Reopening old wounds

Remember that episode back in March when Andrés Martinez resigned as editor of the Times editorial pages after the publisher, David Hiller, didn't back him in the Brian Grazer controversy? If you're vague on it, here are the basics: Martinez and his top editors hatched a plan to invite people they found interesting to guest-edit the Sunday opinion section. First in line was producer Brian Grazer, but that blew up because Martinez's girlfriend, Kelly Mullens, was in business with Grazer's longtime PR rep. Martinez dismissed the ensuing flap, saying Mullens didn't influence the decision to tap Grazer. But Hiller killed the section at the last minute, citing at minimum the appearance of a conflict of interest. Martinez then quit, with blasts at his ex-employer posted on the LAT website and in an email to me for publication.

There was more, including allegations by Martinez's side that an ideologically driven newsroom coup was at play — and responses from Editor Jim O'Shea and columnist Tim Rutten. But that's the gist. At the time Hiller said publicly there would be an investigation, as Bill Boyarsky asked, then nothing more was heard. OK, fast forward to last night. Conservative Times watchdog Patterico asked for the conclusions of that internal probe report and isn't satisfied with the response he received. Excerpt:

Translation: they didn’t find a thing.

So why wasn’t this reported in the L.A. Times? What in the hell is going on here?

Way back when, we were told by publisher David Hiller that the reader’s right to know was Concern Number One...

More at Patterico's Pontifications. I thought the whole guest-editor idea (and choice of Grazer) was lame, inside-the-box outside-the-box thinking. Meanwhile, Martinez has been back on the Times website this week. He's now a pundit at the New America Foundation.