Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Kicked to the Curb by the L.A. Times


Protest sign posted under wall display of the L.A. Times' Pulitzers.

The growing list of journalists cut loose by the Los Angeles Times:

1. Bob Bayer

2. Eric Boyd

3. Kevin Bronson

4. Tom Bronzini

5. Corie Brown

6. Paul Brownfield

7. Jamie Cardenas

8. Bob Carey

9. Mike Castelvecchi

10. Carlos Chavez

11. Jay Christensen

12. Marla Cone

13. Dan Costello

14. Richard Cromelin

15. Janet Cromley

16. Perry Crowe

17. Nick Cuccia

18. Catherine Davis

19. Tricia Davis

20. RUSS DEVITA

21. Donna Deane

22. Casey Dolan

23. Bob Durrell

24. Leslie Earnest

25. Michael Edwards

26. Karin Esterhammer

27. Maggie Farley

28. Lisa Fong

29. John Galant

30. Jason Gelt

31. Josh Getlin

32. Liam Gowing

33. Joel Greenberg

34. David Haldane

35. Richard Hartog

36. Steve Harvey

37. Lynne Heffley

38. Martin Henderson

39. David Hiller

40. Jessica Hollowell

41. Joel Huerto

42. Jennifer James

43. Jennie Jarvie

44. Carol Kaufman

45. Alex Kimball

46. Richard Kipling

47. John Kissell

48. Kathy Kristoff

49. Steve Lacey

50. Evelyn Lau

51. Todd Leibensperger

52. Bettijane Levine

53. Paul Lieberman

54. Liam Lindsey

55. Doug List

56. William Lobdell

57. Ron Logsdon

58. John Malnic

59. Shirley Marlowe

60. Amy Martin

61. Mark Masek

62. Craig Matsuda

63. Rosemary McClure

64. Terry McDermott

65. Gary Metzker

66. Bob Miezerski

67. Steve Mitchell

68. Paul Netter

69. Scott Nordhues

70. Marc Nurre

71. Anne-Marie O'Connor

72. Pauline O'Connor

73. Chris Pasles

74. Kendall Pate

75. Chuck Phillips

76. Christina Pompa

77. Enid Portuguez

78. Jim Powell

79. Jim Powers

80. Steve Pratt

81. Matt Randall

82. Charley Reinken

83. David Reyes

84. Julie Rogers

85. Bob Rohwer

86. Jesus Sanchez

87. Katie Sauceda

88. Deborah Schoch

89. Stu Silverstein

90. Lynn Smith

91. Steve Springer

92. Joan Springhetti

93. Eric Stephens

94. Larry Stewart

95. Darryl Strickland

96. Tom Trapnell

97. Carlos Uribe

98. Janet Wilson

99. Brenda Wong

100. Pete Yoon

101. Nancy Yoshihara

102. Paul Zieke



For updates, click HERE. For news of the Orlando Sentinel, click HERE and HERE. For the latest news about the Baltimore Sun, click HERE.

AUDIO: Fom the PBS News Hour
Tribune Co. Tribulations
Jeffrey Brown examines what's ahead for the Tribune media chain after the announcement that two more executives at its biggest newspapers are leaving.

audioRealAudioDownload


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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Bastille Day at The Los Angeles Times


Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller Resigns

Hiller's 21-month tenure was marked by plans for the sharpest staff and production cuts in The Times' history. No successor is named.

By Michael A. Hiltzik

Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 15, 2008

Los Angeles Times Publisher David D. Hiller resigned Monday after a 21-month tenure that encompassed the departures of two Times editors and plans for the sharpest staff and production cuts in the newspaper's history amid a continuing slide in advertising revenue.

Tribune Co. -- which owns The Times and other media assets, including the Chicago Tribune and KTLA-TV Channel 5, as well as the Chicago Cubs baseball team -- named no successor to Hiller.

Although newspapers across the country have been suffering severe revenue declines, The Times' performance under Hiller has been particularly disappointing. The paper has experienced the steepest drop in cash flow of any in the Tribune chain of 11 daily newspapers. Hiller also acquired a reputation among Tribune brass as an indecisive leader, according to senior Times executives; The Times has been without an advertising manager since February, for example.

Responding to the criticism of his management style, Hiller said, "It's fair to say that along with our colleagues here, we tried to make the decisions that were best for the paper."

A statement he e-mailed to Times staff suggested that he was ousted by Tribune Chairman and Chief Executive Sam Zell: "Sam's the boss and he gets to pick his own quarterback."

Tribune Chief Operating Officer Randy Michaels said he expected to name a new publisher by the end of the summer. In the interim, he said, he would oversee operations at The Times in tandem with Tribune Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer Gerry Spector.

Hiller's departure came the day Times managers began implementing a newsroom cutback of 150 people, part of a paperwide reduction of 250. The newsroom layoffs represent about 17% of the editorial staff at the newspaper and its website.

The cuts were ordered in an effort to husband the newspaper's cash flow in an environment of declining advertising revenue, but they have triggered a debate -- similar to that raging throughout the newspaper industry -- over how they might affect the newspaper's ability to serve the community.

"The overall picture of what's happening to The Times is simply not good," said George Kieffer, a prominent Los Angeles attorney who has expressed concerns in the past about the effect of cutbacks on the newspaper's civic role.

"There has never been a time when Greater Los Angeles has been more in need of civic education, the central role of The Times," he said.

The announcement of Hiller's departure came the same day as the resignation of Ann Marie Lipinski, 52, as editor of the Chicago Tribune.

Lipinski will be replaced by Gerould W. Kern, 58, a former associate and deputy managing editor at the newspaper who has been vice president of editorial at the company's Tribune Publishing unit since 2003.

Lipinski said her last day at the newspaper would be Thursday. Her departure comes scarcely a week after the Chicago paper announced deep cuts in its staffing and number of weekly pages. But in a memo to her staff excerpted in the newspaper, she said of her decision to leave after seven years as editor that "it would be inaccurate to attribute it to any one event." [Click for MORE] Sphere: Related Content

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Believing Is Seeing


The alteration of photos for propaganda purposes has been with us as long as photography itself; it is not an invention of the digital age. But while digitally altered photographs can easily fool the eye, they often leave telltale footprints that allow them to be unmasked as forgeries. There are many famous altered photographs, from a Matthew Brady photograph of Abraham Lincoln’s head composited on to John Calhoun’s body to the endlessly altered photographs from Soviet Russia. An entire book, “The Commissar Vanishes,” by David King, is devoted to Soviet whims about who should be included (or deleted) in photographs. In the series shown above, Stalin is accompanied by three officials, then two, then one, as they successively fall out of favor and are cropped and airbrushed into non-existence. (In the end, in a painting based on the photograph, he stands alone.) We understand Stalin’s intentions by removing comrades, but what is the purpose of these Iranian missile photographs? They are clearly altered. The question remains: Why, and to what end?
[Click for MORE]
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