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Ed Padgett says he has been suspended for writing about the production problems that the Los Angeles Times had last week. "I was told I had been warned in the past regarding my blogging, but I was only warned about broadcasting circulation numbers and nothing else," Padgett posted on the pressroom employees' blog. "So much for first amendment rights." He's waiting to get a call about whether he has been fired. Last week, even the Times' news pages covered the paper's massive production failure that led to most readers getting their paper late or not at all — or without the Sports section — on the day after the Lakers won the NBA title. (Publisher Eddy Hartenstein even apologized online.) Padgett may have gotten his boss's goat by posting something the paper omitted — that the Orange County pressroom had been hurriedly restarted just days after being closed down as an economy measure. He also had said about the production woes at the Olympic plant in Downtown L.A.: "In my thirty-eight years working at the Los Angeles Times, last night was the very first time I wondered if we would deliver today’s edition to our readers. Yes it was that bad last night at the Olympic Production Facility."
Earlier: Padgett on video in 2007 during the successful campaign to bring a union into the Times pressroom. Video by Jacob Soboroff: