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The L.A. Times Festival of Books is a great community event, no question. People have a good time, it's free, authors meet readers and many books are sold. The paper's coverage of it is less fawning now than it was the first year or two, but the news judgment is still questionable.
Case in point: On Sunday, about 60,000 people attended the festival, and the news story in today's paper totals about 1,000 words. Also on Sunday, the paper estimates, 500,000 people crowded into the Fiesta Broadway celebration downtown. Today's news story on that barely cracks 400 words.
* On the other hand: Today's La Opinión, which ran about 900 words (in Spanish) on Fiesta Broadway, mildly criticized the event for being more about advertisers and sponsors than about Latino culture. It did put the story on page one with a big photo, however -- and pegged the crowd at more like 200,000. I didn't see any coverage of the book festival, but there is yet another piece on the ubiquitous Pacifica Radio host Amy Goodman, by Pilar Marrero.