'Book of Tribune damnation'

That's what retired Los Angeles Times reporter Ken Reich calls his series of blog posts telling a little bit about 75 former Times staffers who left during the later part of the Tribune's reign. Reich calls his blog Take Back the Times, so you know where he's coming from. He singles out LA Observed columnist Bill Boyarsky for special praise:

Boyarsky was an inspirational city editor. In fact, not since Bill Thomas was city editor in the 1960s do I think the City desk was any more distinguished than when Boyarsky and Tim Rutten were running it. It was their decision to pursue the Rampart scandal at the Los Angeles Police Department with major continuing coverage. But Boyarsky reached the highest point of a long professional life that had started at the Oakland Tribune (no relation to the Tribune Co.) and the Associated Press bureau in Sacramento, when he was called upon by the retired publisher, Otis Chandler, to deliver the message Chandler had prepared expressing revulsion at the regime of Mark Willes and Kathryn Downing and their roles in the Staples scandal. Though he knew this could get him into trouble, Boyarsky did not hesitate, and his reading of the Chandler letter to a crowded City Room was one of the greatest nights in the history of the paper.

The current Times staffer who blogs anonymously at TellZell.com is calling for a staff boycott on July 9.