One day I expect to open my front door and find a booklet, with tiny little pages, four or six of them, which I can barely read through my thumbs.  This booklet will be known as the "Los Angeles Times".

They shrunk the height, the width…got rid of so much that one must question why it’s necessary.

Oh, don’t go nuclear on me.  I’m entitled to my opinion.  I pay for the print version of the "Times", as well as the physical editions of the "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal".  That’s how much I love newspapers.  I read the news the night before online, but still get the paper.

Then again, stumbling through the pages of the "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal" I find interesting articles that escaped my attention online.  Whereas with the "Los Angeles Times", I find gossip items that were blasted all over the Internet the day before.

Once upon a time, the "Los Angeles Times" decided to go for it, beefed up its D.C. bureau, had a ton of foreign correspondents.  But those days are history.  The only reason to read the "Los Angeles Times" for national or international news is if you’ve got no Net access and it’s the only rag available on a desert island, yup, if it washes on shore in a bottle.  The Business section?  You’d think America had gone out of business!  There’s almost nothing there!

Which leaves the Calendar section, the so-called entertainment section.  Which features a pop critic who lives in Alabama. That’s like the "New York Times" having an architecture critic who lives in Mississippi.  I mean, if you want the pulse of a city, don’t you have to live in that city?

But they keep Ann Powers, who may be likable, but whose writing is damn near incomprehensible, and let Dan Neil go?

Dan Neil?  Who the fuck is Dan Neil, you ask?

Well, soon you might know.  He’s now writing for the "Wall Street Journal".  Rupert Murdoch’s like the cable networks, when the going gets rough, he doubles down, unlike the record labels and the "Los Angeles Times", which bitch and moan and downsize and in the name of keeping their margins eviscerate their businesses.  I mean what’s end game at the labels?  One employee who licenses the catalog and then turns out the light?  Shit, isn’t this what EMI is planning to do?  What’s end game at the "Los Angeles Times", that tiny irrelevant periodical referenced above that it’s almost become?

If the "Los Angeles Times" is to survive, it’s got to deemphasize national and international news, business too, and go extremely local.  Tell me everything that’s happening in the city within which I live.  I don’t watch TV news, and that’s only about murder and mayhem anyway.  Hell, it’s worth a buck to read about what’s truly going on in my city, the rules and regulations, the local politics, but that’s on life support in the newspaper too.  I mean what can the "Los Angeles Times" do best?  Shit, it and "Daily Variety" have lost the movie beat to Nikki Finke and her Deadline.com.

When the going gets rough, you cover everything, like Rupert and the WSJ, or you go hyper-local.  Or you die, like the L.A. "Times".

They’ve got a must-read columnist.  A rock star, who lost his previous job for delineating his sexual activities in the automobile he was reviewing, who won a Pulitzer Prize, and they let him go?  Isn’t that like Apple losing Steve Jobs to Microsoft?  Or the Indianapolis Colts trading Peyton Manning?  Or the Stones firing Mick Jagger?  Huh, what’s up with that?

Give me a reason to read, beyond the fact I don’t want to see an another aged institution bite the dust.  Become something new or die a deserved death.  I’m THIS close to canceling my subscription.

Dan Neil’s debut WSJ column:
The Power and the Fuel-Sipping Glory