Times Plans New Op-Ed Lineup
By J. Michael Kennedy and Rong-Gong Lin II, Times Staff Writers
In a major shake-up of its editorial pages, the Los Angeles Times announced Thursday that it was discontinuing one of its most liberal columnists as well as its conservative editorial cartoonist.
Editorial Page Editor Andrés Martinez said that Robert Scheer, a Times reporter for 17 years before he began writing a column on the Op-Ed pages in 1993, will be dropped. Cartoonist Michael Ramirez, The Times' cartoonist since 1997, will leave the paper at the end of the year and will not be replaced.
Read the article here
Cartoonist Michael Ramirez is also out in an apparent move to deflect criticism. A liberal and a conservative, for an equal fair game? Not while wing nut columnist Max Boot remains. And definitely not when you compare the caliber of Scheer and Ramirez. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but come on.
I'm particularly upset because I live in Los Angeles. Blue Los Angeles. In Blue California. You know, the city that helped significantly to defeat Arnold's failed propositions? And they want to turn this paper into the Riverside Times.
Scheer said he thought The Times had grown tired of his liberal politics. "I've been a punching bag for Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh for years and I think the paper finally collapsed," he said. He said he and Ramirez "both had strong opinions and [I think] the owners think they can improve circulation by making the paper bland and safer."
I will let the LA Times defend itself:
"The opinion pages are the newspaper's town square," he said in a statement. "Our readers expect us to publish all points of view and the broadest range of opinion -- from those of our editorial board and columnists to those of our readers and Op-Ed contributors. And we intend to do exactly that."