Newspaper Tigers
N.Y. Times and L.A. Times continue to wage war while Big Media gets away with murder
That same phony baloney about nonpartisanship was given by the Walt Disney Co. to explain its boneheaded decision not to distribute Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 ($113 mil in box office and still climbing, as compared to flops like The Alamo, Hidalgo, Around the World in 80 Days and King Arthur the studio did release). Yet Eisner’s company enjoys a wealth of perks from Bush and bro’, from Homeland Security’s March 2003 granting of a no-fly zone over Disney World, to tax breaks for its theme parks and hotels in Florida, where Br’er Jeb just happens to be governor.
In any case, after this month’s vacation cease-fire, the NYT-LAT battling begins intensifying when the troop movements are in place. To recap, movie editor Michael Cieply defected from the LAT to the NYT, as did film critic Manohla Dargis, music business writer Jeff Leeds and architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff.
To counter, the LAT made TV critic Carina Chocano into Dargis Lite while Calendar columnist Paul Brownfield became Mr. Chocano. Then, Spring Street added Maria Russo from the New York Observer and Amy Wallace from Los Angeles magazine to estrogen up its editing staff. But did Wallace jump too soon? After all, she coulda been a contendah for the NYT’s second Hollywood gig. Instead, she sounds like journalism’s version of Xena: The Warrior Princess with eye-rolling pronouncements guaranteed to endear her to the bosses: “The L.A. Times is going to be at war with the N.Y. Times over entertainment coverage,” she told the Weekly recently. “And you know what? We’re going to win!”
All well and good, but if an army marches on its stomach, as Napoleon’s said, then we contend newsroom soldiers need at least a computer. On Tuesday, an amusing little NYT memo announcing not just the literal but the physical reorganization of the Culture section reminded the staff of the “downside” of all this hiring: not enough desks.
E-mail at deadlinehollywood@gmail.com.
Now Trending
