"Still Petty After All These Years" by Daniel Guss
The codependent relationship between struggling LA Times and insecure LA City Hall.
@TheGussReport on Twitter - The relationship between overwhelmed local politicians and the struggling Los Angeles Times is an unhealthy, codependent one.
Via their publicly salaried flacks, the politicians often feed stories to the Times with an unspoken understanding that they may get softer, sometimes misleading stories with dubious timing in exchange for the Times getting to report it first.
Once, after undermining a story I was working on, a flack for then-City Council president Herb Wesson approached me in City Hall to grab coffee, “so we can push the reset button.”
Knowing that she had fed the story (and my questions) to a Times’ City Hall beat reporter, I asked her, “what are we resetting?”
She didn’t have an answer, so I told her that I would take a raincheck for when she could explain it.
The Tradition Continues. Like Yesterday.
I got a tip early yesterday about anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic graffiti sloppily spray-painted under the mural outside of Canter’s Delicatessen in the Fairfax District, one of LA’s best Jewish-yet-multicultural destinations. (And other than Porto’s, LA’s best bakery.)
I tweeted about it at 9:20am.
This was more than an hour before the LAPD (later) said it received a complaint about the incident.
After my tweet, I then emailed media inquiries, including to the LAPD and, at 9:24am, LA Mayor Karen Bass, her chief of staff Chris Thompson and media guy Zack Seidl.
Quick Detour for Context
Unless you dutifully click the heels of your ruby red slippers and chant Bass’s mantra du jour about “locking arms,” they dodge legitimate, get-to-the-truth questions.
And this Bass crew is still bitter about my exclusives like her top candidate for LAFD chief getting grabby-grabby, resulting in his sudden retirement. Ditto that, when I reported that the LAPD is covering up its cover-up about domestic violence in the highest ranks of the LAFD.
If City Hall dodges, they know that this column may publish those questions so that the public can decide matters for itself, like whether its mayor is honest and transparent or vindictive and thin-skinned.
Continuing…
Here is my 9:24am email to Bass, Thompson and Seidl, who are fond of claiming that she is a mayor for everyone in Los Angeles, presumably including in times of crises like these.
No response.
When the LAPD later confirmed for me that it was conducting a hate crime investigation, I again reached out to Bass and company at 2:41pm.
Enter the LA Times at 4pm
When the LA Times posted its story on Twitter at 4:03pm, it contained a quote from Bass that it says it received that morning.
While Bass’s office keeps sending me its other press releases, it didn’t send me this one.
The LA Times linked my 9:20am tweet in its story, without mentioning my name. Is this a new policy at the Times, or did it have to promise that in order to get Bass’s quote?
Like everyone else does:
Karen Keeps Quiet
At 5:10pm, I asked Bass’s team and her top legal advisor Dave Michaelson why it withheld Bass’s statement on the Canter’s hate crime (while continuing to send me its other releases), pointing out that it feels like an ongoing pattern and practice of retaliation.
No response, again.
And that’s really the story here; a perpetually grinning mayor getting cover from the declining paper of record to shield the petty, the vindictive, the insecure and codependent.
Oh darn, if only I clicked the heels of my ruby red slippers…
Keep those verifiable tips coming.
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(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a multi-award-winning journalist. In June ‘23, he won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards. He has been City Editor for the Mayor Sam network, and a featured contributor for CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)