The other shoe drops in Chicago
WELL, THE GOOD news is that Tribune found a buyer. The bad news, for some anyway, is that the Chicago company still owns the Los Angeles Times. Sam Zell (Forbes No. 158), the real estate plutocrat who won the auction, says that he is only in it for the money, and will leave the journalism up to others.
Enter Brunehilde, stage right
AS I WAS finishing an entry about the new L.A. Times front page, the fat lady in Chicago stepped onto the stage and began, as predicted, to sing. That is to say, the Tribune, through its new publisher in Los Angeles, fired Dean Baquet, the editor of the Los Angeles Times, even as the empire continued to fall into pieces.
A tale of two Times
IN OCTOBER, two big U.S. papers made some changes.The Los Angeles Times, under siege from its out-of-town owners, unveiled a redesigned front page and typography in the “A” section that at last matches the feature sections.
Soft vs. Hard
THE VERY dry public editor of The New York Times, Byron Calame, asks the question, Can ‘Magazines’ of The Times Subsidize News Coverage?
You can take so much cheese off the pizza that nobody will eat it
THE PRINT media continues to lose elevation, and now the heavy freight is being chopped up for fuel, or just jettisoned. Time Warner, Tribune have announced big asset sales. But the death grip of the stock analysts and the media buyers has not relaxed. Further cuts will be needed. Products will get thinner, pages sizes smaller.
The Los Angeles Times
LIKE Norman Mineta, who somehow served as secretary of transportation under both Clinton and Bush, it’s unusual to keep your job after a change in administrations. But as a design consultant for the Los Angeles Times, I made it through two such changes, and the design direction is still going strong.