Zell Disses L.A. Times

Mickey Kaus blogs:

After apparent Tribune Company owner-to-be Sam Zell visited the L.A. Times a week or so ago, Publisher-for-Now David Hiller sent a memo to the paper’s staff describing Zell as a "[h]igh energy straight-talking business owner" who "[b]elieves Los Angeles Times is very important and ‘has a great future’." Kf hears Zell was rather more critical than that. In his talk to the assembled staffers, he said he found the paper "pretty bland." He pissed on the business section. He ran down the importance of foreign coverage as opposed to local news. Asked whether front-page ads compromised the integrity of the paper, he called that idea a "crock of shit." He made a big point of saying the paper had to print what readers wanted to read, not what LAT editors wanted them to read–an idea that’s pretty much in complete conflict with the existing DNA of the Times (which deemed L.A. mayor Hahn’s divorce while he was in office not worth discussing, and reported Lindsay Lohan’s arrest, after she mowed down some bushes in Beverly Hills, on page B3). All in all, Zell studded his spiel with bad omens for the paper’s entrenched twits. … P.S.: Whose account is more accurate–Hiller’s or mine? There’s an easy way to find out, since a video of Zell’s talk was posted on the Times‘ internal network. Hiller could release it.