Good News Bad News

ORIGINAL POST 3/23: The good news is that Andres Martinez has quit his position as Editorial Page Director at the LA Times. The Sunday opinion section and daily editorial pages have declined in quality in the last few years. He's also a lame columnist.

The bad news is that he's quitting over a stupid controversy that shouldn't have been a controversy. Mr. Martinez had a stupid idea that "guest editors" could sometimes put together their Sunday "Current" section, and the first one invited was Brian Grazer, the bigshot movie producer who works with Ron Howard. I guess it could have been interesting, but the section has no cohesion as it is. Anyways, Brian Grazer's publicist is Mr. Martinez's girlfriend, so there were concerns that Mr. Grazer "had an unfair advantage" (the LA Times report's words--what kind of advantage that really is, I don't know). It's a silly controversy, although it probably wasn't too smart of Mr. Martinez to pick one of his girlfriend's clients for the first one. They pulled the whole section and that's why he's quitting. Overreactions on everybody's parts.

Martinez had parting shots for news editors, reporters and especially the new publisher and editor, implying they were out-of-towners who didn't understand Los Angeles or the workings of the LA Times.

By the way, there were idiots in the newsroom who said they were uncomfortable with the paper "forming partnerships" with people they would cover. That logic would prohibit guest columns from the mayor or any of a number of people. They'd have a point if it were a regular or semi-regular thing, or even a series. This was a one time thing. Lighten up, peoples.

UPDATE: Tim Rutten, news industry critic at the LA Times was rolled under the bus by Andres Martinez in some post-quit emails, so Tim does some rolling back. But he pretends to be above it all and to be disinterested. Oh, he's interested, all right.