Los Angeles Times Watch: GrazerGate FLAP Part IV
Tim Rutten responds – Los Angeles Times: These rules we live by
IT’S been nearly half a century since even a whiff of scandal or implication of misconduct attached itself to The Times’ editorial pages. That’s what makes the resignation of the section’s editor, Andr–s Martinez, and its aftermath a melancholy rather than merely curious affair.
For the record, a substantial number of my more than 35 years at The Times were spent on the paper’s editorial pages — first as an assistant editor of the op-ed page, then as editor of Opinion and, finally, as an editorial writer. I was 24 when I first joined the section, and I vividly recall how daunting it was to be surrounded by vastly more experienced colleagues, many of them genuinely distinguished. I also remember being struck with how an attention to ethics wove itself through even the most mundane parts of our daily work and by — what seemed at the time — a fairly stultifying insistence on propriety.
Suffer through the rest of the self-righteous piece, if you must.
So, who are you going to believe? Martinez or Rutten?
Does it even matter?
Flap at this point has come to agree with Nicki Finke:
And Nikki Finke puts a tremulous finger on the real infection: “Sanctimonious newsroom reporters and editors acting all holier-than-thou about journalism ethics, even though they never complained about the impropriety of their ousted editor Dean Baquet’s behind-the-scenes cozying up to a Billionaire Boys Club of potential local buyers for the LA Times. An editorial editor who oversaw the opinion/Op-ed pages spiralling into irrelevancy, in part because Spring Street’s 2nd floor now panders to neo-con and libertarian and other fringe ideologues whose main qualifications for being published there seem be that they’re all palsy-walsy with each other.”
Days of Our Times indeed………
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Los Angeles Times Watch: GrazerGate FLAP Part III
Los Angeles Times Watch: GrazerGate FLAP Part II
Los Angeles Times Watch: Andres Martinez Quits Over GrazerGate FLAP
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