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Former Los Angeles Times publisher Tom Johnson writes in an email about Ken Reich, the retired reporter who died Monday after posting a blog item critical of the paper's management:
Newspaper publishers often confront withering criticism when their reporters aggressively cover very powerful individuals and organizations.Except for the blistering calls and letters I received about the editorial cartoons of Paul Conrad, no Los Angeles Times staffer generated more intense reaction for me than did Ken Reich (not even Martin Bernheimer's reviews of the Los Angeles Philharmonic that often scorched Mrs. Norman Chandler's favorite project, The Music Center).
Editor Bill Thomas assigned Ken to report independently on every aspect of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee. Headed by chairman Paul Ziffren and President Peter Ueberroth, the LAOC was comprised of many of the most influential power brokers of the city. Even Times' former publisher Otis Chandler had a special interest in wanting the L.A. Olympics to be a big success.
Continued after the jump. Meanwhile, more than 50 of Reich's ex-colleagues, news subjects and friends have posted in the comments at his blog. Also, NBC Olympics reporter Alan Abrahamson put up an appreciation at his NBC blog.
Times Mirror, our then parent company, was one of the major sponsors of the splendid 1984 Olympics Arts Festival.None of this fazed Ken Reich in the slightest. He investigated the finances of the LAOC. He reported on management conflicts of the LAOC. He reported on controversies between the LAOC and the International Olympic Organizing Committee.
Multiple complaints about Ken's reporting were directed at Times Mirror corporate executives, at Otis, at Bill Thomas, and at me.
Accuracy rarely was the issue, because Ken got the facts right.
Many critics called Ken's reporting "harmful to the Olympics, anti-Ueberroth, biased, incomplete," and occasionally, "pure bs".
As historians, award committees, editors, and even our competitors later acknowledged, Ken's body of work was splendid.
Along the way, Ken and I became friends. His greatest pride in life was his daughter Kathy and her accomplishments. Not far behind was his pride in The Times of his era.
Having served in a variety of media roles--including chief executive of The Times and of CNN--I never knew a better, stronger, more able journalist anywhere in the world.
Tom Johnson
Publisher, Los Angeles Times (80-89)