MEDIA CULTURE
"The Newsroom's Agenda" [Stephen Spruiell]
A bizarre scandal at the LA Times has prompted the resignation of editorial page editor Andres Martinez. In his angry farewell, Martinez drops this bombshell about the relationship between the editorial and news pages at the LAT:
Among the biggest possible conflicts of interest a newspaper can enter into is to have the same people involved in news coverage running opinion pages. I am proud of the fact that Jeff Johnson, Dean Baquet and I fully separated the opinion pages from the newsroom at the Times. I accept my share of the responsibility for placing the Times in this predicament, but I will not be lectured on ethics by some ostensibly objective news reporters and editors who lobby for editorials to be written on certain subjects, or who have suggested that our editorial page coordinate more closely with the newsroom's agenda, and I strongly urge the present and future leadership of the paper to resist the cries to revisit the separation between news and opinion that we have achieved.
News reporters and editors who lobby for editorials to be written on certain subjects? The newsroom's agenda? Really?
Cathy Seipp would have had a field day with this.
03/22 05:28 PM
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