How Would They Cover Custer's Last Stand?

The Tribune fires the LA Times editor who stood up against the Tribune's campaign to gut the Times, the journalism community nationwide decries the act as an assault on editorial quality, and the Chicago Tribune covers the incident as a mere promotion for a couple of Tribune employees.

The story by Phil Rosenthal and Michael Oneal (Why does it take two Tribune reporters to do a worse job than one reporter could do at any other newspaper?) omits the biggest issue in the firing: the Tribune Corporation's business model of valuing financial concerns above journalistic concerns. The story fails to mention the speech that precipitated Dean Baquet's forced resignation, a speech in which Baquet urged America's newspaper editors to resist corporate efforts to diminish newsroom quality. The story mentions the takeover bid by two California billionaires, but fails to include the widely discussed explanation that they're making the bid to save the LA Times from Tribune mismanagement. And in the place of this real news, the story includes apologetic clauses designed to make the Tribune seem normal in the media world and to make its machinations appear as mere economic necessities:

Indeed, this is hair-pulling time in media circles. Tribune Co., which owns both the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, is under pressure from investors to boost its laggard share price and has been entertaining interest from private-equity investors.

Oh really, this is all just about share price? Only at the Tribune.

Such (cost-cutting) orders have become increasingly common among traditional media companies struggling with shrinking audience and revenue amid competition from the Internet and new technologies.

Ah, traditional media companies. The truth is, media companies have been struggling for decades, but it's the Tribune in particular that has become known for valuing profit above editorial quality and for treating journalism as mere "content" for sale, the stuff between the ads. Rosenthal and Oneal demonstrate again that at the Tribune, the stuff between the ads may be less trustworthy than the ads themselves.

Rosenthal and Oneal recount a heartwarming incident that makes us wonder what's in the Kool-Aid in the Tribune Tower. They describe Chicago Tribune employees offering a "lengthy ovation" to James O'Shea, the Tribune agent who is being sent to Los Angeles to replace Baquet. O'Shea's Tribune colleagues presented him with plastic armor and a toy shield, as if to say, "Go forth boldly and destroy the LA Times." Wake up Tribune. O'Shea isn't Odysseus. He's the Cyclops.