From the weekend papers

Special kind of reader: Tim Rutten harrumphs about how the Tribune executives just don't understand that LAT readers are less interested in local news than they are in foreign and Washington news, citing "decades of research conducted by the paper." "Editors who live and work in Los Angeles and Southern California understand these things about their readers," he writes. Huh? I must have missed the memo. Probably tied up covering all those insignificant local stories. Seriously folks, the Times continues to find itself on a kind of journalistic hinge. Should it be the third-best national paper (fourth if you're counting the WSJ) or the nation's preeminent regional paper, which admittedly sounds a lot less sexy. The answer might lie in two numbers Rutten neglected to mention. Circulation in 1990: 1.2 million. Circulation this year: 851,000. Guess not everyone is just focused on foreign and Washington news.

Supermarket strategy: It's still six months before its contract expires, but the United Food and Commercial Workers Union has laid out a new negotiating strategy to the LAT. The union plans to negotiate with each supermarket chain separately rather than bargaining with the employers as a group. The idea is to cut a deal with one of the chains and use that as a model for the others. It also avoids the possibility of the chains acting in concert, as they did in the 141-day strike in 2003-04.

Farming on the edge: The Ventura County Star has part six of its very ambitious series on the county's agricultural industry (another one of those local stories LAT readers probably aren't much interested in). In case you've missed it, senior reporter John Krist is spending the year in local fields, orchards and packing houses. What's especially ambitious has been the multi-media aspect of the series. Go online and you'll be able to click onto not only the stories, but video profiles of the players, maps, charts, a video history and a blog. MSN and a few newspapers have been experimenting with this new way of telling complicated stories. Krist began the series in April and will have more installments through the end of the year. He explains in his blog how this got started:

In a sense, "Farming on the Edge" began more than 40 years ago, when my folks moved from San Francisco to a piece of rural property in the Sonoma County wine country. I was about 5 at the time, and so I grew up amid 23 acres of orchards and vineyards. As a kid, and later as a teen-ager and young adult, I spent summers and weekends doing the kind of manual labor that it has apparently become very difficult to hire non-immigrants to do.

I picked fruit, chopped weeds, pruned trees and vines, stacked boxes, loaded trucks, dug ditches and moved irrigation pipe. On hot August days I crawled around in the dirt picking prunes; on foggy autumn mornings I risked my fingers using a sharp hook-bladed knife to cut bunches of grapes from vines buzzing with bees. I picked apples and drove tractors. I sucked dust, developed blisters and then calluses, fell off ladders and got sunburned.

And while I cannot say I loved every minute of it, I certainly enjoyed living on that ranch. It taught me about nature, and about hard work, and about the limitations placed by weather and other unpredictable forces on each year's crops. It granted me experiences that my friends from town did not share.

Port fee dies: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sticks to his pro-business ways by vetoing legislation by state Sen. Alan Lowenthal that would have placed a $60 fee on each container passing through the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The fee, amounting to $500 million a year, would have been used to improve security, reduce pollution and upgrade rail networks that carry all that cargo. The measure generated lots of support among community and environmental groups, but shippers and retailers apparently made a convincing case.

Arnold's record: The Daily News examines the governor's scorecard and finds that he has been mostly a friend to business.

He has helped employers generate some 600,000 new jobs, traveled abroad to drum up trade and tourism dollars, and approved a workers' compensation reform package aimed at reducing business costs. He has also lowered the state budget deficit - though not wiped it out completely, as he had promised - while increasing state spending. He has resisted most major tax increases and his financial moves have helped boost the state's credit rating. He also passed an on-time budget this year for the first time in five years.

The LAT, meanwhile, examines the connection between the governor favoring the insurance industry in various legislative battles and having a onetime insurance lobbyist as deputy chief of staff and a former State Farm official as his insurance advisor. Must just be a coincidence. The piece notes that advisor Kathleen Webb "has met continually with industry trade groups and attended private meetings where insurance lobbyists plot strategy and discuss ways to push their agenda, her calendar shows. She has not recorded a single meeting with a consumer representative."

When insurance-related bills have crossed Schwarzenegger's desk, he has sided with — or at least not opposed — the industry nearly nine times in 10, a review of 56 bills tracked by insurance groups shows. At other times, he has sought to kill or blunt legislation before it reached him.

Boxing for billions: The traditionally clubby world of private equity firms is getting a lot more rough-and-tumble, reports the NYT's Andrew Ross Sorkin. Case in point: the recent auction for L.A.-based Univision. Televisa was believed to have an early advantage, but the Mexican broadcaster needed U.S. private equity partners because of federal rules regarding foreign ownership. A half-dozen firms lined up to form a partnership.

When Televisa selected Kohlberg Kravis to be part of the alliance, Kohlberg Kravis demanded the right to choose the other private equity firms that would be part of the group. It kicked out Madison Dearborn, Providence Equity Partners and Haim Saban in favor of the Carlyle Group, Blackstone Group and Bain Capital. Interestingly, Madison, Providence and Mr. Saban went on to form their own group and won the auction after Kohlberg Kravis, Carlyle and Blackstone got cold feet and quit the Televisa alliance.

The scenic route: A city sting operation found that out of 30 taxi trips from various parts of L.A., 15 cost more than they should have. Drivers were accused of taking less direct routes and possibly rigging their meters. Drivers and taxi companies say the results are not credible because the survey sample is so small - and they might have a point (couldn't they have some up with more than 30 trips?). Also, "scenic routes" are sometimes preferable to more direct routes when traffic is bad.

Sex sells: That's being played out at the 11th Adult Convention, a consumer show of where all sorts of naughty movies and gadegetry are being peddled. They expected 15,000 attendees at the L.A. Convention Center for the two-day show.

Rose talk already?: Longtime Tournament of Roses executive Bill Flinn brushes off all the usual questions about the parade's financial health and tells the Pasadena Star-News that everything is great. Of course, there's no way of really knowing, since the Tournament of Roses keeps things close to the vest. A 2005 economic impact report done by UCLA showed that direct spending of those attending the parade, game, and all the other events amounted to $208 million.