Newsrack politics

CityBeat runs a piece on the frustrations of small newspapers like, well, CityBeat, over the city's coming newsrack ordinance. Every newspaper dispenser on the street in Los Angeles will eventually have to be the same size and color as the green L.A. Times racks. Besides the expense of retrofitting and a $21.69 permit fee per rack, some publishers feel squeezed out and abandoned by the LAT's decision to drop its resistance to the ordinance. "The coalition-building that had been done in the spirit of freedom of the press got hijacked by the L.A. Times,” says Charles Gerencser, vice president of Southland Publishing (owner of CityBeat). “If the city wanted to quash the voice of the independent press, this was a surefire way to do it.”