Kirk emails: "Don’t you think the LA Times running ads on page one is the signal of the end of a once great paper? When I was in journalism school, no paper would ever be taken seriously if they ran ads on page one of any section, let alone hard news. Unquestionably the final nail in the coffin."
I don’t think running ads on page one has significance. What’s the difference between an ad on page one and an ad on page 171? It wouldn’t bother me if the entire page one of the LA Times was taken up with ads. What matters is the quality of the reporting the paper publishes on all its pages.
Kirk responds:
There may not be a problem per se, but it is unquestionably an indication of where the paper is headed. Years ago the LAT proudly put their circulation right under their masthead which always hovered around 1 million daily, 1.2 million Sunday. Where are the circulation figures now? Nowhere because they are down about 30%.
When I worked at The Times they had the best and brightest in journalism. They broke stories daily. Today the editorial staff is shrinking fast and their investigative stories are few and far between. The Chandler days — when someone truly cared about the paper — are over.
Last, I predict in 5 years the LAT will no longer print a newspaper. They will become entirely web-based. This will be a good thing because instead of putting resources into printing a paper, they can spend money on reporters, breaking stories and doing investigations, which is what a newspaper should be doing. Or I guess they could just keep it mundane and return higher profits to shareholders.
And this doesn’t apply only to the LAT.
