Baquet out at L.A. Times

Baquet will land on his feet. There's a place for people of his talent and principles. Clearly that place is not in the Tribune Company.

When Tribune bought Times Mirror, a few folks left LA and Baltimore and Hartford just because they feared Tribune Co. Having worked for Tribune, I thought they were a little wacky and reactionary at the time. Now I think they were right and I was wrong.

 

I worked for another Tribune Co. paper and never had a problem with the company. That apparently has changed considerably since then.

 

Is that talent and principles, or is it the sort of thing like where major league managers get fired and recycled, kind of like Dave Bristol?

Before Baquet "stood up to the Tribune beancounters" what were his accomplishments at the LA Times?

 

Um...pretty good. 13 Pulitzers in five years as a Managing Editor and Editor.

 

It's the LA Times. they are supposed to do stories of that magnitude.

 

Gold, in reading everything I can about the L.A. Times every day, I can say this: I don't think, except for some questions about his management style sometimes being a bottleneck, that I've read any critical words about Baquet being anything but a top flight newspaperman, either as a reporter or as an editor.

 

Did Baquet cure cancer? End world hunger? Settle the Israel-Palestinian crisis? Must've missed that memo.

The hand-wringing and garment-rending I've read on Romenesko about this is nauseating and disgusting. Instead of carrying on for someone who will land on their feet with a great job in a matter of weeks -- if not days -- the real sympathy and wailing should be saved for those in the business who are losing their jobs with little or any hope of finding another one.

 

Maybe all that carrying on is precisely because Baquet was standing up for all those folks and got slapped down. It's a sad development for them, too.

 

Yes, but now that the guy who was fighting to save jobs is out, that staff will be further depleted and will no longer be able to do stories of that magnitude.

That is why this is a big deal, not because Baquet is the world's greatest editor, but because one of the world's greatest newspaper staffs is about to be further downsized, leaving the world with one fewer great newspaper.

 

Bump, point (semi) taken, but St. Dean will land on his feet. These people losing their jobs -- especially the ones north of 40 -- probably won't, at least in this business.

Spare me the canonization of this man. He doesn't deserve it.

 

Tribune has always been a mean-ass corporate boss. As in, if it wasn't central to Chicago, they just didn't give a damn about it up there. They've bullied Orlando and Fort Lauderdale for years, and now they're trying to beat up the L.A. Times. Difference is, those people out in L.A. weren't afraid to take a stand on it.

For the right reasons, too.

The L.A. Times has always been a major paper, and probably better than the Chicago Tribune. But the Trib wants to rule the world, and that ain't right. The Times is so much better, and the Trib is burning through talent in L.A. just to prove that the Trib is boss.

That ain't right.

 

Yes indeed -- and that place is the NYT, to kick ass in the DC bureau. The WaPo-NYT war for Washington hearts and minds just got a lot more interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/30/business/media/30cnd-paper.html