One of the many fun things about living in L.A. is that you get to hear those cool New York journalists talking about you behind your back. Or, because we’re in L.A., people in New York won’t even bother with the behind-the-back stuff — they’ll lecture us to our faces, as if we were a surly teen in need of adult guidance.
The latest is Kurt Andersen, writing in New York magazine. Ostensibly, he’s attacking the Los Angeles Times (which we like to consider our hometown paper, faults and all) but like many before him, he pretty much takes a large swipe at the city itself, which he finds unworthy of a having a major newspaper.
Kurt has never lived in L.A., he’s quick to admit, and so he uses as his main source Michael Kinsley, another journalist. The problem here? Kinsley never lived in L.A., either, despite the fact that he ran the Los Angeles Times editorial pages in 2004-2005. He’d commute from the more sophisticated, cosmopolitan Seattle, spend two weeks a month in a downtown apartment (and trust me, a third-generation Californian, no one actually lives downtown), refuse to come into the office and, on weekends, he would drive at random to a suburban Target store, buy and T-shirt and return to Seattle confident he had gotten to know the real L.A.
When the Times fired him, he was bewildered. How could such a thing happen? Certainly this tells us something awful about the Los Angeles Times, which might want the man helping to shape local thought to be somewhat local himself. And it tells us something awful about the city, which would allow such a newspaper to exist. He’s been complaining about it ever since.
Since the Los Angeles Times has become the poster child for problem-ridden newspapers you’ll be reading lots of stories by people like Kurt and Michael. Here’s the key thing to remember: The Times often sucks as a newspaper. And the reason for that is that misguided corporate types — from outside L.A. — turned the paper over to people also not from L.A. The result has been New Yorkers putting out a newspaper for New Yorkers that apparently New Yorkers don’t like very much — in L.A.
None of this has much to do with those of us who live in L.A., by the way. But it does have a lot to do with people like Kurt Andersen and Michael Kinsley, who really don’t know what they’re talking about, but who either end up talking about the Times or, worse yet, running it.
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Comments on this entry:
So true and excellent point. It's just typical NY bull—running one's mouth because they consider it the "intellectual" thing to do.
Oh my brother, testify!