Should the LA Times be a local paper?

[Image: latimeslogo]Absolutely not.

Tuesday night’s Frontline presentation on the news media featured a section on the LA Times, and the current, possibly idiotic, owners of the Times explained that they were trying to make the LA Times a more local paper in order to increase readership.

That’s stupid. The LA Times is in a position halfway between The New York Times and the Who Cares Times. No matter where I live, I will probably subscribe to the Sunday NYTimes just because it’s an iconic, national newspaper. When the World Trade Center went down in 2001, I bought the New York Times issue the next day, because it’s the status symbol paper.

The way newspapers and other old media are going to grow their readership is by broadening their appeal, not narrowing it. Assuming that the LA Times can’t and shouldn’t compete with the NYTimes, the Washington Post, the WSJ, and…USA Today is insulting. It can and it should.

Don’t get me wrong—the LA Times should continue to cover local news, events, weather, high school sports, and everything else that a good local paper covers, but it damn well better not focus on, and I’m slant-quoting from the documentary here, “the things people in Los Angeles care about: Style, Fashion, Hollywood.”

I’m insulted. If I wanted tabloid crap, I’d buy tabloids. I want good journalism, journalism that I can’t get from CNN, The Drudge Report, or even NPR. I’ll buy the LA Times if you make it worth my while. But budget cuts and shallow topics are not the way to do that.