More Times talk

Once again, Tim Rutten is on his holier-than-Times rant. This week, he focuses on those money-grubbing Wall Street types who are only after the fattest profit and couldn't care less about Pulitzers or foreign bureaus or anything else having to do with quality journalism - all of which is pretty much true. But so what? What planet has this guy been living on? Putting aside Rutten's naivete about the way business works (Tip: I've found "Understanding Wall Street" by Jeffrey B. Little and Lucien Rhodes to be a good primer), is his ceaseless pomposity about how important the Times is to this community, this nation, this world!

Alone among America's major newspapers, The Times is simultaneously the hometown newspaper of one of the world's great cities, the most important source of news in the nation's richest and most significant state, the leading source of journalism in the country's Western region and a newspaper with national and international reach, particularly in Latin America and along the Pacific Rim.

At the same time, it is Southern California's leading journal of the arts and culture and primary chronicler of the world's most significant laboratory of popular culture: the film industry.

Obviously, The Times plays these roles imperfectly — often inadequately and, sometimes, abysmally — but it cannot abandon any of them without fundamentally breaking faith with its readers, without "devaluing" their relationship with what is, at the end of the day, their newspaper.

Isn't he embarrassed to go on like that? Somebody really needs to throw a few humility pills into the water coolers over there. And as I pointed out last week, why no mention of circulation? If the Times is such an irreplaceable institution, so critical to the lifeblood of the readers it serves, why have 350,000 some-odd subscribers somehow managed to replace it? And many of those before the Tribune boys came marching into town.

Duly noted: After months of ignoring one of the biggest business stories in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Business Journal (FD: my former employer) finally cranks out a me-too assessment of what the Tribune properties might sell for. There's even a parenthetical mention of the Gang of 20 letter to Tribune execs that included Publisher Matt Toledo. Too bad the story is only available through paid subscription.