Like the vast majority of the big media, the Los Angeles Times (LAT) is a dying business.  There have been endless articles written about why the industry as a whole is dying, and they have some merit.  The LAT is a unique beast though and there are others like Patterico and Hugh Hewitt who have dedicated more time to documenting the uniuqely bad LAT in the past.  The LAT knows it has problems because circulation is falling rapidly and is attempting in various ways to stop the excessive bleeding.  Of interest to me at the moment and to the future of the LAT is a recent article purporting to ‘cover’ the local blogging scene.  I was interested and hopeful briefly since they actually manage to put together a good article now and then.  Maybe the LAT would enter into some sort of relationship with the new media, a sort of give and take that would give life and responsiveness to the ossified hidebound Lefty character of the LAT.  Sadly I was let down, and I was not alone.  To their credit the LAT is doing some new things, and as part of the ‘Outside the Tent’ program they had Catherine Seipp write a piece where she took them to town called Where, you overpaid fools, was Little Green Footballs?:

If you missed that piece, allow me to summarize. An article called "Blogging L.A." included neither the much-hyped L.A.-based commercial blogging enterprises that began this year (the Huffington Post and Pajamas Media, of which I’m a member), nor any of the major L.A. blogs (Kausfiles, the Volokh Conspiracy, Little Green Footballs, et al) except L.A. Observed and Defamer, and then only in passing.

Readers of this story would also have no idea that proto-blogger Matt Drudge began the Drudge Report here (his right-hand man, Andrew Breitbart, who still lives in L.A., recently began a news service called Breitbart.com) nor that the rise of influential (and profitable) big political blogs is, I’m sure, one reason traditional newspapers have been losing circulation and advertising — thus the loss of those 85 editorial jobs.

Of course when you think about it from the LAT perspective their lack of coverage to the large successful blogs is hardly surprising.  They might lose a bunch more customers who find they don’t need to pay money for such a poor product anymore.  So the LAT continues in its current Lefty bubbleverse form, giving its shrinking captive audience only what is in its own self-defined best interests to know.  Any information they find inconvenient is ignored or actively discounted as they manage down their business like a surfer riding out the last dregs of the wave.  They would rather ride the wave to its certain end than break off and try to go catch another one.

It is hardly surprising that the elite running the LAT and other major media outlets are trying to defend their status quo against the new disruptive technologies.  What they are doing is pretty standard human behavior, they are just doing what they know how to do.  But the strength of the capitalist free market system is that it is supposed to discipline these desires with the need to make a profit.  Those who can’t cut it get fired and new people hired to make the business grow and prosper.  Simple stuff.  The real question is why the stock owners of these publicly owned corporations are content to just ride along and lose money like this?  Where is the Board of Directors of the Tribune Company, owners of the LAT?  Why are they sitting idly by while the business they own is being run into the ground by managers and workers who are clearly out of touch with the larger nation and business community?

Own any Tribune Company stock?  Send a letter to the Board and ask for some answers.  Not that you’ll get anything but a canned response, but maybe it will spur them to actually make some serious changes and turn the LAT around or sell it to someone who will.