did just that last night

welchie’s bro David Carr of the new york times took a magnifying glass to some of the practices and accusations of the management of Tribune Corp, the company that owns the Chicago Tribune and LA Times. there were many unnamed sources, old stories, and questionable actions.

welch, a libertarian, and the editor of the libertarian Reason magazine, asked the simple question “Does it Matter That the Tribune Co. Is Run By Frat Dicks?“

while there are many in the blogosphere and media world who are rooting against Trib management and cheered on the NYT’s 4,000 word shot across the bow, welch says that there were several angles to the Sam Zell-led Trib that the Times conveniently left out.

And the most undercovered L.A. Times media story of all? The paper, as Brian Doherty, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and even a reluctant Tim Cavanaugh have all recently noted here, has been bringing it of late, plunging into real and impactful tough-nosed coverage of local power structures, while taking the whole “website that publishes a newspaper” thing seriously enough that both traffic and quality have grown through the roof.

Did that happen in spite of Zell? Because of him, at least in part? Now that would be a media story that would interest me beyond the rubbernecking pleasure of hearing about frat-boy antics by managers who never bothered learning the native dialect.

welchie as always reminds us that life is not a black and white ansel adams photo of a pretty tree in front of a mountain, but often its a cubist abstract with many sides and intricate details whose nuances are just as rewarding to study as is the overall image. and for that he rules.