New York Times Takes Aim At L.A. Times, Calls Paper a 'Unifying Force of Complaint'

By Dennis Romero Mon., Jan. 24 2011 at 9:04 AM

L.A. Noire

The L.A. Times gets critiqued by cross-country rival.

The Los Angeles Times is becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of local media.

Not only does it get no respect, but its cross-country rival, the paper it once aspired to challenge for American journalistic supremacy, has reached out across the miles to report that the LAT "has joined the city's impossible freeway traffic as a unifying force of complaint."

The NYT quotes longtime readers who have canceled subscriptions and turned away from their once-daily habit. Of course ...

... the people it quotes are all over 50 -- people who remember the good old days when the paper weighed pounds.

They're never going to get that fat, cat-killing weekday Times on their porches again. And the paper has shed nearly half its staff in the last 10 years.

On the other hand, it's still a great institution. And while its elder readers might be hurumphing over the fact that the Times doesn't cover Orange County or the Philippines the way it once did, it's been expanding coverage where the eyeballs are - online.

And take it from us, the Times isn't the only paper in town to hear people whistling "The Way We Were." The Weekly gets it all the time.

Part of it has to do with almost-instant ability for readers to weigh in. No letters. No stamps. Just comment and publish. It also has to do with the changes that none of us like - fewer people doing more of the coverage in town.

And here's the thing: L.A., despite its Third World stereotypes, is an edgy, forward-thinking place where readers have migrated online moreso than elsewhere.

Reporting about oldsters canceling their "subscriptions" is kind of like moaning about the death of the landline phone.

Perhaps the griping is because change isn't happening fast enough.

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concerned parent

The LA TImes has adopted an unethical policy of REPUBLISHING decades old court case stories where people have been acquitted. They make sure these stories show up in web searches rather than relegate them to archived news where they more suitably belong if at all. REPUBLISHING these stories can cause enormous damage to innocent people and their families. They of course believe their original published articals are beyond reproach and protected by the First Ammendment. What about the right of people to live without the fear that old articles will damage their lives by having past horrific events showing up as a front page Google hit? This ignorant policy exists not to inform but to place the LA TImes in higher search rankings solely for financial gain. They do not care about people.

Jimmy James

If the LA Times is the Rodney Dangerfield of journalism, it gets no respect and it's been dead for nearly a decade, then what is the LA Weekly? I'd say a mix between Sam Kinison and Dane Cook. It got attention by being loud and obnoxious, but it's shtick got old very quick.

Stephen Blackmoore

Yes, the Times still has problems, and yes, it's improved substantially since it went online. There's no way the Homicide Report could exist if not for the web.

But I think it has more problems with change in terms of it's readers who long for the good old days than it does with not shifting fast enough. It has a ways to go but a lot of the complaints against it in the past have been with its lack of focus on Los Angeles. If not for that a podunk paper like The Daily News could never have filled that void and been a contender against it.

Now the focus is much more on where it needs to be: Los Angeles. It won't improve subscription numbers because really subscriptions are dead, but I think if it maintains those changes and moves way from the poison fed it by Zell and the Tribune it can become a great paper again.