BLOOEY! (Martinez out at L.A. Times)

Background:

The Los Angeles Times has sucked since the Tribune bought it from the Chandlers after that L.A. aristocratic family had a power struggle. Currently, the Times is a mess, with (someone counted) 12 different fonts on the front page, and an ongoing meltdown of what used to be a decent op-ed page. This latter disaster has often been politically motivated, purging progressive writers (both of them) and hyping up the Sunday Opinion (now renamed "Current") into a sodden wad of right wing harrangues, dippy political comics, and scary nuclear-terrorism anti-Arab rabble-rousing.

However, this time it's a different kind of politics, relating to the current Times management's latest (and lamest) romance with Hollywood. It also involves a particular individual's romance of a different and more physical sort with an employee at a PR firm that "just happened" to have a say in which Tinsel Town type got to be a guest editor of the aforementioned Sunday Current section (after, as rumor has it, Steven Spielberg's people refused the offer).

This Town has been abuzz for several days. Now this, straight from the horse's mouth:

Editor resigns over killed opinion section

By James Rainey, Times Staff Writer
11:06 AM PDT, March 22, 2007

Los Angeles Times Editorial Page Editor Andres Martinez resigned this morning over the paper's decision to cancel a special edition of its Sunday Current section.

Martinez made the decision after Publisher David D. Hiller announced this morning that The Times would not publish this Sunday's Current section in order to avoid the appearance that a conflict of interest led to the selection of Hollywood producer Brian Grazer as a guest editor.

...

Martinez had advocated that the section run with an editor's note that he would have drafted, explaining how the section was conceived and telling readers of his relationship with public relations executive Kelly Mullens. Both the editor and Mullens denied that the relationship had anything to do with Grazer's choice to edit the section.

...

Mullens has worked as a consultant and recently was listed on news releases promoting the collaboration between the paper and Grazer, producer of "A Beautiful Mind" and other hit movies.