Nancy Cleeland took the L.A. Times buyout and wrote at the Huffington Post that the paper lacks coverage of economic justice in Los Angeles.

 Ms Cleeland is dead-on about the Los Angeles Times. The Los Angeles of my youth,­ a largely middle-class city, has been replaced by growing centers of rich and poor, mostly poor. If you do a little math, you will see that Social Security taxes, housing costs, and health care have blown a hole in the middle class.

U.S. trade policy, and essentially an open border to Mexico's hard-working but relatively desperate immigrants have also hurt middle-class Angelenos, although this is debatable, and often (unfortunately) turns into an argument infused with racism, or charges of racism. These realities should be a framework for many stories in the Los Angeles Times, as a call to action on the federal level. Aside from housing, it is issues which must be dealt with at a federal level which are polarizing our society.

Too bad Cleeland left. We cannot expect another billionaire owner (Zell) to be a gut-fighter for people who work for a living, or to care much how ordinary people in Los Angeles live. His employees at the Los Angeles Times may care, but care about their jobs more.

It will fall on other publications and venues to play a role in trying to resurrect a more egalitarian society in Los Angeles, in which, yes, enterprise and capital are rewarded, but so is driving a bus for 40 hours a week.

Benjamin Mark Cole