L.A. Times shoves out Al Martinez; PLUS: Phoebe Flowers

Re: L.A. Times shoves out Al Martinez

Oh, it does. It certainly does.
But, I need a new notebook for my "Signals-a-Sad-Change-in-the-Business" List.

 

Re: L.A. Times shoves out Al Martinez

Yeah, maybe that's now moot as a topic here. The business has changed a great deal, and the old days are permanently gone.

 

Re: L.A. Times shoves out Al Martinez

For many people, reading the newspaper is a habit they picked up as a kid. Like cigarettes and booze, it gave us a certain kind of "buzz". Seems newspapers are taking a lot of nicotine out of their "cigs" TV listings, stocks, comics, the things that are there in the paper day after day giving a sense of stability in an everchanging world of bylines, designs and corporate owners. Al Martinez provided that connection to readers, like a Mike Royko, Herb Caen, Jim Murray...he was a familiar face that lent credibility to the rest of the paper.
Kinda like that scene in Contact when Jodie Foster visits the alien land and is greeted by her father...

 

Re: L.A. Times shoves out Al Martinez

Familiar faces or no, they still need to deliver on a consistent basis, particularly if they are columnists. And Martinez has been stuck in a low-level, low-energy time warp for some time now. His situation wasn't handled that well, and he hasn't handled it especially well either.

 

Re: L.A. Times shoves out Al Martinez

If the old days are gone — and they are, then the old-timers are going with them.

Age does slow one down. You just have to be smarter and think in a different way. Either that or be as sharp as Art Buchwald.

We all mature and change. Our style — if we have one — comes to reflect what we've learned the hard way. There are times, I admit, when I feel very out of place — a garrulous old man just flapping his gums.

I'd like to think there is a place for gum-flapping.

In the meantime, I'll simply grow longer fingernails, the better to hold on. The time will come when I am no longer needed. That's fine. I'll find something else.

There is always the chance I will simply walk away in disgust. The daughter better be out of college by then.

 

Re: L.A. Times shoves out Al Martinez AND Phoebe Flowers

Today, L.A. Observed says they got a second e-mail from Martinez saying his work e-mail is being shut off tonight, a week before his final column.

There must be some underlying infighting and grumpiness for this to be going on.

On a completely unrelated note on the other coast, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel is ending staff movie reviews and reassigning the excellent -- to me -- Phoebe Flowers.

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2007/05/critic_flowers_scattered_to_th.php

They're going to be doing all wire reviews now. So another good regional paper drops another exclusive coverage element to do it cheaper.

 

Maybe there's more than meets the eye. I'm an east coaster and don't know Martinez.

Still, it's disturbing. He's a guy with a voice and an audience and an apparently brilliant body of work. At the end of their careers, what will the bean-counting mofos who forced him out the door have to point to as their accomplishments?

"I trimmed costs 20 percent through staff reductions."

May they rot in hell.

 

And trimmed circ by 40 percent...

 

As a columnist who was axed for the sins of being over 35 and making too much money, Martinez's fate is more understandable (not that I approve, I at least understand the nasty shithead reasoning behind it) than Flowers'. The MOVIE reviewer? No, movie theaters don't advertise.
Flowers would be well advised to start her own movie review blog and pay some visits to local theaters with cheap ad rates in hand.
That's just the way they teach it at Harvard Business School. Cut a popular service, then make it REAL EASY for competitors offering the same service to enter the market.
Sun-Sentinel is Tribune, right? That guy Zell's sure setting the world on fire.

 

Anybody know if the laid off people at the L.A. Times all were people who where offered buyouts, but did not accept? Or were some of the layoffs people who weren't offered buyouts?

 

Zell hasn't taken over yet. There's still some things that have to be completed before he does.

 

Zell is now on the board of directors and has invested $250 million in the company.