The Tribune Company Puts Former Republican Senator's Daughter In Charge of DC Bureau, To Cut Nearly 1/3 of It's Staff

LA Observed reports in "While the LAT cuts in DC... ":

Meanwhile, today's naming of Cissy Baker — whose Republican Party ties include that she's the daughter of former Tennessee senator Howard Baker — to oversee Tribune Company news operations in Washington is raising eyebrows there and here.

Wonkette related a short story about Ms Baker in 2006 that showed she is also the granddaughter of Everett Dirkson.  Well I didn't know.  Did you?

Wall Street Journal's Marketwatch says in "Cissy Baker to Lead Tribune Washington News Bureau ":

Cissy Baker today was named vice president of the Washington News Bureau for Tribune Company, overseeing all newsgathering operations in the nation's capital for the company's publishing, broadcasting and interactive divisions. She will also be responsible for coordinating news coverage and facilitating content sharing among the company's media businesses. 

Cissy not only has strong ties to Republicans she has mostly been based in broadcast news.  Oh joy!  Just what the Tribune Company print media need, a little more dumbing down.

WSJ touts Ms Baker's beginning experience as:

Baker helped launch CNN in 1980. In 1982 Baker left CNN to pursue a career in politics. At the age of 25 she ran for Congress in Tennessee's Fourth Congressional District, where her family home was located.

So, at the age of 23 Ms. Baker 'helped launch CNN"?  Those are some ties she had.

Ms. Baker worked for Fox News apparently between 1990 when she left CNN and '94 when she was put in charge of Tribune DC bureau for broadcasting. The Marketwatch article says she was seeking "some "fair and balanced" experience. This was written in a snarky tone, but still, repetition of BS is repetition of BS.  That is rather bad form for the WSJ which is owned by News Corp the parent company of Fox News (in the extreme case that you didn't know).

Now she'll bring broadcast experience where it will be needed least.  In fact, with two Clear Channel alumni directly under CEO Zell, a former head of Direct TV leading the LA Times, and now Cissy Baker, an expert in news lite and right heading the DC Bureau for print and broadcasting news, Sam Zell's Tribune company is nearing perfect devolution to  the level of local news with a right wing bent.  

Editor and Publisher reported on October 28 in "Tribune D.C. Bureau Cuts Expected " that the Tribune Company (which, according to their website) publishes the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Sun Sentinel (South Florida), Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant, Morning Call and Daily Press, will be cutting nearly a third of its staff, from 42 to 30.  I guess it takes a special person to be okay with heading such a truncated operation for 6 once widely respected city papers.

The Lady and I worried about our sanity lately as we looked for quality news on the world and politics in the LA Times. 

International and national news is often slanted in the vague but right slanted junk you expect from a paper that is more about making money than about real world class journalism.

Only once in a while you might get a piece that smacks something into the nation's floodlights.  I figure those are written by nutcakes who still believe in journalism for its own sake, not as a stepping stool to a big paycheck.

Big paychecks in the future will go to those in journalism who play it safe.  And more and more 'reporters' out there write like they have a sign over their desk to remind them of just that reality.

Staff has been cut nearly 50% in the last years at the Times, but even more important is the fact that minority  journalists are getting pink slips, possibly faster than more experienced whites according to LA Observed "Times story does the numbers ".  

And, of course, Rush Limbaugh would warble about the greater experience of many white reporters, but yeah, ok, hey you ever heard of discrimination?  Yeah, that slowed the hiring of minorities and LA is a city mostly of minorities.  They don't want to hear everything from the point of view of the old white men that dominate the newspaper.

 But still we wondered if somehow we were seeing things in the paper.

LA Observed shows that we weren't.  And the news about the new Washington bureau chief increases our certainty.

The paper recently installed new section fonts with Colors! and Sam Zell announced months ago that his papers would be filled with more and more color pictures, and someone got the brilliant idea to make up sarcastic headlines for their articles.  They promised us we were going to love the "new" LA Times.

Unfortunately, they put the bells and whistles in a paper that still may beat advertising handouts, but not by much in real news.  We're in talk with the family about switching to a smaller local paper that has less pretension and therefore relies mostly on AP articles.  The AP still considers itself a journalistic company, not just an place to throw advertising.

tags: la times  sam zell  cissy baker  washington dc  

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