April Fool’s Day

30 March 2009 |permalink | email article

LA Observed ran this provocative headline Sunday: Psst, how about Arnold to start a newspaper?

Editor Kevin Roderick notes that author and Slate blogger Mickey Kaus has several friends at the Los Angeles Times, but for years has been advocating the demise of the newspaper, partly in the hope that an outlet more to his liking would arise from the chaos.

Kaus views Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the movie action hero but failed governor, as a West Side moneybags who can start a new “paper” to replace one that looks like it is in a “death spiral.”

Kaus, who lives in Venice, writes that he wants a paper more aimed at the Westside and tries to rebut the notion that the Times seems to think that by paying attention to the wealthiest part of the city “is somehow elitist, if not racist.” It’s a dumb argument.

I also know several friends at the Times, a vanishing breed of great reporters that is no longer a national paper despite winning scores of Pulitzer prizes because it’s now controlled by billionaire Sam Zell who has no real interest in it, or newspapers in general.

Kaus’s theory that only the West Side matters strikes me as a crude April’s Fool’s joke – an insult to those who remain at what used to be known as Times Mirror Square before the greedy Chandler family sold out for billions.

Last week Schwarzenegger reaffirmed to San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board that he’s not running for U.S. Senate but has some thoughts about “Terminator 5.”

But the self-described “proud Republican” made it clear his future is wide open. “I can do anything I want.” Hmmm!

 

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