When I started this blog, I had no intention of turning it into a LA Times bashing site; however... when the Los Angeles Times daily home delivers us fish-filled barrels and then passes out loaded shotguns with hair triggers -- well -- what are we poor bloggers supposed to do?
The immensely frustrating part is that the LAT has so many skilled and gifted writers -- two rather different qualities, I might add -- that it almost seems impossible for the LAT to then so totally fail the people of Los Angeles in delivering a product that in any way explains or reflects the city it purports to cover.
But fail the LA Times does do in its ever-continuing downward spiral -- and then the Times has the chutzpah to pointedly look down upon whomever dares point out their columns of clay.
The latest repeat offender is David Shaw in his March 27th column (http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-ca-shaw27mar27,0,5319183,print.story) on bloggers. While his main topic was whether or not us bloggers deserve our constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech protection, his main offense, as far as I am concerned, is to challenge the ability of anyone other than institutions like the LA Times to get their facts correct.
Now many people have already taken him to the wood shed for his journalistic sins -- Jack Shafer and Mickey Kaus in Slate to name just two (http://slate.msn.com/id/2115883/ and http://www.slate.com/id/2115861/), but in subsequent posts I will point out just a few recent examples of the LA Times much vaunted filter system that has so superbly protected them against the errors that we bloggers are so prone to committing.
No comments:
Post a Comment