Newspapers

Who's killing the Daily News

Former Daily News editor Ron Kaye has been building up to this post ever since he got fired last year, I suspect. With Ed Moss departing yesterday as publisher and president of LANG, Kaye fingers him as an "empty suit" and "the first and last chapter of my book 'Who Killed the LA Daily News.'"

When the story of why our daily newspapers died is finally told, Ed Moss will deserve more than a passing mention...

Many are responsible for what went wrong. But Ed Moss, and the owner who put him in place, Dean Singleton, bear the heaviest responsibility.

Moss sucked the spirit out of the paper and left it to die. On Wednesday, he resigned to become publisher of the San Diego Union-Tribune, which was recently bought as a real estate deal for its Mission Valley plant by Beverly Hills-based Platinum Equity

Sending Moss to fix a struggling paper is like sending a mortician to treat an ailing patient. He will do the only thing he knows how to do: Cut, and cut, and cut some more: When he's done with his handiwork, the U-T will be ready for embalming and burial much like the Daily News is.

Kaye says Moss "speaks in vapid cliches and offers no leadership." He adds: "I've never worked for anyone worse in my 44 years at nine different news organizations....My heart goes out to my colleagues still at the Daily News every time I pick up the paper and see what Moss' leadership has done to it." Nothing personal, Kaye says: "I'd been fired before but never by someone who had to fly in a surrogate from out of town to do it."


More by Kevin Roderick:
Standing up to Harvey Weinstein
The Media
LA Times gets a top editor with nothing but questions
LA Observed Notes: Harvey Weinstein stripped bare
LA Observed Notes: Photos of the homeless, photos that found homes
Recent Newspapers stories on LA Observed:
Read the LA Times response to Los Angeles Magazine's piece
NYT thins more in Los Angeles, and the LAT hires locally
Oops: 6-year-old Betty Broderick story runs in LA Times*
More details on mixed use plan for LA Times buildings
Tribune doubles down on the whole Tronc thing
Tribune Publishing sending its IT jobs to India
Tribune Publishing slides toward parody
Sadly for LAT, this might be worst Tribune yet


 

LA Observed on Twitter