Kaplan to Radio Liberal

The L.A. Times' loss is Progress Media's gain -- or something like that. USC journalism professor Martin Kaplan, former speechwriter for Walter Mondale, has been tapped to host a nightly talk show on the new liberal radio network when it launches, the New York Times reports. In his USC hat -- he is associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communciation and director of the Norman Lear Center -- Kaplan has been the LAT's go-to guy for local observations on the media. In the past year alone he has been cited or quoted more than 30 times, including in 10 Tim Rutten columns and a couple by Steve Lopez. Most of the time Kaplan has been identified with USC but without going into his liberal and partisan Democratic creds, which I guess will change once he goes on the air.

Mr. Kaplan said in an interview that part of his charge would be to address some of the more extreme voices on the right. "It will be a chance to make fun of the pomposity and the bullying which the right has engaged in, and which a good chunk of the mainstream media has bought into," he said. "The self-righteousness of the right is now their greatest weakness, and I think we need to put those people on a whoopee cushion."

Earlier Matt Welch rant about the LAT-Kaplan connection.

More on Progress Media from Robert Tagorda at Priorities and Frivolities.