LA Times Finally Catches Up to MMQB
Sunday, July 8th, 2007On June 15, we published an item on the Motion Picture Academy of America (MPAA) leaving its long-time digs in Encino and moving to the Sherman Oaks Galleria. On Saturday July 7, the LA Times finally caught up, “reporting” the move in a page two business section story.
I developed the MPAA story myself the old-fashioned journalistic way, moving around the city with my eyes open. Seeing “For Rent” signs in the courtyard of the MPAA offices, I contacted a spokesperson (who told me I was the first reporter to call), confirmed the move and published the item.
The Times taking 22 days to run big news on one of Hollywood’s most important organizations is inexcusable.
I don’t hate the mainstream media, or the Times. In fact, I recently won another award writing for the LA Times’ now-slashed magazine, West. But it’s frustrated to see–and try to work in–what the Times’ own Tim Rutten calls “the generalized collapse of confidence by newspapers engendered by print journalism’s passage through an economically wrenching transformation.”
