L.A. Times Roll of Honor, Those Who Left, 64-75

Today, I'm finishing up describing what happened at the hands of the evil Tribune Co. to 75 L.A. Times writers and editors who were at the newspaper at the wrong time -- long after the halcyon years of Otis Chandler, Tom Johnson and Bill Thomas. Without the benevolent protection and enlightened employment policies of these great journalists, they found themselves helpless, in many cases, to protect their livelihoods, and they were swept aside in successive waves of buyouts, induced buyouts and layoffs.

Yet to me, and I believe, as time goes on, to many others, they will be seen as heroes. They were a great group of people, putting out one of the finest newspapers in the country, and it was through no fault of their own that a tide of Chicago disdain and neglect came rolling into Los Angeles with the Tribune purchase and almost immediately set the paper off on a downhill course toward mediocrity. It was resisted for awhile by editors John Carroll and Dean Baquet, but eventually they were swept aside, and then the floodgates of Chicago sewage opened very widely.

Also, at the end here, I have a few comments about two of the most serious losses at the Times during the early Tribune years, those of Bill Boyarsky and Narda Zacchino.

Roll of Honor:

64. Rone Tempest. A foreign correspondent in the dangerous corners of the Middle East, then a writer in Northern California, he did many things very well. The Times was lucky to have him. But, as other foreign correspondents have found, Tempest discovered he had a hard time settling into what inherently was a less glamorous job at home.

65. Wendy Thermos. She was one of the reporters who pulled themselves upward by the bootstraps, gradually becoming a stronger writer, only to have her Times career cut short. Very much her own person, modest and unassuming yet having strong willpower. I liked and admired her.

66. Kevin Thomas. A proud movie reviewer for many years, he was suddenly told one day he had to take a buyout. He was not ready for retirement, and genuinely hurt that he was being ushered out the door. Later, he was able to write some reviews for the paper as a freelancer, but he still feels, appropriately, that he was very roughly and unfairly treated. I wonder, as he commands great layoffs at all the papers he now controls, whether Sam Zell ever thinks of the interests of the Kevin Thomases.

67. Mai Tran. One of the paper's first Vietnamese reporters, for a time the only reporter who spoke Vietnamese, she brought fresh perspectives to Orange County coverage. Again, this is the newspaper that once talked diversity, yet many of its most talented ethnic writers no longer have their jobs.

68. Sam Howe Verhovek. He has now reportedly left the New York Times too. For the L.A. Times, he was a national correspondent based in the Northwest, and also worked in other capacities, including, I believe, as the paper's architectural critic, always a difficult post to fill since many editors think little of the assignment.

69. Debora Vrona. An excellent Business reporter, aspiring upward. She is one of many losses of young, vigorous personnel that the paper has sustained.

70. Amy Wallace. For a time, an important writer in both Metro and Calendar.

71. Jenifer Warren. She was one of the most serious losses in the Sacramento bureau and statewide, because she covered the vital prison beat. California prisons had fallen into a terrible mess, overcrowded and often terribly inhumane to the prisoners and under the domination of a rapacious and irresponsible prison guards union. Warren was better at covering this story than anyone else. She has not at all been adequately replaced. She was yet another improving reporter, with her best years ahead.

72. Henry Weinstein. A reporter of reporters, he was one of the greatest Timesmen, but not only on account of his legal reporting and coverage of the death penalty issue, but also because he was an outspoken voice in the staff demanding that the paper always observe the highest ethical standards. It was Weinstein's vehement denunciation of those responsible for the Staples scandal at an open employees meeting that resulted in that blossoming as the issue that finally led to the ouster of Mark Willes and Michael Parks. Highly popular amongst the staff, he was disgusted when Sam Zell went to the Washington Bureau earlier this year and dismissed what its reporters did as inconsequential, Weinstein, as was characteristic with him, said so very plainly. I understand he has now been hired by the new dean of the U.C. Irvine Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky to teach there. They are lucky to have him, and the Times is extremely unlucky to lose him.

73. Robert Welkos. The author with Joel Sappell of the Scientology series, he was an able investigative reporter who worked both in Metro and Calendar. He wrote sensitively about a surgical operation he had had, and was a resilient popular member of the staff.

74 . Nona Yates. Long in the Times library and then a senior researcher in Metro and Business, she, like Tracy Thomas, provided valuable services. Unfailingly helpful. The kind of person a great institution needs.

75. Nora Zamichow. A distinctive writer of crime, military and other stories, she specialized in the long poignant, well-researched articles that used to mark the Times as a newspaper. One of the most eloquent writers in the business, with great moral sensitivity.

In closing out this series, I should also mention as great losses both Bill Boyarsky and Narda Zacchino. Both left the paper very early in the Tribune years when, after distinguished careers, they were left through bureaucratic shuffles with little to do. The Tribune Co. was never high on independent voices, and they were two of the best.

Boyarsky was an inspirational city editor. In fact, not since Bill Thomas was city editor in the 1960s do I think the City desk was any more distinguished than when Boyarsky and Tim Rutten were running it. It was their decision to pursue the Rampart scandal at the Los Angeles Police Department with major continuing coverage. But Boyarsky reached the highest point of a long professional life that had started at the Oakland Tribune (no relation to the Tribune Co.) and the Associated Press bureau in Sacramento, when he was called upon by the retired publisher, Otis Chandler, to deliver the message Chandler had prepared expressing revulsion at the regime of Mark Willes and Kathryn Downing and their roles in the Staples scandal. Though he knew this could get him into trouble, Boyarsky did not hesitate, and his reading of the Chandler letter to a crowded City Room was one of the greatest nights in the history of the paper. When Tribune overseers arrived, they ignored a University of Oregon citation to the Times staff for standing up heroically in the cause of journalistic independence in the Staples matter, and they quickly let Boyarsky know that, with the unpopular Miriam Pawel named as Metro editor, he would have little to do. Boyarsky left quietly, but has had a distinguished retirement as a teacher at USC, an author of a biography on Jesse Unruh, a member of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission and a writer for LAObserved and Truth.dig.

Narda Zacchino held many ranking positions at the Times before being foolishly passed over for editor of the paper in 1996 and subsequently being farmed out as an editor-at-large dealing with readers. Much at the Times might have been different had Zacchino been editor under Willes instead of Michael Parks, since, I believe, she might have been able to influence Willes in more constructive directions, and the Staples scandal and subsequent sale to the evil Tribune Co. would have been unlikely to occur. Zacchino spent six years as an editor of the San Francisco Chronicle upon leaving the Times, and is now the author of a book on the death in Afghanistan of Pat Tillman, the former professional football player.

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One of the more repulsive statements of this year's presidential campaign was made against John McCain today on CBS's Face The Nation show by the retired Gen. Wesley Clark, when he denigrated McCain's military record and heroism in the Vietnam war. Clark, an ambitious man, was undoubtedly trying to curry favor with Barack Obama when he spoke with such prejudice and venom. Obama ought to cut him off at his knees.

L.A. Times Roll of Honor, Those Who Left, 51-63

In this day and age, it's quite often the victims rather than the barbaric aggressors who ultimately get the most attention. That's the way it is in Darfur, in Zimbabwe, at Ground Zero in New York, and, in the corporate world at Enron, Carter Hawley Hale, and other firms that have been destroyed by skulduggery and incompetence.

The Tribune Co. is headed the same way as other failed enterprises, under the same kind of control, a loon and his band of crackpots and sleazes who think they can pare down the news offerings of their newspapers, devote a higher percentage of pages to advertising, and still retain their readership. They will get their comeuppance in short order, (the L.A. Times under the evil Tribune Co. is already down 400,000 in daily circulation) but one terrible thing about it is that their employees will lose their livelihood and be forced to find new jobs, working for hopefully more enlightened people. The other terrible thing is that a whole city and state, Los Angeles and California will lose the public service that a good newspaper provides, reining in both government and private excesses.

This week, I've been discussing some of the talented people at the L.A. Times who have already been induced to take buyouts, often in the midst of their careers, or simply been laid off. They are far better people, of course, than the skunks who got rid of them, and they are supposed to actually own the company, but they are actually at the mercy of the neanderthals. And this is not the end. Just yesterday, the Tribune toady in Los Angeles, David Hiller, spoke of new layoffs, and the editor he named, Russ Stanton, unlike his predecessors, is unresisting. Stanton entered into a Faustian compact, and now will have to live with it the rest of his life.

I've already discussed 50 of the former employees, as listed by the courageous internal Ask Zell blog. and today and tomorrow will complete the discussions of 74 I knew well in the 39 years I was at the Times. My aim is to demonstrate clearly just what Los Angeles has lost in the purges committed by the damnable Tribune Co. since it purchased the paper eight years ago. (Zell only came along last year, replacing the inept and prejudiced Dennis FitzSimons, who, as CEO, started committing mayhem against the Times).

Roll of Honor:

51. Ruth Ryon. An engaging reporter in the Real Estate section, she worked many years for Dick Turpin, a longtime real estate editor and educational writer at the Times, who will soon celebrate his 90th birthday. He was fortunate enough to retire before the axe began to fall on the better paid and/or elderly employees. Ryon was a conscientious reporter, but, like so many, she was forced out when Tribune started cutting, cutting, cutting.

52. Kevin Sack. Dean Baquet, who had known him at the New York Times and admired his work, brought him to the L.A. Times after becoming editor, to work in the Atlanta bureau. Now, he is back at the New York Times, as is Baquet. Sack, like several other Pulitzer Prize winners, was treated with disdain by the Tribune ignoramuses. Sack has won two Pulitzers. At the L.A. Times, he and Alan Miller, who as noted a couple of days ago has also left the paper, won one of them for exploring crashes by an unsafe U.S. military airplane. Now, both Baquet and Sack have been replaced by less experienced, less skilled and, not coincidentally, more poorly paid personnel.

53. Robert Salladay. One of the more competent reporters in the Sacramento bureau, he is one of several who have been ushered out, despite their valuable understanding of the faltering state government.

54. Joel Sappell. An editor in several important coverages, including the energy crisis in California that grew out of power company deregulation, he was shuffled off to the Web site when Tribune promised to improve it, only to find he had little company support for the improvements, which naturally would have entailed hiring more staff. Sappell, who would certainly have stayed with the paper for many more years, left disillusioned, and, commendably, said so. He will certainly be missed. He usually said what he thought, not a popular thing to do at the Tribune Co. In a high point of his Times career, he authored the series on Scientology with Robert Welkos.

55. Molly Selvin. An admirable editorial writer, stood always for the highest ethics and strongest principles. Unceremoniously dumped by editorial page editor Andres Martinez in a contemptible purge that also affected others, she wrote elsewhere on the paper for awhile, but then took a buyout. The kind of person who should never lose her job, and certainly not to a squalid boss like Martinez, who lost his own job later after committing sexual peccadillos.

56. Jube Shriver. A Business section reporter who was developing into a fine journalist, and earning a better salary, just the kind of person Zell and Hiller don't like.

57. Stephanie Simon. One of the stars at the L.A. Times from the time she arrived, and most recently, the Midwestern correspondent based in St. Louis. Her stories often were on Page 1, and she traveled widely on her beat. She's now with the Wall Street Journal. She concluded wisely there was not much future for talent at the L.A. Times. An exceptional person, a Yale graduate, she cannot be successfully replaced.

58. Bill Sing. As Business section editor, he improved the section within limits and was an intelligent editor. First kicked upstairs and later left. After years of loyal service, he was one of many who were mistreated.

59. Frank Sotomayor. Along with the late Frank del Olmo, he fought for years for better coverage of Latino issues at the Times, and to advance able Latino writers. Always under-appreciated, despite his educational attainments and humanity, he was eventually sent to the useful Metro Pro minority journalists program in its somewhat waning years under Tribune. I always felt badly for him, because he was able and intelligent and a fine editor to deal with. At a more reasonable place, he would have been more successful. It is the paper's loss that he was not.

60. John Spano. The brother of travel writer Susan Spano, he was an assistant Metro editor who worked hard and conscientiously. A good journeyman of the kind the Times could not afford to lose. Very careful. Maybe, his sin was he was too loyal. Loyalty is not appreciated at Tribune.

61. Bill Stall. A Pulitzer Prize winning editorial writer, after a distinguished career with the Associated Press in Sacramento and then with the Times, where he also served as political editor. Stall was terminated by the goofy editorial page editor, Andres Martinez, who, as mentioned above, ultimately lost his own job after committing sexual peccadillos. Martinez got rid of all three Pulitzer Prize winners on his editorial page staff. But Stall knows so much about state government that he still appears occasionally, and brilliantly, on the Op Ed page. His firing by Martinez was an utter disgrace, even more so because Martinez had been vying for the Pulitzer Stall actually won. It was a case of an inferior editor firing a superior writer.

62, Larry Stammer. An able reporter who undertook such thankless tasks as becoming a religion writer. Very knowledgable, he had been with the San Jose Mercury News in Sacramento before coming to the Times. He was also a skilled writer about politics. Very pleasant. Nice to have as a colleague, like so many of those who are now gone, were.

63. John Stewart. Long a copy editor on the National Desk, always interested in what was going on elsewhere in the paper. Very supportive and friendly.

All of these writers and editors, too, should be entered in the book of Tribune damnation.

Tomorrow: Rone Tempest, Wendy Thermos, Kevin Thomas, Mai Tran, Sam Howe Verhovek, Amy Wallace, Jenifer Warren. Henry Weinstein, Robert Welkos, Nona Yates, and Nora Zamichow.

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The New York Times has a long story this morning by Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah about the imminent Taliban threat to take over the major Pakistani city of Peshawar. The rise of the terrorists of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan threatens U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan and world stability as a whole. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state, which would have to be destroyed if its nuclear weapons fell into terrorist hands. The L.A. Times is presently ably represented in this critical theatre of the War on Terror by Laura King.

Early this morning, the Associated Press reports that Pakistani armed forces attacked the terrorists outside Peshawar. There have been many such operations, few of them successful.

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Another day of announced layoffs in the newspaper business. The freely-distributed Palo Alto Daily News will fire six of its staff and suspend publication on Mondays. Tne San Jose Mercury News announced nine more terminations, and is now down 63% in staff overall.

L.A. Times Roll of Honor, Those Who Left, 38-50

(Bulletin precede: In his latest silly, stupid message, David Hiller, the so-called publisher of the L.A. Times, begins by saying that "the company's financial picture remains very difficult" and then suggests that the L.A. Times print edition will soon take a backseat to its Web site, thus justifying further layoffs. It is a prescription for the death of the paper, sooner rather than later.
It is Hiller, Sam Zell and other executives at the squalid Tribune Co., such as the Tulare twerp who sold his soul to become editor, who are failing. Every move they make is a wrong one. Is it necessary to remove this bunch of losers to save the paper? Certainly. Any step taken to rid Los Angeles of these bums would be justified. They are fools and knaves, make no mistake.

Although Hiller didn't say so, the L.A. Times remains the greatest profit center of Tribune. Moving away from a print edition that produces 90% of the newspaper's revenue to a Web site which, contrary to Hiller's promises has not been dramatically improved and continues to attract few ads, is a prescription for further failure).

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Another day goes by, and more idiocy from Zell and his unfriendly band of eaters of bad Chicago food. Yesterday, it was an announcement of broad new layoffs at the Hartford Courant and the Baltimore Sun. So, it is certainly appropriate to continue my series on talented L.A. Times employees whose careers have been disrupted, forced out in the years of the evil Tribune ownership.

Roll of Honor:

39. Sonia Nazario. Her saga, "Enrique's Journey," about a Honduran teenager who crosses several borders against great odds to find his mother in the U.S., won Pulitzer Prizes for both writing and photography, and is becoming an HBO mini-series. In the days of Otis Chandler, Tom Johnson and Bill Thomas, Nazario could have written her books on the job and had them published in the paper. Now, under Tribune, there's no place for such writers, and almost all have left. The Tribune toady, Hiller, proclaimed at one point an interest in having the Times appeal more to the Latino community. Then, as usual, he showed it was all bushwa, by ushering talented Latinos out the door.

40. Jim Newton. A distinguished Times city and state reporter and editor for 19 years, most recently editor of the editorial pages, he can accurately be described as fed up with Hiller, his last supervisor. Now, he has a book contract to follow up his excellent biography of Earl Warren with a book about Dwight Eisenhower. He looks forward to his departure to Abilene, Kansas, to do the research. But any decent newspaper would have fallen all over itself to give Newton reason to stay, probably by making him editor and giving him real authority. Hiller would have had to go, but that would have been just another bonus of keeping Newton.

41. Susan Okita. Any great institution has many people in less exalted positions who do a good job. Okita for much of her Times career was in the wire room, where she impressed colleagues with her brightness and glamor. Later, she became a secretary. Now, she must be brightening some other office.

42. Myrna Oliver. The late great obituary writer Burt Folkart -- my pod mate for many years -- gave her refuge as an obituary writer when she was searching for a niche, and she became a diligent and eloquent one. Universally popular, she was the kind of person you want around the office, until Tribune took control and pushed her away. She came from John Wooden's state of Indiana and had many of his conservative virtues.

43. Jonathan Peterson. A Business and Washington writer, he covered Peter Ueberroth's effort to assist South Los Angeles to recover and develop from the 1992 riots. Useful in many ways.

44. Gina Piccolo. A biology major at Towson University in Maryland, later a physical therapist, she came to Los Angeles to find her fortune in journalism, worked hard for the Times community newspapers at a small salary and later became a talented movie critic. Always improving, she was just the kind of go-getter any decent newspaper would not want to lose. But like so many, she is now elsewhere.

45. Gayle Pollard. A writer for the editorial pages, she brought sensitivity and racial diversity to the job. Contributed to the paper in many ways.

46. Jeff Rabin. Conscientious, he had the peculiar idea he was a citizen in a worthwhile enterprise. Insisted on making his views known and was not a quiet employee. Since the Tribune Co. wants quiet ones who will take whatever shit they are given without complaint, he is no longer on the staff. But the newspaper is the loser.

47. Michael Ramirez. An idiosyncratic, conservative cartoonist, he was brought to the Times as a kind of counterpoint for Paul Conrad when that great cartoonist wore out his welcome with the smaller minds that came to dominate the paper's management. Ramirez was determined to follow his own path and was not all that popular with much of the staff. But his cartoons were often interesting. Now, with his departure, the Times dishonorably doesn't have a staff cartoonist. (Conrad, like Herblock at the Washington Post, continued to do cartoons well past retirement, and they were running widely, but not in the Times).

48. Cecilia Rasmussen. Her graceful articles on Los Angeles history were a valuable extra feature of the newspaper for many years. It is the poorer for no longer having her. Pleasant and popular.

49. David Rosenzweig. He was not the best liked city editor the paper ever had. He could be prickly and he may have focused the Metro section too much on crimes. Liked too often to say no to new ideas. But he was conscientious and honest. Even after he had to step down as city editor, he wrote usefully on the local justice system. We had our differences, but he was always fair to me, and we became friends. He died last year.

50. Alissa Rubin. One of the best correspondents the newspaper ever had in Iraq, the editors insisted that she go elsewhere. Instead, she resigned and joined the New York Times as one of their Baghdad correspondents. The Times has other very talented foreign correspondents still on staff, especially Kim Murphy (who is shortly to return to the U.S.), Borzou Daragahi and Megan Stack, but losing Rubin was unnecessary and unfortunate.

Tomorrow: Ruth Ryon, Kevin Sack, Robert Salladay, Joel Sappell, Molly Selvin, Jube Shriver, Stephanie Simon, Bill Sing, Frank Sotomayor, John Spano, Bill Stall, Larry Stammer, John Stewart.

Any great paper is made up of many different types of people, with many kinds of talent. Anyone who thinks, with all these losses, that the Times hasn't been badly hurt is deluding him or herself.

This afternoon, Zell was on CNBC mouthing extreme right wing views, among them let's do nothing, he said, to stem foreclosures in the mortgage scandal. Zell sounded in this interview like a fascist. A slumlord by profession, he may belong, as Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson suggested recently, in jail.

L.A. Times Roll of Honor--Those Who Left, 27-38

On a day that Sam Zell spoke of possibly selling the L.A. Times building, continuing his evil scheme of treating his largest newspaper as a poor, undeserving step child, I thought how worthwhile it was to continue honoring those talented reporters and editors whose lives have been so disrupted by the eight-year Tribune ownership.

So, here goes, with another 12 names:

Roll of Honor

27. Vernon Loeb. He came to Los Angeles at a time when investigative reporting was the Times' forte, in every expectation that he would play a decisive role as an editor supervising these projects. Instead, by the time he left, the Times had virtually abandoned that noble calling. He could have done so much. Instead, he's back East, and the paper is poorer for it.

28. Claudia Luther. Like many reporters, she had diverse assignments in her years with the Times, concluding with membership in the talented team under Jon Thurber that wrote obituaries. Some of the best obituaries in the country still run in the Times, one of the few sections of the paper that has maintained its quality under Tribune management. But she is now gone, and, just as with Loeb, the paper is poorer for it.

29. Eric Malnic. He was with the paper well over 40 years, and seemed indestructible. Whenever I would ask him how long he thought we would last, he'd always say, proudly, "We're still here." As a reporter of everything from weather stories to plane crashes, he did a sound, responsible job. As an editor, he could be somewhat draconian. Still, I always valued our friendship,, and his strong personality was much needed in the City Room. He did a great many things and did them well.

30. Tyler Marshall. He could have become foreign editor, had he wanted to. He filled a number of foreign assignments with humor and distinction. I knew him first in his role as the paper's correspondent in India, which he regarded as quite a challenge, both personal and professional. But he was tough. From India, he used to go to Afghanistan, never an easy country to cover. Later, he served in both Europe and elsewhere in Asia, before coming to the Washington bureau. After Zell is through, there may not be many foreign correspondents left at the paper. Marshall was one of the best of them.

31. Joe Mathews. He was one of John Carroll's favorites, and for good reason. The talented son of two distinguished journalists, Linda and Jay Mathews, and a former editor of the Harvard Crimson, Joe did fine work both in Los Angeles and Washington and developed an expertise on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that meant a lot to the newspaper. Losing people like him at such a young age would be difficult for any paper. For the Times, it approaches tragedy that he, and so many like him, have had to move on.

32. Rick Meyer. When something like the Gulf War came along, and stories were coming from all over the place, Meyer sat in Los Angeles and put them together. This is a mighty important role at any paper, that of the talented rewrite man, and Meyer followed in a great Times tradition that included Art Berman and Dial Torgerson. He did many other things well, but it was in this role in times of crisis that he shined. And always he was pleasant to deal with.

33. Alan Miller. He won a Pulitzer Prize in Washington for his work on military aircraft and other systems that didn't work. Rather self-effacing, he was one of these quiet newsmen that make a paper great. Losing him is no small loss.

34. John Montorio. When I recently lamented his departure, dismissed by the new editor, Russ Stanton, someone commented on my blog that this was a highly popular initial act on Stanton's part. I don't doubt it, because Montorio was a prickly personality, often sharp and arbitrary. But under him the Calendar section flourished and Tim Rutten and Patrick Goldstein wrote valuable columns that he encouraged. If you seek his monument, look around, an author once wrote about a dictator. Montorio may have sometimes been very much the boss, but he built great sections, and their decline since he left shows what his ouster meant.

35. Solomon Moore. Like Jean Guccione and Doug Smith, for a long time, he was stuck in the San Fernando Valley suburban section, but unlike them, he was often treated there with disdain. I remember when he started writing a few insurance stories, an editor there told me he didn't know anything about insurance. Instead, it was the editor who knew nothing about insurance. Like other black reporters, he had to struggle to be assigned non-black stories. But Moore persevered, finally found his way downtown and then abroad, as a valuable correspondent in both Africa and Iraq. He became someone the paper could not easily afford to lose, but it did.

36. Dave Morgan. Charming and able, he was a vital part of producing the Sports section every day, before it was cut back by editors outside Sports who didn't understand what the section meant to the Times' reputation. Finally, unfortunately, he left for Yahoo, and the paper remains poorer for it.

37. Lorenza Munoz. The daughter of Sergio Munoz and wife of Greg Krikorian, worked hard and produced excellent stories. She was in the process of becoming extremely able. Instead, someone else will get the benefit of her talents.

38. Sergio Munoz. He came to the Times from La Opinion, and was a distinguished part of the editorial page staff. He had encyclopedic knowledge of the Latino community and Latin America, and was free and candid in expressing his opinions. He once advised me that if I took a trip from Guatemala City to Panama City, I could easily be kidnapped somewhere along the way. Any California paper in the larger community needed more Latino voices, and he was certainly one of the most astute.

Tomorrow: Sonia Nazario, Jim Newton, Susan Okita, Myrna Oliver, Jonathan Peterson, Gina Piccolo, Gayle Pollard, Jeff Rabin, Michael Ramirez, Cecilia Rasmussen, David Rosenzweig and Alissa Rubin.

I just wish there were justice in the world. Then we could split Mark Willes' severance package amongst all these great journalists, and each one would get more than $1 million.

(Contrary to what someone has written as a comment on this blog, the quote I used in the paragraph on John Montorio came from the last words of Alan Bullock's biography of Adolf Hitler. I now feel I should not have used any quote likening Montorio, a highly honorable man, to any dictator, much less Hitler. Montorio was a strong leader of many Times sections. He deserves only compliments).

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Rising on the speculative words of two Arab thugs -- Chakib Khalil, the Algerian who heads OPEC, and Shukri Guanem, chief oil minister of Libya -- the price of oil briefly crossed the $140-a-barrel price on the world's markets today. As I've stated before, the oil producers are at war with the rest of the world, and action should be taken to cut them off at the knees.

L.A. Times Roll of Honor--Those Who Left, 13-26

I'm continuing today with describing the work and distinctive contributions writers who are no longer with the L.A. Times made to that newspaper, before they were encouraged or forced to leave by the evil Tribune Co. Examined yesterday were 12 writers. Here are another 14 in a week long series.

Roll of Honor (Continued):

13. Tom Furlong. A distinguished Business section writer, he was one of those who kept the section going at times when it wasn't very brave, restricted itself to covering mostly business and not consumer issues, and, occasionally, had weak direction. A journeyman reporter of the kind good newspapers can't afford to lose.

14. Jean Guccione. She represented the occasionally excellent suburban reporters who should have been brought downtown immediately to cover news for all of Southern California. From New Orleans originally, she worked for the Daily Journal, where she became a friend and admirer of Phil Hager, long an outstanding Times writer on the courts. Her own coverage of the legal system in the San Fernando Valley and beyond was superb. I understand she is now with the Los Angeles County D.A.'s office.

15. Bob Hilburn. His incomparable writing on rock musicians was long one of the most distinctive offerings in the Calendar section. Although he sometimes still contributes, the section is not the same without him writing every week. He is one of the nicest people in the business. Is there anyone who did not appreciate his many gifts to the paper? Admired greatly by my son, David, who met him and his wife, Kathy Barr, at Dodger games we all attended. Another person who should not have been let out the door.

16. Robert Lee Hotz. A highly talented science writer, and an esteemed colleague of mine in earthquake writing. He came to my rescue on quake coverage on occasions when my amateurism would no longer do, and teamed with me on a story the day of the Northridge quake that contributed to the Times winning a Pulitzer Prize. His series on the brain, and another series on Antarctica were among many distinctive contributions to the paper. Now with the Wall Street Journal, he is one of many reporters who no sane outfit, which Tribune is not, would have allowed to escape.

17. Shawn Hubler. An able reporter and sensitive columnist, her writings were a contribution to every edition she appeared in. The supportive and understanding wife of Bob Magnuson, an editor who was promoted and promoted, until he was unceremoniously kicked off the paper. She followed him to San Francisco and for a time wrote for the Times from there.

18. Don Hunt. He served as a weekend editor on the City Desk. Conscientious and friendly, he was the kind of supervisor who was appreciated, and the kind, unlike Noel Greenwood and a few other overbearing editors I can remember, who was modest and self-effacing, yet did a fine job.

19. Evelyn Iritani. An enterprising and eclectic Business writer, she brought a thorough understanding of Asian economics at a time when China was emerging as a world power. The kind of specialist a great newspaper needs terribly.

20. Connie Kang. Her humane and understanding reporting on the Korean community, an important part of Los Angeles city life, provided coverage that no other reporter could do nearly as well. How could Tribune Co. ever let her leave? Always friendly, she lit up the City Room.

21. Daryl Kelley. A longtime Ventura County edition reporter, he was one of the most talented members of a wide ranging suburban staff at a time when the Times had a huge suburban contingent. Allowing Kelley and many other suburban reporters to drop from the Times' rolls left it a poorer paper.

22. Johnny Mike Kennedy. A talented, brave correspondent of the newspaper in Lebanon, Iraq and other dangerous Middle Eastern locales, and an able writer in the Los Angeles office, Kennedy was the supportive husband of Becky Trounson, taking a leave and writing a novel in Jerusalem while she served there as a Times correspondent. Their daughter, Merit, studied Arabic, spent a year in Cairo, has just graduated from Stanford and looks forward to a career involving the Middle East. On the night, she was admitted to Stanford, and I told John Carroll, he remarked, acidly, "That will put them into the poor house." Later, Tribune Co. insensitively accepted Kennedy's departure, in a striking demonstration of ingratitude for brave past service.

23. Greg Krikorian. Honest, sometimes bluntly so, he wrote about terrorism and gave sympathetic treatment sometimes to those accused of such crimes. He and I did not agree on the Arab-Israeli issue, but I always respected him, and felt he showed great promise for a long career with the paper. Losing him was certainly not in either the Times' or the public's interest.

24. Lennie Laguire. How could I not like her, since she was the editor who first suggested that I write a consumer column, (that lasted three years before John Carroll killed it?) She had many different jobs with the newspaper, and to my mind performed well in each. She was imaginative, pleasant, fun to work for. A strong person. Losing a talent like hers was certainly not in the paper's interest.

25. Myron Levin. A dedicated investigative reporter for the Business section, he drove the tobacco industry nuts with his probing pieces on the dread addiction of smoking. Once he was on to something, he stuck to it single mindedly. Just exactly what a great newspaper needs, and can scarcely do without. He had a hearty appreciation for just what a scoundrel Tribune owner Sam Zell was, and did not hesitate to say so when he left.

26. Simon Li. A distinguished foreign editor, he served with great ability and perseverance until health problems forced him to step aside into a less demanding senior position. Later, he was a valued supporter of the difficult (because of overbearing Tribune supervision) managing editorship of Doug Frantz. A member of a prominent Hong Kong family, he brought to the paper an understanding of foreign affairs that was without parallel. (And he was a patient man, patient enough to listen to some of my own madcap views on foreign affairs). Good health or not, he was not the kind of editor the paper can afford to do without.

All these deserve favorable mention in the book of Tribune Co. damnation.

Tomorrow: Vernon Loeb, Claudia Luther, Eric Malnic, Tyler Marshall, Joe Mathews, Rick Meyer, Alan Miller, John Montorio, Solomon Moore, Dave Morgan, Lorenza Munoz,
and Sergio Munoz.

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The news today that Sam Zell intends to seek offers for both the property in downtown Los Angeles on which the Los Angeles Times is located, and the Tribune Tower in Chicago, appears to be part of an ongoing plot by him and his fellow-executives at Tribune to sell off the company, and raid it for return of his $315 million investment.

The columnist Harold Meyerson suggested recently in the Washington Post that Zell be jailed for life. His policies amount to a lack of exercise of proper fiduciary control. He says this is an employee-owned company, but he is raiding it and killing it, with no real consultation with employees.

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Maureen Dowd demonstrates again today in the New York Times why she is one of the most outstanding and sensitive political writers of the year, and certainly well attuned to the almost mythic (already) candidacy of Barack Obama. Her dissection today of Karl Rove's dismissal of Obama as an elitist is one of her best.

"Rove and company are nervous, because they see that Obama, in rejecting public financing, is not going to be a chump like some other past Democratic candidates," she observes.

The criticism of her by Clark Hoyt, the overly straight "public editor," or ombudsman, of the NYT, on Sunday showed only that Hoyt has insufficient respect for great journalism, or doesn't know what it is.