LA Times layoffs

The 17.6-ounce, $3.99 box of cereal I always buy is now 15.3 ounces and $4.29.

When did Sam Zell buy Kellogg's?

 

I'm certainly no soccer supporter but it seems like the height of stupidity for a paper in the LA area to cut back on coverage of the sport there. That'd be like the Dallas Morning News dropping coverage of high school football.

 

All this talk of canceling subscriptions makes me laugh.

We purchased a 6-month Sunday-only subscription to the LAT in January. We moved out of the area in April, but in the 13 weeks that the subscription was current, the ratio of "calls to ask how we enjoyed our Sunday LAT" versus "actual Sunday LATs we received" was 3:1.

That's right: We received the Sunday paper once, in 13 weeks.

Told the last two circulation reps who called that I couldn't tell them how much I enjoyed it if it never showed up. The first lady took my address again and said, "Uhh, have you moved or changed your address?" Nope, same damn place we were at when we signed up. So she "assured" me that they had it right and I could expect the paper next week. Nope.

Second dude that called me got a little bit of an earful. Oops. ... Then he asked me if I wanted to cancel, and I replied, "No, the subscription's paid for. I just want the damn paper to show up!" Then, believe it or not, he hung up on me.

I got a laugh out of that. Awful, awful customer service, though, I tell ya.

 

The Times minimizing soccer coverage further keeps with the market. While local stalwart Grahame Jones - and all his great institutional knowledge of the game - remains, other papers are cutting way down. The OC register has whacked both of its MLS beats (though not the writers), the Singleton group has coverage. but is beaten on just about every big story, and Riverside Press-Enterprise continues to have some of the better soccer insight in SoCal, thanks to a freelancer who writes constantly.

But as to Armchair's point: brings back a few memories of trying to sell that to my editors. "This is Southern California; we can't minimize soccer coverage!" Some battles won, some lost.

As for now, let's put it this way. Various exoduses, layoffs and cutbacks have greatly reduced soccer coverage in LA. The best coverage of recent years remains in the Times and the Riverside paper, of course. But two years ago (yes, even pre-Beckham), last week's Galaxy-Chivas USA games would have had a packed press box. I'm not sure there were more than eight English-language journalists there last week, in a press box that holds at least triple that.

 

This from Bob Carey, a long-time photographer and photo editor just laid off from The Times. I think he's right on track:

http://www.cjr.org/parting_thoughts/parting_thoughts_bob_carey.php

 

What an excellent read! Best of luck, Bob.

 

Great piece.

 

it'd be nice if the stupid photographer used ap style in his post.

 

Nice piece, but someone needs to tell Bob that not all those folks in the suburban bureaus were ``redeployed''. Some of us got the ax in the neck, albeit with a nice go-away check.

 

Well said...

 

"The decline of the L.A. Times is due mostly to the failure of the members of the Chandler family to exercise even a vestigial shred of stewardship. They should be guiding the Times through an orderly transition to the Internet. They just wanted their money, and now that Sam Zell has given it to them, the wheels are coming off the cart."

I thought the Chandlers were long out of the equation before Zell.

No?