Weinstein's exit email also chides Zell

My cherished colleagues:

Nearly 30 years ago, I entered this building for the first time, thrilled to be at a great newspaper striving to be ever greater.

Mark Murphy, then the Metro Editor took a gamble on me. After all, at that point, the publisher of San Francisco Examiner, the newspaper where I was working, wanted to fire me for launching a campaign to raise money for two reporters the paper abandoned in a libel suit. I was lucky to land here and lucky to stay for many reasons.

I have been very lucky to work at the Los Angeles Times for three decades with a fabulous group of reporters, photographers, editors, researchers and skilled technicians.

I was lucky enough to meet my wife Laurie Becklund here and to have the staff respond warmly when our then young daughter Elizabeth used to come with me to the newsroom and hand out supplies.

I also have been fortunate to have worked on stories in 35 states and the District of Columbia.

What can you say about a job where you had the opportunity to help an innocent man get out of prison after 24 years for a murder he didn't commit, assist poor people recover homes stolen from them and get paid for hanging out with Vin Scully in a press box and bars in New York. Truly, I have been blessed.

This was my fourth and apparently my last newspaper. There is no doubt in my mind that is the most resilient staff in journalism anywhere in the country. You have performed admirably under the greatest adversities, be they riots, earthquakes or greedy, misguided executives, some of whom seem to think that stories from foreign countries are produced by elves not courageous journalists.

Do not ever doubt for a moment that you are the heart of this newspaper. This is a collaborative enterprise but without you and your work there would be nothing to sell ads around. In 1999, during the Staples scandal, one executive told the Wall Street Journal that we were "marketing vehicles.'' He was wrong and we told him so.

Now, The Principal Owner has the temerity to tell great journalists in our Washington bureau that they are nothing but "overhead,'' not producing any revenue. As I said, if journalists were not producing stories, be they from a ravaged Los Angeles hospital, the Supreme Court in Washington, the flooded streets of New Orleans, the war zones of Bosnia, El Salvador and Iraq, the famine-ravished countries of Africa, the bright lights of Dodger Stadium or a dimly lit movie screening room, there would be no Los Angeles Times to sell. I hope Mr. Zell eventually understands that.

In recent days, I have received many heartfelt messages from colleagues about the contributions I have made to the paper and the value of My Big Mouth. To state the obvious, I'm hardly the only person with a conscience in this building. There are hundreds of you and I am confident that you will step up to the plate after I depart. I will be rooting for all of you, as journalists and as friends.

I got into journalism because I thought it was a way to do some good and to have some fun at the same time. I still love the work and there is a part of me that will always revel in the idea of discovering a secret about some malefactor that I can reveal to the world. Over the past month, however, I came to the conclusion that there were other ways I could do some good and that I was young enough and energetic enough to have at least a modest length second act. I hope to pass on some of my values to younger people in the hope that they, too, will have a desire to become watchdogs of democracy. Afterall, at our best, that's what we are.

My very best to all of you, Henry