Salon.com > Los Angeles Times

Koch Brothers eyeing Tribune company

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 18:59:00 +0000

Word has circulated since at least March that the libertarian leaning, Tea Party backing Koch brothers wanted to buy the Tribune Company, the struggling newspaper outfit that owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and several regional papers. The New York Times reports today that gaining influence in the media is part of the brothers "three-pronged, 10-year strategy to shift the country toward a smaller government with less regulation and taxes." The other two prongs are "educating grass-roots activists and influencing politics."

The Times reports:

Koch brothers consider purchasing L.A. Times

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:45:00 +0000

According to "multiple sources" who spoke with L.A. Weekly, the conservative billionaire Koch brothers are considering buying the Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Trubine and the Baltimore Sun, among other publications:

Now, these are unverified rumors that should be taken with a grain of salt if not a whole dollop. The Tribune Co. won't comment on any specific offers they've received, although a source there says, "We've gotten a ton of interest. That was one of the reasons for hiring the outside financial advisors, to sift through the unsolicited interest." [...]

Another rumor, passed along by a member of the L.A. Times Editorial Board, no less, has the Koch Brothers helping to finance a bid by "Papa Doug" Manchester, himself a right-wing multimillionaire who in 2009 bought the San Diego Union Tribune and promptly turned it into a propaganda organ for San Diego development.

Like many newspaper companies, Tribune Co. has faced hard times in recent years, complicated by the difficult reign of Sam Zell, who took the company into bankruptcy.

Invest in readers, not MFAs

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 20:53:00 +0000

Supply and demand -- those are concepts you'd expect a mogul to understand almost instinctively, so what to make of the recent donation by the Zell Family Foundation (set up by financier Sam Zell and his wife, Helen) of $50 million to the creative writing program at the University of Michigan? Helen Zell told the Associated Press, "The ability of fiction to develop creativity, to analyze the human psyche, help you understand people — it's critical. It's as important as vitamins or anything else. To me, it's the core of the intellectual health of human beings."

Of course, creative writing programs are not a bad thing, but their role in our current culture can make even those who work within them uneasy. The programs provide promising young writers with the opportunity to concentrate on their work in an (ideally) supportive community of writers. But the programs have difficulty imparting to their students a central truth of most authors' lives: Nobody cares about your work. When it comes to books, the supply is much larger than the demand.

U.S. polluting water it may someday drink

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 21:59:00 +0000

Mexico City plans to draw drinking water from a mile-deep aquifer, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. The Mexican effort challenges a key tenet of U.S. clean water policy: that water far underground can be intentionally polluted because it will never be used.

U.S. environmental regulators have long assumed that reservoirs located thousands of feet underground will be too expensive to tap. So even as population increases, temperatures rise, and traditional water supplies dry up, American scientists and policy-makers often exempt these deep aquifers from clean water protections and allow energy and mining companies to inject pollutants directly into them.

Obama’s endless fundraising

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 00:27:00 +0000

If you’re one of those who equate the worlds of Washington and Hollywood — the standard joke: “Politics is show business for ugly people” — then a presidential inauguration is the Oscars, Golden Globes and Emmy Awards combined, right down to the parties, balls, extravagant wardrobes and goody bags stuffed with swag. Just check out the online “57th Presidential Inauguration Store," which is peddling more tchotchkes than the vendors outside a Justin Bieber concert — from shot glasses, T-shirts and tube socks to an Obama portrait by the artist Chuck Close and a $7,500 set of official medallions.

The company behind this marketing behemoth — as it was during the 2012 campaign, when at times it appeared the Obama team was running a big-box store rather than a presidential race — is Financial Innovations, Inc., which also happens to be one of a handful of corporations donating money to underwrite this year’s inaugural celebration. Its owner, Democratic fundraiser Mark Weiner, was an Obama bundler, raising as much as half a million dollars for the president’s reelection. According to Matea Gold at the Los Angeles Times, analyzing data from the Federal Election Commission, Financial Innovations “was paid more than $15.7 million by two Obama campaign committees to produce and mail campaign merchandise.”

Latino gang member convicted for role in racist terror campaign

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 19:49:00 +0000

A Latino street gang leader and his son were sentenced in federal court Monday to lengthy prison terms for their role in a years-long campaign of racist terror and ethnic cleansing targeting African Americans in and around Los Angeles.

Since at least the mid-1990s, Latino street gangs across Los Angeles County have been targeting, beating and sometimes killing blacks in an attempt to drive them out of the region.

Just before Christmas 2006, Cheryl Green, 14, playing on her skateboard with a group of friends just south of 206^th Street in Los Angeles, was shot dead in broad daylight by two men who approached the group and opened fire without saying a word. Two members of the 204^th Street gang were later arrested in the killing.

Green’s death shook the city.

An FCC Christmas gift for Rupert Murdoch?

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 21:46:00 +0000

Until now, this hasn’t been the best year for media mogul Rupert Murdoch. For one, none of the Republicans who had been on the payroll of his Fox News Channel – not Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum or Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin – became this year’s GOP nominee for president.

Oh sure, when Mitt Romney got the nod instead, Murdoch’s TV and newspaper empire backed him big time, but on election night, Fox pundits like Dick Morris and Karl Rove – the top GOP strategist and fundraiser -- had to eat crow as Barack Obama won a second term in the White House, despite their predictions of a Republican landslide. (When the network called Ohio and the election for Obama, a desperate Rove tried to keep Fox statisticians from doing their job until the facts couldn’t be ignored or denied. New York magazine reports that Fox News programming chief Bill Shine now “has sent out orders mandating that producers must get permission before booking Rove or Morris.”)

Dark money obscures Congress

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 19:52:00 +0000

It's been tempting to treat the 2012 election as proof that money in politics doesn't matter as much as commonly believed, or that Citizens United and the emergence of Super PACs and political non-profits didn't change things as much as predicted. “Effect of 'super PACs' proved to be less than expected,” the Los Angeles Times declared in a post-election headline.