Former Daily News editor Ron Kaye has been building up to this post ever since he got fired last year, I suspect. With Ed Moss departing yesterday as publisher and president of LANG, Kaye fingers him as an "empty suit" and "the first and last chapter of my book 'Who Killed the LA Daily News.'"

When the story of why our daily newspapers died is finally told, Ed Moss will deserve more than a passing mention...

Many are responsible for what went wrong. But Ed Moss, and the owner who put him in place, Dean Singleton, bear the heaviest responsibility.

Moss sucked the spirit out of the paper and left it to die. On Wednesday, he resigned to become publisher of the San Diego Union-Tribune, which was recently bought as a real estate deal for its Mission Valley plant by Beverly Hills-based Platinum Equity

Sending Moss to fix a struggling paper is like sending a mortician to treat an ailing patient. He will do the only thing he knows how to do: Cut, and cut, and cut some more: When he's done with his handiwork, the U-T will be ready for embalming and burial much like the Daily News is.

Kaye says Moss "speaks in vapid cliches and offers no leadership." He adds: "I've never worked for anyone worse in my 44 years at nine different news organizations....My heart goes out to my colleagues still at the Daily News every time I pick up the paper and see what Moss' leadership has done to it." Nothing personal, Kaye says: "I'd been fired before but never by someone who had to fly in a surrogate from out of town to do it."