LAT kudos itself for not running Rocky story

The Los Angeles Times got beaten on Tuesday by the San Francisco Chronicle's disclosure of an FBI probe into City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo. A memo to the staff last night from Executive Editor John Arthur turns it to a positive. (He cc's it to new Publisher Eddy Hartenstein.)

From: Arthur, John
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 10:06 PM
Subject: What a week

All Hands,

Kudos to Metro for a trio of terrific investigative pieces this week:

-- The Rocky story, which we carefully held, despite competitive pressures, in order to get enough information. Then, when we published, we had far more details than anyone else;

-- Today's Las Encinas story, which shines a light on bad events at a well-known hospital;

-- And Paul Pringle's outstanding reporting on the machinations inside the S.E.I.U. local. Paul's stories resulted in the sudden leave of absence taken by the union local president, as detailed in today's story.

This work represents our highest calling -- to hold institutions and public servants accountable.

And these stories come as:

-- Our Olympic team continues to produce, around the clock, colorful stories, blogs, photos and graphics from Beijing and L.A.;
-- Our political group develops outstanding enterprise, one example of which is today's story by Steve Braun on the McCain and Obama tax plans;

-- As a Times Poll that was the first to show a newly tightened race was quickly quoted around the country;

-- As the Foreign and D.C. staffs stay on top of the Russia-Georgia conflict, which broke out suddenly on the opening day of the Olympics and involved reporting, some of it dangerous, from correspondents and a photographer on the scene and elsewhere.

As Lopez says -- all for 50 cents!

Great job by all.

John