LA Times Misses the Boat Again

The LA Times is bleeding red ink all over itself as its subscription numbers take an express elevator to the basement. The LA Times is a business and as such it is expected to make money for its owners. It is expected that the LA Times will engage in some serious introspection to stem the subscription exodus.

The LA Times announced today that they are revamping the editorial page of their paper. Specifically they are dropping political cartoonist Michael Ramirez, and columnists Robert Scheer, Michael McGough and David Gelernter. The paper states,

"The opinion pages are the newspaper's town square," he (Editorial Page Editor Andrés Martinez) said in a statement. "Our readers expect us to publish all points of view and the broadest range of opinion — from those of our editorial board and columnists to those of our readers and Op-Ed contributors. And we intend to do exactly that."

Gentlemen, if you expect these moves to improve your bottom-line, you are mistaken. You’ve simply made the commentary pages blander. I’ll admit that I gave up reading Robert Scheer long ago. His leftist diatribe left me unable to accept him as a serious thinker. One of the great joys of your commentary pages is Michael Ramirez and David Gelernter. Sure all these contributors can be and often are controversial. That’s what you expect of the editorial/commentary pages.

The problem with the LA Times commentary pages was the lack of balance between liberal and conservative commentary. That was beginning to change and notable evidence was the bi-weekly inclusion of Dennis Prager pieces.

The real problem with the LA Times is the blatant bias of news pieces and the headlines. Fix that and you will be back on the road to recovery.

Update: 11/15/05
The LA Times answers critics of its editoral page changes in 400 plus words and doesn't say anythng.