I have to wonder if the Times' near-total surrender of its award-winning tradition of covering a major local industry — cutting-edge science — helps explain why the New York Times beat the locals on the apparent suicide of a world-class Caltech scientist. I picked up an item in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune on Tuesday. The New York Times moved a staff-written story yesterday calling Andrew Lange "an astrophysicist whose balloon-borne measurements of light left over from the Big Bang played a key role in elucidating the shape and nature of the universe." Today the L.A. Times website carries an Associated Press wire story.

Noted: The NYT, and not the LAT, recently covered a major Physics of the Universe Summit held here in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile: At least three Caltech students took their own lives last year. (The LAT did cover those, by the way.)