Read the Times and Weep

04 August 2008 |permalink | email article

Billionaire businessman Sam Zell plays liege lord and Tribune Company executes his orders with the Los Angeles Times now reduced to a hapless vassal.

Sure, the Times’ plight is about declining revenue that reflects economic realities. But the once proud, Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper which first rose to serious national prominence under Otis Chandler is a step closer now to becoming a virtual wasteland. Many of its savvy bench of reporters, whose institutional memory is irreplaceable, are gone.

Sunday’s scaled down edition suggests just how bad the situation has become – shrunken Opinion pages, thinner Book Review contents tucked into Calendar and advertising often smothering news page content, all of which portend badly for the future.

The changes are thin gruel for loyal readers to digest. With more job cuts and a trimmed down financial forecast certain, is it possible that future Saturday editions will become little more than a weekend preview of a Sunday paper rapidly losing any voice? 

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