I read your paper for your work

This is the first I've read from James Rainey. What a dweeb. The LAT staff must be angry they're prevented, either by their bosses or their lack of spines, from doing decent reporting on local politics and that the Weekly is filling the niche.

I like how Rainey got in that "oooh, the Weekly's publisher is in Phoenix, and they fired that super-nice and thoughtful editor, neener neener!" Isn't the LAT's most recent owner located about 1000 miles further east, and haven't they cut something like half the paper's entire staff over the past several years? Plank, speck, ahole.

P.S. I hadn't even realized that Marc Cooper was gone. A belated good riddance.

I am always impressed with the reporting done by the Weekly. The Times is such a lap dog for the establishment it is irrelevant. Like Harry Shearer calls it on his "Le Show" - the "L.A. Dog Trainer". I hope to continue reading award winning, insightful articles from the Weekly. Rainey is scared and should be. Where is the Times on the City Council salaries? Where are they on places like Cudahy? Bell Gardens? The Billboard scandal? Corruption in City Hall? George Torres? I read the L.A. Times every day, and compared to the Weekly their reporting is very weak sauce. I think their bias is clear, and their days are numbered.

I moved away from my beloved LA long ago because I couldn't stand what was being done to it. But I've kept in touch by visiting (the beach) and reading local blogs. Lately, the LA Weekly has actually been presenting views from all over the spectrum, something the Times stopped doing long ago.

I thought all news in LA had descended into a This Modern World-level of juvenile ignorance but it appears that thinking people are demanding better.

Keep up the great work Jill!

Jill Stewart responds:

Thanks very much. Please take a look at the great debate underway over at Patterico's always-insightful blog that focuses on politics, crime and media. Go to: http://patterico.com/2009/06/19/la-times-hit-piece-on-jill-stewart-la-weekly-staff-writer-responds/

I posted a Comment over at Patterico a few moments ago. Here's what I said:

Thank you to Patterico for publishing his post about Rainey’s attempted take-down of yours truly.

I’ll admit, yes, I’ve been enjoying myself. I am thrilled to see the backlash as people read Patrick Range McDonald’s terrific and tough story, “Trust Us, It’s 1956,” [http://www.laweekly.com/2009-04-30/news/bratton-l-a-is-as-safe-as-1956/]. The article uses fact upon fact to question Bratton’s manipulation of statistics — at a time when far too many people are genuflecting to the chief. I like the charming Bill Bratton too, and I see him at Yama cocktail parties. But his effort to claim that LA is as safe as 1956, and the amazing and lazy repeating of this fakery by the media, is a good story. Check out our LA Weekly piece about it, if you haven’t already.

My strongest reaction to the new Comments [on Patterico's site] so far, however, is one up there somewhere in which a horribly sexist and outrageous comment is made about our star investigative/crime reporter, Christine Pelisek.

Pelisek is very much her own woman. No man, in her professional or private life, has “forged” or otherwise crafted her. Christine Pelisek has fought for every career advance, elbows out at times, and won them fair and square. Christine Pelisek is a sponge, she is a weapon, she takes no guff and she follows her own road. A national magazine is working on a piece about her “Grim Sleeper” achievements, and a top cop said he wished “she worked for us.” The paternalistic stuff I saw, in one of the Comments [on Patterico's site], is just plain creepy, icky, old-school, ossified, foolish, male, repressive, female-bashing. Let’s bury the Eliza Doolittle canard about successful female journalists really, really deep in the 1970’s where it should forever rot.

"Pelisek is very much her own woman. No man, in her professional or private life, has “forged” or otherwise crafted her."

Yeah, Cooper shoud have stopped when he hit rock bottom with his initial comment (he acknowledges he read a post that he's commenting on....out of courtesy - wtf??). Instead he breaks out a shovel and starts going for lower ground with sexism and ad hominem.

And did a reporter working for a paper that ran an anti-Arnold smear piece days before an election really just accuse you of political favoritism? nice.

Patterico is the best source of news about the sad state of the LATimes.

Keep up the good work. Rock that boat hard. The LAT lost me years ago when they tried to use their influence to save Gay Davis and smear Arnold. Blatant. I see them as a propaganda machine for the left.

I absolutely agree with Rainey, including his analyis of your infamous "11% mayor" article, which calls time spent doing P R stuff as mayor, traveling to/from events, etc. as self-promo time not counted toward his work time. Plus your assaults on Chief Bratton, where you essentially re-write the same story.

Plus how many times have you argued that the Council should have their salaries cut in half -- until now it's been taken up by your likeminded fellow-blogger/ former Daily News head Ron Kaye as a full-fledged project for his groups? (Which also united around opposing Measure B, supporting the rightwing Trutanich/ David Berger-Walter Moore team over Weiss, etc.) Of course Ron Kaye staunchly supports you, as do the listeners of rightwing radio hosts like Kevin James/ McIntyre (who likewise hate the same people you do and have the same political bent -- although you consider yourself "libertarian" instead of conservative Republican), Mayor Sam: you're ALL a self-referential circle of propagandists who all see eye-to-eye so OF COURSE think you're "the only truth" while the L A Times is too busy kissing butt to Villaraigosa.

Which is not true, either -- the only thing Rainey's wrong and myopic about is that his L A Times has its own strong biases. Not only Rosa Brooks (mercifully gone -- because she was a horrible, monotonous writer, in the vein of Marc Cooper, not because of her left-of-Hugo-Chavez views), Jonah Goldberg on the other extreme, but also the always-anti-Villaraigosa Steve Lopez, the hostile-to-Jack-Weiss but sycophantic P R operatives to Trutanich, David Zahniser and Maeve Reston, and their equally easily-spun editorial writer Greene. All of whom did a huge character assassination on Weiss while working for Trutanich.

(Maybe Joe Mailander's right: the Times regretted going so easy on Villaraigosa before the primary when a rightwing nobody like Walter Moore got 1/4 of the votes and the other lesser nobodies together another 1/4, so they took it out on Weiss instead. In a "last gasp of old white guy tribalism," to paraphrase Joe, the representative of the old, corpulent, chest-thumping suburban class of trogladytes -- the only ones who still form their opinions based on what the Times and Daily News tell them.) Incidentally, Joe has a defense of you, Jill, on his blog, arguing that Rainey and the Times are just as biased (and more hopelessly wrong) and myopic -- there's no such thing as objectivity anymore anyway, so it's just a matter of "whose 'right'" you want to side with.

Full Disclosure: I used anonymous sources in an article I wrote for Jill Stewart. She was concerned until I disclosed to her the sources, their reason for requiring anonymity and that this same information would be coming out in court within weeks of our article’s publication. I find working with Jill isn’t any different from working with my other gifted and fair former editors Alan Mittlestaedt, Dean Kuipers and Steve Appleford at CityBeat. It’s just a total pleasure to write for Jill. For real Jill has an agenda. It’s called “news!”

I welcome Marc Cooper to come back now and say my work is “laughable” too.

That’s fine, and he’s entitled to his opinion (though maybe not an entire Times hatchet piece solely focused on his opinion), but I’d like to ask Marc Cooper how long he’s going to fall back on that old “Jill vs. Alan” drama while failing to disclose that Jill actually hired Alan back at the LA Weekly?

The failing ,bankrupt and non-award winning LAT must be in
deep denial now that its OWN poll today shows the LAPD
has a higher approval rating in Los Angeles than the
LAT love child Mayor Tony Villar and that the Award
winning L.A. Weekly has become the real newspaper of record in town as opposed to the sickening LAT biased editorial bs!

Regarding Maria's thoughts a couple of posts up: I don't know how David Zahniser's work could be qualified as anything but exemplary--and I write for the Weekly and am willing to disclose my identity.

Tibby Rothman, your comment is not surprising considering that Zahniser went to the L A Times from the L A Weekly -- where you may have worked with him?

And for confirmation, look no further than to numerous thankful comment from Antonio and Weiss-bashing sites like Mayor Sam and Ron Kaye where readers say "thank you, thank you, David (Z) Zahniser!" for "at least a half-dozen hit pieces on Weiss right before the election which really helped us."

I could dissect not only his prosecutorial approach to Weiss in his articles (largely goes for Reston, too) but also the absurd contortions to accept Trutanich's spins as facts, but that would take too long. The Times never disclosed who paid for a full-paid Weiss-bashing ad that typically costs from $80-100,000 but was attributed to a small homeowner group opposing a development. (Trutanich did disclose that the head of the group gave him a $2,000 donation and used that ad over and over in his debates and campaign appearances.) Trutanich similarly orchestrated a group of constituents going to city hall to criticize Weiss over the same things they have all along, as his campaign manager was on-site and his campaign filmed the whole thing from prepared spots on the Chamber side next to Trutanich advocate Zine, as well as having cameras ready on the other side of the rope. This was clearly a campaign stunt by people generally known to be working for Trutanich, but reported by the Times as though it were grass-roots. The same was true with a "debate" staged even before the primary by a "Coalition of 50 HOA's" which was formed by a chief Weiss critic for the SOLE purpose of forming a "foot army" to launch the failed recall against him; she and her group then coalesced behind Trutanich (who couldn't have cared less about their Westside issues except insofar as these people served his purposes) and staged sham debates in order to achieve a pre-ordainced outcome and lay a trap for Weiss. Of course Zahniser (and the Times) were aware of this clearly delineated history but chose to ignore it til the end. -- There are far too many examples of biased, slanted reporting, and it would bore the general reader here.

But even now after the race, just look at the way in which even Daviid Z's most recent (more toned down) articles on the spate of development coming before council (several articles on the same topic within a week or two, the frequency of his pieces hammering the same topic being another hallmark of his Weiss "coverage"), he still gives undue emphasis to the opposition, and quotes the same handful of people who have been most hostile to Weiss for not getting their way, giving them the concluding slant as well, while there is little attempt to get supportive comments and those people and their views are not given the final slant of the articles.

This is in contrast by the way to the latest article on the Burton Way project, which was written by someone else and more accurately reflects the general opinions of the community.

Jill Stewart, you made the LA Weekly a great read. The articles in LA Weekly may not be perfectly accurate, but at least they bring certain facts up that need to be discussed/debated in our community. The LA Times has been unbelievably remiss in questioning anything. This is not a left/right argument. This is an A+ for shaking things up in a city that is floundering in every area. Maybe the Mayor actually works 15% of the time,... it's not enough!
Thank you, Ms Stewart!

This is insane, the Times may be a shadow of its former self but its decline is nothing compared to what has happened to the LA Weekly after those New Times bozos purchased it. Now they've ruined two once great papers (Village Voice?) Anyone who thinks Jill Stewart is a good editor let alone writer a complete idiot. Sure there are still a few good writers at the Weekly, but they sure weren't brought on or nurtured by Stewart and her bumbling overlords.

Its stories like this that make me more then happy that I ended my subscription to the LA Times. I got more information and more of the honest reporting that lets me make my own decisions about an issue. Kudos to Stewart.

As one of Stewart's writers orginially skewered by Cooper, I'm glad to see Jill sticking to her guns, taking names and winning awards! Cooper is, in all fairness, a good writer, but he's mean spirited to those around him who fail to make proper obeisance.

Keep it up, Jill!

Doug Lasken
Pohang, South Korea

Well, well, well. Looks like Stewart can dish it out but she can't take it. Quite humorous that she would whine about being wronged in the media when she herself has a reputation of taking liberies with the truth to meet her own agenda. I know. I was a victim of Stewart and MiniMe Heimpel last summer.

I advocate for people made ill from environmental exposures. Through my and others' efforts, we have effectively exposed a deception in US public health policy. At my urging, Senator Edward Kennedy requested a Federal Government Accountability Office audit into the matter. As a result, we now have less conflicted science over the issue coming from the Federal government.

For my efforts of being a good and involved citizen, Stewart and Heimpel chose to character assassinate not only me, but my husband and children- who are not even involved in advocating over the issue. Through this assassination they attempted to discount my words and thus discount the words of all of those for whom I advocate.

No less than seven of the people Heimpel claimed to have interviewed for the hit piece article, stated in writing to the LAWeekly that they were grossly misquoted or never even interviewed at all. Some, who were interviewed via email, provided documentation of the false quotes attributed to them. One even blogged of Heimpel's misquotes of him. He wrote that he was never asked about me by Daniel Heimpel or anyone at LAWeekly. This blogger is not even on the same side of the issue I am. http://overlawyered.com/2008/07/la-weekly-the-mold-rush-and-the-case-of-sharon-kramer-and-bruce-kelman/

Even after being told of all the misquotes, told that I was getting hang up calls in the middle of the night and told that I was fearful for the safety of my children from the hatred inciting, false light writing by Heimpel and Stewart; LAWeekly, and their parent company of Village Voice, still refused to retract.

Personally, I find it now to be quite telling of Stewart's character that she would cry foul for someone bringing the harm from her interpretation of journalism to greater light. I also find it to be a poor taste joke that MiniMe would receive an investigative journalist of the year award. This is an insult to the true journalists that are left out there who try to report balanced and accurate news.

Mr. Rainey's understanding of Jill Stewart's bizarre interpretation of the word "journalist" is exactly correct. From what I can tell of her work, she mass promotes an agenda driven, marketing of Village Voiceovers and could care less about truth in journalism.

you may think you're better than LATimes but your paper has REFUSED to investigate factual evidence of corruption with the city council and neighborhood councils. When it was presented to your various editors and journalists, LA Weekly couldn't be bothered. Again, the internet proves it is the better medium. The only way to see what is going on is blogs with people who care to expose the crap going on in City Hall. If you guys think you are so hard hitting way don't you take up the offers of people in the know with real information on corruption in the city and actually check it out? Don't EVEN say you do, as I know personally YOU DON'T!

whatever problems the LAW has, it can't compare to the neo-con drivel that passes for hard-news coverage at the LAT. The LAT is chasing the Fox Nation audience it covets so desperately, while leaving regular folks interesting in reading daily journalism out in the cold. The LAT couldn't get out in front of a local or national political issue (or state issue), if it tried - scared of offending the Prop. 13/Prop. 8 lunatic fringe it apparently values so highly as readers, in the hopes they'll stop watching glenn beck and start reading the LAT.

whatever problems the LAW has, it can't compare to the neo-con drivel that passes for hard-news coverage at the LAT. The LAT is chasing the Fox Nation audience it covets so desperately, while leaving regular folks interesting in reading daily journalism out in the cold. The LAT couldn't get out in front of a local or national political issue (or state issue), if it tried - scared of offending the Prop. 13/Prop. 8 lunatic fringe it apparently values so highly as readers, in the hopes they'll stop watching glenn beck and start reading the LAT.

News Editor Jill Stewart responds:

Thanks very much to all the people who are weighing in, whether for the Weekly and me or against us. We believe in rigorous public debate. I think LA could be great city if our politicians followed that approach instead of the backroom, dishonest, non-democracy we currently have in place here. They give us a lot of low-hanging fruit, as journalists, but are creating a sucky town in which to live. Keep up the back and forth, whatever the issue.