraq, a major issue in the 2006 mid-term elections.