On Saving the Los Angeles Times From Itself

With all of the internal machinations and alterations going down these days at a place called the L.A. Times -- what with demands for Tribune Company to sell it and the editors to improve it and residents to keep reading it despite the creeping obsolescence of its ilk -- publisher Jeff Johnson thought it was finally time to take some real action. And so, he did. Because when the going gets tough, the tough, naturally, send out a memo.

My friend Kate Coe over at FishbowlLA posted the full text of the Johnson memo that addresses the sale rumors, what the paper is going to do to improve itself and, well, everything except the only real issue that matters: who was on that grassy knoll in Dallas during a certain fateful day in November 1963? Alas, Johnson mentioned nothing of it, making him now officially part of the conspiracy.

Fishbowl's Kate the Great, by the way, also decided today to take a poll of the blog's readers asking them if they would miss it if the Times shut down. The breakdown as of 4:15 p.m. PT today:

--"Of course. L.A. needs a hometown paper": 68%

--"No. I get all of my news online, anyway": 17%

--"Maybe. I just got a Labradoodle puppy": 14%

This adds up to only 99%, leading me to believe that an additional 1% is comprised of people who simply don't matter. And even I -- as a Los Angeles Times subscriber for some 30 years -- wouldn't use the paper to potty train a Labradoodle. (That's what USA Today is for.) But Kate's point is well taken that it may soon come to that.