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Podcasts Off-Ramp
7-year Love Affair with LA Times Subscription's Sad End
Off-Ramp with John Rabe Hero Image
(
Dan Carino
)
Jan 23, 2010
Listen • 3:10
7-year Love Affair with LA Times Subscription's Sad End
Jon Regardie, executive editor of the "Los Angeles Downtown News," tells the sad story of a love affair that died. Come inside, for John's personal lament for the newspaper.
Somewhere in Pasadena, there's someone with a low opinion of the LA Times.
Somewhere in Pasadena, there's someone with a low opinion of the LA Times.
(
John Rabe
)

Jon Regardie, executive editor of the "Los Angeles Downtown News," tells the sad story of a love affair that died. Come inside, for John's personal lament for the newspaper.

Jon Regardie, executive editor of the "Los Angeles Downtown News," tells the sad story of a love affair that died. Come inside, for John's personal lament for the newspaper.

I’ve written before about my affinity for newspapers.

The ink is in my blood, even though I’ve never worked at a newspaper. It got there because my dad was friends with all the old guard newspaper men and women in Detroit. Guys like Tony Spina of the Detroit Free Press, who witnessed Japan conceding defeat in WW2 and was Pope John XXIII’s favorite photographer. And George E. Van, the Detroit News’ yachting reporter (think about that for a minute) who sailed on famed the J-Boat “Ranger” as a young man. And Joe Falls, sports columnist for the Detroit Times, the Detroit News and the Free Press, who burst into the room with news of Dave Righetti’s no hitter in 1983, and kindly helped me write an AP story on the high school basketball tournament game I’d just watched, but didn’t understand.

I was weaned at the Detroit Press Club, and one of my most vivid memories is the afternoon my dad and I spent at one of the papers, where the reporters still smoked cigars at their desks. So many cigars I got sick, and Charlie the bartender at the press club gave me some milk and some Coke to settle my stomach. He probably did the same thing for Bill Bonds every night before Bonds’ “newscast.” (That’s a Detroit joke.)

Like the LA Downtown News’ Jon Regardie, I can’t imagine life without the paper on my doorstep. Now comes news that the New York Times is planning to charge us for using its website. (Well, not me because I pay for home delivery.) I love Steve Lopez, but not enough to pay to read his archived columns when the LA Times used to charge for them. And have you ever paid for an article from the archives of the Pasadena-Star News or the Long Beach Gazettes? Has anyone? Ever? I can’t imagine they make more than about ten bucks a week on them.

I don’t know the answer to the problem the papers face, except collusion by all the outlets, and I imagine that’s illegal.