Travis Armstrong, the Wendy McCaw aide whose elevation to publisher and newsroom boss — and suppression of his DUI sentence from the news pages — sparked the mass departure of News-Press editors has posted his enemies list on the paper's editorial page. Armstrong names several local politicians and the Los Angeles Times as co-conspirators in a campaign to make him and the News-Press look bad. The whole thing is posted at BlogaBarbara, where the locals are guffawing. Here's an L.A.-centric excerpt:

Perhaps most disheartening has been the L.A. Times because of what appears in my personal view to be journalistic ethical questions involving the newspaper's coverage. The Times has set up a subscription booth across De la Guerra Plaza from the News-Press building.

In Times reporter James Rainey's interview with me while I temporarily served as acting publisher in July, I asked him if the newspaper's assistant managing editor for Page 1, John Arthur, had a hand in one of Mr. Rainey's stories on the News-Press resignations. The impression I got from Mr. Rainey's dancing around the question was yes. Mr. Arthur, before this story appeared, told one of the departing editors in an e-mail to "hang in there! Best, John."

How's that for journalistic detachment?

Another Times reporter who has written about the resignations is Catherine Saillant. She works in the smallish Ventura bureau alongside Steven Chawkins, husband of former News-Press metro editor Jane Hulse Chawkins. (Mr. Chawkins has a history of chasing News-Press stories. Yesterday, he wrote about how a veterans group is backing away from the proposal to turn Santa Rosa Island into a private hunting ground for retired soldiers. The News-Press had the story on Page 1 last Friday.)

The blog's commenters also speculate that gay employees of the News-Press are likely uncomfortable about their jobs now that syndicated advice-giver Dr. Laura Schlesinger is on board as a columnist. Armstrong notes, by the way, that he is no longer publisher. And Editor & Publisher says that two more journalists — a reporter and a copy editor — have resigned.

> | More
© 2003-2010   •  About LA Observed  •  Email the editor
Follow LAO
Kevin Roderick blog
12:37 AM Thu | The musician who began as the lead singer for the Box Tops in the 1960s died in New Orleans.
11:06 PM Wed | Adrienne's social diary
Mark Lacter, LA Biz Observed
5:44 PM Wed | Both John Malone's Liberty Media and Relativity Media are out, and Time Warner is expected to bid low.
1:48 PM Wed | Market's lucky seven
Sponsors
Jewish Journal logo
California Wellness Foundation
For information on becoming a sponsor, email the editor.
Sign up for email

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner


Blogads Los Angeles network

Get RSS Feeds
of LA Observed
LA Observed publishes several Real Simple Syndication feeds for easy scanning of headlines. If you wish to subscribe to a feed, most popular RSS readers will do it for you. You can also enter the web address from the XML button below or click on a specific feed. For more help with RSS, try here or here.




Add to Google