Patterico's Pontifications

7/8/2008

Debate with Marc Cooper — Day Two

Filed under: Dog Trainer — Patterico @ 7:33 am



Don’t forget to check out my debate with Marc Cooper on the future of the L.A. Times — a debate taking place at the L.A. Times web site.

Part One is here. If you didn’t read it yesterday, read it now!

Check back during the day at this link — probably after noon Pacific time — for Part Two.

UPDATE: Here’s the link to Part Two.

25 Responses to “Debate with Marc Cooper — Day Two”

  1. I hope you enjoy the debate. I certainly do.

    But one thing is obvious: Marc Cooper DOES NOT want to change. He wants to continue lying about the War in Iraq. He wants to continue to lie about the Bush administration. He wants to continue lying about judges, rappers, and everything else. He has a god-given right to use the LAT as his personal mission, and damn it all, that SOB Zell has no right to act like he owns the paper.

    It’s the whole wrestling with a pig-thing, I guess. Cooper is the pig.

    Scott (412f3f)

  2. Patterico,
    Great summary of typical bogus media. Short and concise.

    Todd Roth (99e0d9)

  3. Any link(s) to Cooper’s claim that the LAT is making a 20% profit?

    Perfect Sense (23c691)

  4. You’ve gotta love the couple of comments that identify the obvious source of the LAT’s problems: Boooosh!!!

    Whatever will these people do with themselves come January?

    Pablo (99243e)

  5. #3 I wondered about that too. Liberals whine that”Big Oil’s” profits on sales of 9-10% are obscene.

    Stu707 (adbb5a)

  6. Whatever will these people do with themselves come January?

    CELEBRATE!!!

    AngelSong (9c0015)

  7. This seems like a dangerous move for the LAT. I dunno.

    http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-trw-tellus,0,1342714.special

    Scott (412f3f)

  8. I notice they didn’t put my comment up–I guess my mention of their photoshopping a pic from the Iraq War as a little too free speechy.

    Patricia (aaa977)

  9. The Wall Street Journal is a great example of one MSM dinosaur adapting and making do in the digital age.

    The LAT should observe and appreciate gems like James Taranto’s Best of the Web, and the personalized services that are offered to online subscribers.

    Mr. Cooper needs to understand a free-market core idea: To survive, they need us the consumer, we don’t need them.

    melky (020160)

  10. Patricia,

    They put up my comment about the Times being unsuitable for cat box liner as my cats would think that the box was full and would soil the carpet.

    PCD (5c49b0)

  11. This is my comment on the Day Two article:

    Marc,

    You miss Patterico’s point entirely. The Times has grown old, fat, and sloppy when it isn’t outright lying to the public.

    Unless there is a sea change, and the Times actually discovers Journalistic Ethics and Honesty, It is a dying dinosaur.

    PCD (5c49b0)

  12. Agree w/ #11.

    Per Marc: But the Weekly can only function properly in direct relationship to — not instead of — The Times. No one I know at the Weekly thinks it can or should substitute for The Times.

    Whether it’s in their business plan or not, the Weekly might just find itself without real competition. Patrick provided just a few examples of major scoops. He has lots more. And he hasn’t really listed all of the major errors. Given that the Times credits its readership with intelligence and discernment, why would many stay with the sickly dinosaur?

    ManlyDad (22e85d)

  13. He seems to be comparing the LAT to a fine restaurant, and all the other news sources in the region as Burger Kings.

    One small problem with that comparison: more people eat at Burger King than at Balducci’s.

    So is he arguing that people would be happy with buying a copy of the paper on their birthdays or anniversaries? All while people outside the 25-mile range of the LAT offices decide to eat at other specialty restaurants?

    Bullshit. Let’s try a different analogy. The LAT is the nation’s largest maker of horse buggy whips, and automobiles are suddenly cheap enough (thanks to the advent of mass production technology) for everyone to have one sitting where the horses used to live.

    Yes, you can still find a buggy whip if you ask around long enough, but the entire industry has been left in the metaphorical dust as the Internet speeds away at a mile a minute.

    Drumwaster (5ccf59)

  14. It seems to me that Marc is arguing a different thing, or isn’t really giving your points any weight, moreso like your points seem to be shrugged off or addressed, but then shrugged off as not important.

    G (722480)

  15. Did Marc Cooper actually respond to “Adapt or die” by comparing the LA Times to Mont Blanc and Pelikan fountain pens? Maybe he thinks that’s option 1 but, no offense to Mont Blanc and Pelikan, I think that’s clearly option 2.

    DRJ (d5bcc5)

  16. Marc Cooper is a complete light-weight and out of his league.

    Here’s what I put up at the Day Two article:

    Mr. Cooper refuses to address (or even recognize) the elephant in the room, which is the Times’ dwindling readership and an almost universal rejection of the dishonesty by the Times and it’s writers/editors. The Times readership will continue to dwindle into oblivion until it decides to uphold real journalistic ethics and objective/non-partisan reporting.

    thebronze (82b795)

  17. Marc’s talk about “a corps of professionally trained journalists” is (probably unintentionally) hilarious.

    I realize that journos want to be treated as professionals, but the simple fact of the matter is that journalism’s an occupation, not a profession. Paid journalism does not require significantly greater skills than those possessed by a guy standing behind a counter asking, “Do you want fries with that?”

    BC (abe920)

  18. Marc Cooper made some excellent points in Round Two.

    Not so good was talking about the future by drawing comparisons to fountain pens and tony restaurants. Are 1/20th of the LAT’s current readership really going to pay 40x today’s prices for a boutique professionally-trained-journalist’s-eye-view of local politics? Even if they would, I’m skeptical that that’d form the basis of a viable business plan.

    The Times’ management and owners are in a tough spot.

    AMac (c822c9)

  19. Dear Dilettante Verbal Sniper;

    Are you going to take that lying down?

    Heh.

    daleyrocks (d9ec17)

  20. Cooper seems to want to keep from burning his bridges with the LAT, maybe get a gig if it comes down to paying the rent. Here’s my two cents:

    I have read the LAT for 35 years, enjoying it less and less, to the point where I now take pleasure in their failures. For years, they have been judging the performance of others, from the Dodgers to the LAPD to Governors, etc. It must have been a very comfortable feeling for Times editors and staffers in being anointed to judge, without accountability. It is the same smug feeling I am enjoying each time I read about page cuts, staff cuts, falling readership, and embarrassments like Andres Martinez, photoshopped cover pictures, Chuck Phillips, and the Staples advertising debacle.

    Submitted by: TimesDisliker

    TimesDisliker (941e8a)

  21. Wow. First rate stuff. Somewhere along the line you’ve become a great writer. Or maybe you always were and I wasn’t paying attention.

    The big mystery is why you don’t have an endowed chair and fancy title. But maybe that isn’t so much of a mystery given our corrupt and brain dead leftist culture.

    PrestoPundit (ff5e16)

  22. Newspapers and their closed propaganda way of controlling the news will not survive the Internet. Dittos for Marxism. A free Internet press will end both, the participation age is here, and it’s not going back.

    Great job …

    bill-tb (26027c)

  23. PrestoPundit,

    I don’t know why USC has to keep bringing Liberal Propagandists like Cooper, Estridge, Chimerensky, …

    PCD (5c49b0)

  24. Let’s face facts, this guy was Allende’s speech writer, and you could consider Allende either enormously naive (kind of like McGovern,) or colluding with Marxist elements in the country.
    Now some people who were McGovernites grew up, just like some the strongest anti-Chavez figures
    were former leftists; than again you have the crew that regaled Warren Beatty; that included
    Bill Clinton, they never will. He applies that kind of naivete, to everything from the Iraq War, to the economy, issues of self defense and law enforcement.

    narciso (c36902)

  25. The LA Times’ DustUp page describes Cooper’s Day Two argument this way:

    Marc Cooper predicts a future in which The Times’ brand of journalism will appeal to a niche market.

    That’s close to being an accurate description of the Times’ market now. In 2006, LA County had an estimated population of 9.9M and it has undoubtedly increased since then. Meanwhile, in 2007 the LA Times had a M-F circulation of 815,000 and falling. Isn’t that already a niche market?

    DRJ (cfa65f)


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