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Cathy Seipp's media column in CityBeat this week is about her pal Mickey Kaus and his runaway success as a blogger (gets paid by Slate, draws 20,000 hits a day, national reputation), and their mutual dislike for most things about the L.A. Times. David Shaw's media writing and the paper's recall coverage come in for the strongest ribbing.
A few weeks ago when I ran into Mickey, he agreed with me that the Times has improved under Tribune ownership. “But as it’s gotten better,” he added, “it’s also gotten less compelling.” And now he thinks it’s stopped improving anyway: “The recall coverage has been awful; the contrast between a great journalistic opportunity and their performance is just glaring. The classic L.A. Times thing is they bring in new people without firing the old people. I just think the culture there must be so pervasively somnolent that you’d probably need someone who’s as big a prick as [former New York Times editor] Howell Raines to shake things up.”
The column also reviews Kausfiles' role in breaking the story of Schwarzenegger's notorious Oui interview.
Update: Kaus is also quoted in Tim Rutten's Saturday LAT column that is partly about Kausfiles' revelation of an old Tonight Show interview where Arnold bragged of ripping off L.A. homeowners in his 20s. Schwarzenegger's campaign says the candidate made up that and the Oui gangbang claims.