Los Angeles Times, Redux

Tim Rutten wrote an interesting piece on Sam Zell’s takeover of the Los Angeles Times, which happened on Thursday. He ruminates over the Tribune Company’s disastrous ownership of the paper, concluding that large corporations make terrible stewards of the news:

“The era of corporate accumulation has been an unmitigated disaster for American journalism. Money has flowed like a fiscal Mississippi into the pockets of investors and fund managers, draining one newspaper and TV station after another of the resources necessary to serve their communities' common good. Nearly every American newspaper and local television station sucked into one of the chains -- from the largest to the smallest -- during that period is today a lesser journalistic entity of less real service to its audience than when it was acquired.”