Even the New York Times gets it right sometimes ;^)

Isn't Frank Bruni cutting it as critic there?

Oh, PLEASE let them take S. Irene. Two major expense account-padding pieces on San Francisco restaurants in yesterday's Food section, crowding out (among other things) Culinary SOS, which -- being something that food-oriented Times readers might actually find useful -- is being used as filler these days.

I realize that an editor's responsible for all of this, and The Times will probably find another "critic" as limited and snobbbish as Virbela, but one can hope they're in short supply.

The NYT stealing S.Irene Virbila would be a big win for the LAT.

I'm glad for Howard. Another case of the DN bring up a sportswriter who jumps to a bigger (not usually the NYT) out-of-town paper. Sometimes they return to LA and write for the rag published at Times Mirror Square (Tim Brown comes immediately to mind).

congrats to beck. maybe he'll eventually take broussard's job, who makes me miss mike wise even more! It's also nice to see someone make that leap with the star and the daily news on his resume - considering what sometimes passes for news at those places. I hope that one or two other reporters at those two papers can have the same luck as beck...

Sounds like all poor Todd is fit to review is sour grapes.

So if Sherri Irene goes, will we get Regina Schrambling?

Howard wrote his way to New York on hard work and talent. Way to go Beck!

Sour grapes?

(1) I voiced specific reasons for my dissatisfaction with The Times' food section. If you disagree, plenty of editors (and, maybe, readers) agree with you. Personally, I'd rather the paper run more recipes, and cover more places where real people eat. Locally. If I wanted to read about San Francisco restaurants, I'd read The Chronicle.

(2) I have never had any interest in The Times's food section than the increasingly remote prospect of finding something useful in it. The last resipe I copied from the section was from an ad.

(3) I use my real name and e-mail address.

What, exactly, is the purpose of using one's own name and email address in a random public forum on the web? Does it lend one more cred in their writing? To whom? What of those bloggers that remain anonymous? Who cares who wrote what? Let the writing stand for itself. Unless it is some kind of terrible illegal item, which on the web is rarely provable, I say let adsf1234 be heard without prejudice. I don't see this site becoming a hot-bed of death threats and bomb building lessons. I also don't understand why people get all in a huff over identity in posts. Do people really plan on calling me on the phone, or mailing me a letter based on a post at LA Observed? I'd much rather limit the potential for spam and longterm bot archiving that using actual names and addresses fosters. Happy to hear the other side of this issue, and I won't call you names. Promise.

Viva Beck!

Anonymouse ... here here. Very well said. I wondered the same thing the first day I landed on sites like this one, which, honestly, I enjoy. I just never got the identity thing. And over on another LAObserved.com post about Ken Layne and his comment about columnists this week, friends of his all tried to back him up by merely shouting down those who posted anonymously, rather than trying to comment on what was being said. Thanks for offering a good take on the other side.

Even from Arkansas, I would read Beck on the Lakers and thought he was a really good basketball writer....hate to see him leave

I quote Our Leader:

Real names raise the level of discussion. Please use them. L.A. Observed does not edit or approve comments, but any that are abusive or off-topic may be deleted without warning. Spam of any kind will be deleted and the poster's IP address restricted.

* * *

Having been accused of sour grapes, I was defending myself.

I'm not putting down those who choose to hide behind a pseudonym and fake e-mail. But I have no problem with attaching my name to something I write. Nor do I see anything to be gained (for me) by anonymity.

Howard Beck isn't the only departure at the DN. Michael Anastasi, the second in charge on the sports desk, is going to the Salt Lake Tribune to be managing editor.

I'm one of those terrible people Triple Threat referred to, those who use a real name, who know and defended Ken Layne, and believe TT's anonymous attacks reflected more on him/her than on Layne.

TT, the "identity thing" means standing behind your words. You subject others to criticism by name, but hide from the same treatment under a pseudonym. It's a hypocritical double standard.

You've said many people have to be anonymous here because they work at newspapers where the bosses don't let them post under their names. Perhaps that's the case with you, as you've hinted. I have no way of knowing if that implication is true with you personally, because your claim can't be fact-checked. Perhaps you just enjoy attacking others without making yourself equally vulnerable to a response. In any case, your tactics are unfair to those who have the guts to use their real names.

I've been skeptical of anonymity for a long time before I saw your anonymous postings. Your various rationalizations haven't been very persuasive.

You've previously posted approvingly of anonymous sources as a journalistic tool. But it has a serious drawback in that people have to take anonymous statements on faith. Journalism is not supposed to read like divine revelation.

There was at least one story that quoted an unidentified Bush adminstration official saying bad things about the Democrats. The reporter should have just called the RNC. Someone would have been glad to say the same things, under a real name. The gratuitious anonymity detracted from the story's credibility.

Jack Shafer over at Slate has made some good observations on the anonymice addiction, at no less a paper than the Washington Post. (http://slate.msn.com/id/2090660)

I think anonymity in news stories should be limited to times when the story is extremely significant, when the information provided is essential to the story, and when there is no other way to get the information. This involves some judgment calls, of course. A rule of thumb could be that anonymous sources should only be used when the reporter is prepared to defy a judge and go to jail to keep the identity secret.

Not all uses of anonymity have to be that dramatic, but there should be some useful aspect to its use that can't be duplicated any other way. Journo Websites such as the late lamented NewsMAIT provided one such service. It let fellow reporters to know what to expect at a certain paper, positive or negative.

Of course, the postings could not be accepted without corrorboration. But they did allow journos to alert their peers to things they should check out before accepting a job.

And I accept that many people who pose questions or observations on this board -- not personal attacks -- must remain anonymous to keep their jobs. I understand and sympathize with their situation.

Those excuses don't apply to you, TT. I don't see what great service your postings are providing. They seem to be made for no finer purpose than to insult others. That's just mean and petty.

Assuming that as you have implied, you really do work for a newspaper with an ethics policy that forbids employees posting on these Web sites, you are violating that policy for remarkably trivial reasons.

Anastasi's leaving? GREAT!

The guy is a jerk who tried to bully me on a couple of occasions. Both as a stringer for the paper and as a subscriber (years apart).

Salt Lake Tribune is getting a piece of "work" who will alienate the employees of its paper.

Mike: Don't let the door hit you on the way out of the San Fernando Valley. When this fails, maybe you can go back to UC Davis.

Fikes, listen, and then please stop stalking me around the various entries on this Web site. After this, I won't try to fight you anymore because you insist on having the last word and you're tiring me and probably everyone else here.

I did not attack Ken Layne as a human being. You're being inaccurate and you distorted everything in that thread, Mr. Journalism Teacher. He made a ridiculous comment and I pointed it out. That was all. Then you flipped out, though you barely brought up the core comment. Maybe because you're his friend. Maybe because I read some of your leads online to see what kind of reporter you are and what kind of writing you're willing to put your byline on.

I dunno why.

I don't really know what to make of you. But you're clearly not at the station journalistically where I or anyone else is going to digest any more of your ethics or reporting lectures without throwing up.

Since Fikes has done us all a big favor and posted his name, including middle initial, anyone who would like to judge the quality of his journalistic nature, or whatever you wanna call it, can look up his bylines online and make up their own mind. Not an attack. Just a suggestion.

I wasn't the first person to post anonymously on Internet sites. The ethics policy at my paper forbids me from posting on media sites with my name. I haven't violated it.

This thread was supposed to be about Howard Beck, who is a good writer and deserves to do well. Good luck to him.

Triple Threat: It's just that at this point maybe some of us are curious what your pseudonym means.

Reporter/editor/janitor?

Brochure writer/proofreader/receptionist?

Publicist/novelist/waiter?

Give us a hint!

Triple Threat:

I'll drop the matter if you'll stop referring to it, since you're so easily upset. Ken Layne was only a part of it. I haven't seen him in years. It's your laughable defense of anonymity as God's Gift to Journalism that's really objectionable. It lowers standards.

On another matter, don't you think it's rather ludicrous for an anonymous person to claim of being stalked?

As for my articles, you're welcome to read my obit of Francis Crick which ran today and advise me on how to do better. Perhaps you can link to some of your own stories as examples.

Oh, dear. There I go being intimidating again.

That was an invitation to be snarky. So since you asked, B.J., I looked at your story. I won't say much because I don't wanna attack you anonymously, but in terms of making it better ... um ... did you know that including the dateline, there are 17 capitalized words in your first graf? And two numbers? And not much else? A little more time on that lead and little less time on this site might be a good thing for you.

Cathy, here's a hint for you:

anonymous/anonymous/anonymous

I took a look at Fike' obit on Crick. It's servicable, nothing special tho. In fact, it's the kind of thing any of us could do in our sleep, so I'm not sure why he's trotting it out. Is that the best he's got?

And what exactly does that "J" stand for anyway? It makes me rather suspicious. What kind of scoundrel hides behind a middle initial? In fact, I won't trust anything he writes until I find out what his middle name is!

Anonymous posts do NOT detract from the message being presented. Who the hell cares WHO TT really is. Maybe he's just some schmo working at the 7/Eleven. Does it really make any difference? No.

Don't believe me? Don't believe TT. Then go do a Google search on the name Silence Dogood.

If it was good enough for him, it's good enough for me.

TT:

Well, you've certainly shown me up. You're a master at counting capitalized letters.

Other than Crick's name, major accomplishment,place, age, date and cause of death, institutional affiliation and length of residence in San Diego, my opening graf says absolutely nothing.

As for the capitalization, the dateline is dictated by style, yielding seven letters at the start.

and t4, i liked the silence dogood part. nice to know there's a fan of american history here.

sign me novanglus

> Personally, I'd rather the paper run
> more recipes, and cover more places
> where real people eat.

Considering how little advertising is drawn anymore to the Food section, you'll be lucky if that part of the LAT even survives over the next few years.

Back to your lead, for clarification: I counted the dateline as just one capital letter, not all 7, and if you don't realize yet how a whole bunch of proper nouns floating around in a lead can drag down a sentence and rob it of its power, then ... hmmm ... OK.

After all, I just work at 7-Eleven.

I wasn't dissing you with the 7-Eleven comment TT! I was just making a point. I mean, I'm your No. 1 fan!

Besides, how many times have I been overcome with the need for Funyums at 2 a.m.? I LOVE those 7-Eleven guys!

No offense taken. See ya later at the store :)

Reading these anonymity debates is like peeping in on a circle jerk. It's a spectacle full of froth and fury signifying nothing. I'm at once nauseated and aroused, and it's only a matter of time before I burst in uninvited.

(just doing my part to raise our level of 'da bate)

This post caught my eye because I saw a Help Wanted ad for the LADN Lakers beat a month back. Figured I'd post it for fun / background:

Description:
Lakers beat writer: The Los Angeles Daily News, a 200,000 circulation newspaper located in the San Fernando Valley, is seeking a sports writer to cover the Lakers. This is one of our top beats, and we want someone who can break news and write engaging features and enterprise stories. NBA or major beat experience and at least three years at a daily newspaper are required. Please send resume and at least 10 writing samples to: Doug Jacobs, Executive Sports Editor, Los Angeles Daily News, P.O. Box 4200, Woodland Hills, CA 91365. No phone calls, please.

It was posted July 3 at JournalismJobs.com, so I'm guessing Beck has been gone for a month now. I don't blame him ... a whole new team is on the way & it's a good time for a Beat Reporter to move on.

(I don't live in California these days & am not seeking work there, but scanning the CA jobs on CraigsList and JournalismJobs and CNPA is a habit I developed while doing LAExaminer. It's a good way to see who's coming or going, and what papers are on the Up -- the SF Examiner was hiring a half-dozen editors & reporters, last time I checked. And every week or two I go through the bookmarks again, out of curiosity. Also, I sent Welch this Lakers Beat ad just to torture him.)

Um, anyway, it is disturbing to see people mentioning me in a thread about a Lakers Beat job, as I am not associated with the Lakers in any way & never worked for the LADN, etc. Both friends & foes, can I ask that you leave Kevin's site for L.A. related stuff, unless Kevin specifically mentions me, which I believe he has done about once this year? It is a little weird to check in on my regular L.A. news / media site and find people arguing about the likes of me in a Lakers Beat thread. (I'm sorry I'm just noticing this, Kevin. The only stuff I've looked at online for an entire week was all about the DNC convention, and then I got so sleepy ....)

I guess I could've just decided against commenting here, but I thought the LADN job ad would be an interesting addition to the conversation.

Cheers & Happy Weekend to you all,
Ken

Thanks for adding that, Ken.

Uh, excuse me, guys, but sometimes related and, yeah, even barely related items are gonna develop on a thread and inspire cross-posting. Look around.

Anonymity came up here, as it did on another thread that heated up last week, and it was tossed around again. Hardly anything on this thread is actually about Ken Layne. He was not "discussed" here. Gimme a break. And the thing is, if Ken Layne was "L.A. enough" to come up on a recent posting elsewhere on this site, then he's certainly "L.A. enough" to be brought up for another nanosecond again when a barely related issue comes up.

This whole issue of anonymity has been exhausted here for now. The great majority of people who post do so anonymously and seemed symbolically silent during all of this. That speaks for itself.

Finally, I am always amazed what media people (even bloggers) will say and do for people they know and like, and, in reverse, what they're willing to say about others. We were all recently cautioned about trying to post any word about specific people laid off at the Times; and then look at all the naked rumors published about people about to leave other jobs where maybe we're not such good friends with the people. Thanks for such an educational forum.

Actually, the anonymity thread isn't quite exhausted.

This site is moving inexorably toward registration or some other way of urging commenters to stand by their words. If the technology were available to me and easy to use, it would be in force already. I'm convinced that having people use their names will raise the level of savvy and actual insight into the media and Los Angeles, and cut out 80% of the cheap shots that waste our time and that discourage the vast majority of readers from ever commenting.

I say this being a fan of some kinds of anonymous communication. But on this site, it hasn't worked very well. Half the time, it seems, the anonymous commenters are carrying out a personal grudge. A lot of the time they use this as a free forum to spew some position they don't want their name connected with. That's boring, and wandering far afield from the intent of L.A. Observed and why I put time into it.

Personally, when I see a new anonymous poster here, I've come to assume -- until shown otherwise -- that it's the Web analogue of the lonely guy who writes rambling postcards to the newspaper or calls too many talk shows. Many times, to be sure, I'm happily surprised by real insight or wit, or just a good thought. Some of the best commenters here are, indeed, anonymous. (But nearly all of the assholes who everybody wishes would just go away post with fake names). I'm leery until they prove they deserve to be taken seriously. And if they bad mouth somebody else, without using their own name, I figure right off they are dishonest and scratch them off my internal list of people with an opinion worth absorbing. On the occasions when I delete a comment for being offensive to me, it's almost always from one of those losers-in-hiding.

Most blogs don't run this way, of course. They are anything goes. But I think the blogosphere can stand another site where the aim is a bit higher. One way to go may be two tiers of feedback, like Romenesko uses. One level where comments are always signed and there's usually a good exchange among people who keep their dignity and know what they are talking about; and a more general level where anyone can post. I never look at that one. I figure anybody with an opinion I'd care about would be up with the big kids.

For now, I'm not going to stop people from posting with fake names and email. I can't; it's too much trouble. But it makes you something of a second-class citizen here. It means you have no leeway to attack someone, and have nothing to complain about if I ignore you or delete your post. Recently, some longtime anonymous posters came out of the closet and took responsibility for their words, and I think they are more respected for it. I hope more will do so.

To another point that's been raised here, I'm not aware of any newspaper or other media outlet that bars its staff from posting here under their own name. I'd be surprised if there were a blanket rule anywhere.

It's your Web site, your ball and your game, Kevin. You be just as heavy-handed as you like. But this isn't exactly the Poynter Institute.

I have visited this site many times and every so often post something anonymously. For all the thousands of L.A. media people (full-time TV, magazine and newspaper writers and editors) who are supposed to look at this site regularly, next to none ever post with their full names. Twist that as you will.

The way I view it, in my second-class citizen sort of way, anonymous postings cause trouble mainly because there's always someone willing to take that angle and harp on anonymity and ignore anything of merit the person had to say. True discussion then dies quickly. I'd rather be involved in an anonymous discussion that might teach me something or make me think than concentrate on who the poster is and what they do for a living, who they write for, what kind of writer they are. That leads nowhere except to comparisons of who works for the bigger paper, who's smarter, etc.

Requiring registration to post or view feedback will cut your audience in half or more. Look at other Web sites and what happened when they did that.

And ... if you wanna model yourself after Poynter, take a look at how few people post on threads that are just *dying* for a long series of points and arguments. For a site that draws nationally, many of the threads there have 0 comments.

Wanna talk about boring now?

Oh well, I tried...

BTW, you might want to re-inform yourself on the popularity of blogs that don't allow just anybody to comment. It begins at the top of the traffic lists with Drudge, Joshua Marshall, Instapundit & Andrew Sullian, and goes from there.

On the other hand, the list of blogs that let any idiot comment include the #1 linked blog in the world, Slashdot, and include Political Animal (CalPundit), Atrios, Scott Water, Wil Wheaton, and so forth.

I don't see the fuss with real names anyway. Are we going to require you to fax your drivers' license to comment? Who the hell is Robert Chang (and which one of the many people with that generic Asian name is it anyway?)

If "Triple Threat" had just used a generic name like Juan Garcia or Alex Jones (or, gasp, "Todd Everett"), we wouldn't be having this discussion.

I agree with Triple Threat.
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(disclaimer: I bear no relation to the owner of this blog.)

Yep, there are both kinds of blogs -- those that thrive with comments, and those that thrive without. Was that not already clear?

Hmm, I may ask people to send in their drivers licenses, just to see if anybody does it...

Actually, all you'd ever be asked to do is attach your actual name to your words. After all, I have to.

(The real KR)