Near the very end of this piece is the line: “Tens of thousands of humans could lose jobs in the future — from taxi to truck drivers.”

That is called burying the lede.

When you read stories about Waymo and other robot cars bum rushing the show, watch how good journalists and reputable media outlets treat these bots and their alleged inevitably in away that is so much different than how they write about ChatGPT being tested by Sports Illustrated, Gannet, and LAist
.
It’s the Same exact thing, except this bot isn’t coming for their job, it’s coming for the struggling middle class gig workers grinding at all hours of the day and night to make ends meet. So it’s ok. And cute.

And “omg my backseat driving reflex is on high alert.”

While readers are thankful for all the details about how terrible these cars have rolled out onto the streets – smashing into people and property, clogging narrow streets of Frisco when they malfunction – and learn how the politicians claim to be concerned but magically these vehicles have appeared without any public consent, something’s missing in the narrative.

Namely how the humans who take these journalists to lunch and work and from LAX in the rain and to LAX in the dark – are being fucked by two new foes: lawmakers and now the press.

It took decades of voting and red tape and hand wringing to finally get first medical and then recreational marijuana in California – and we still can’t smoke a joint in a park or on the sidewalk. Meanwhile many cities have refused to listen to the voice of the people and have outlawed the sale of the Devil’s cabbage in their precious burb.

But robot cars on the streets? NBD? Get used to it? That’s the tone from every news outlet on TV, print and online. “Look everyone the rides are free this month!”

As great journos like Jon Healey, Ben Welsh, and Michelle Maltais and others are well aware, ChatGPT in online news is 1,000% easier to pull off than robot taxis.

Given a fraction of the seed money Waymo and the others have received even a dope like me could lead a team to create bots that could spit out “news” with precision SEO, tantalizing copyright free AI art to go with every story, and corresponding social media posts effortlessly deployed at the exact time the algo says they should be published.

But when the media writes about *their* precarious jobs being targeted by zeros and ones the tone is far more dark and far less giddy.

The entire entertainment industry went on strike less than a year ago over the fear of AI and ChatGPT replacing extras and screenwriters and the media supported that industry, their strike, and their cause.

That same media quietly cheered when SI folded shortly after it was revealed that they had been partnering with a startup built solely to replace human journalists with bots.

But robot taxis replacing humans and our Priuses? A yawn louder than a typical reaction from a Plaschke column.

The LA Times needs a regular rideshare column to bring home the human damage this technology can’t wait to sink its teeth into. A column where a not-so-humble driver takes fellow humans around this vast city and has human interactions with them and reports back who Angelenos truly are and shares examples of ways bots could never replace souls.

Yesterday I picked up a woman who needed to go from Mid City to Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital because she had a mild stroke and didn’t want to call an ambulance because she feared it would only take her to Cedars and she hated how long the wait at the ER was.

So when I arrived she begged me to come around to the alley to get her because walking was difficult. When we realized the back gate had accidently closed and locked, she had me walk all around the giant building to the front area and meet her at her apartment where I was asked to hold her as she gently made her way down her rickety staircase.

She smelled of urine. She was shaking. She yelled out a few times terrified she was going to fall. You’re not going to fall I assured her. I am right here.

When we made it across town she asked me to get her a wheelchair and help her out of the car and into the waiting room. Which I gladly did. Of course. This woman was younger than my mother.

There are things robots are great at. And there are some things the human touch is ideal for.

Carrying Angelenos around this beautiful town isn’t for everyone. And it sure as hell isn’t the place for an untested bot in 2024. Unless you want to find a safe space to light up, piss or puke.

Three things I do every time I read these curious stories in my favorite paper.

he was one of the first LA Times ppl i freaked out from meeting when i did

which was early in my run there

he had written a story that would later get him in trouble

about how this guy in jail told him who killed Tupac

turned out it wasnt true and they had to retract it from the paper and we had to do all these special things on the website

but a few weeks before that he was assigned to do a live chat in my office

and i was all holy shit chuck phillips i used to read you way back in college

he was so nice

so down to earth

and here he is interviewing 2pac back in the day

was Kareem’s.

so i googled it and naturally it’s gone, as is most of the things i did at the Times and Los Angeleno.

but i got lucky and his blog has been archived on the wayback machine.

im starting to thing: ive had a wild life.

this is what our original blog splash page looked like.

i was not very successful at lobbying for its own homepage, but i still stand by that concept.

i am heartbroken

RIP Henry

youre not allowed to criticize them

even if they keep sending their employees to the unemployment lines

or the retirement homes.

youre not allowed to count their money or question what they do with the paper

because everyone knows that newspapers in 2020 are money losing ventures

first it was craigslist, then monster.com, then facebook, the ways newspaper revenues dried up were death by a million cuts.

even though over there are over 2,000 billionaires, only a few of them have any interest in the news biz, and so you arent allowed to criticize those who do because omg what if they all say

fuck this shit.

but heres the thing about billionaires, and please correct me if i am wrong.

in order to achieve that title, you can’t really give a whole bunch of it away in annoying ways like salaries and health insurance and matching 401ks.

im sure there was a bit of a twinge today when the richest man in LA signed the paperwork that sent 40 people into the worst day of their life: suddenly unemployed in the middle of a pandemic

and clearly theres not just a mountain of dollar bills in his basement, six billion strong.

but come on.

come the fuck on.

how is this not heartless, selfish, fucking shitty behavior

the type that the best newspaper west of manhattan would call out if it was being done by any other billionaire in town.

ive seen them do it.

today about 666 present and former employees of the LA Times joined together to say goodbye to the Times building

our home away from home

our home

our home.

i saw so many people who i never thought would be there. i saw faces whose names i didnt remember. i saw people who looked EXACTLY as they did when I was last there.

and i love them all

it was all so sweet.

in many ways it was just like we left it

“new” carpet and equipment and tv and stuff but almost everything was in the same place.

yes amber and i took the tour last month but that was a limited thing and we didnt get to talk to too many people

but this was different, this was a real homecoming where we got to wander around the sprawling building. which was a little weird without a lot of the pictures that used to line the walls, and framed iconic newspaper front pages that saluted you as you walked through the ground floor.

there was the elevator that i once rode with Rihanna as she was visiting her then-boyfriend Chris Brown

there was the office i once received a gigantic bonus in

there was the bathroom i once took a cool selfie in

and there was the spot where my desk once was where i learned that Michael Jackson had died

and where i watched Barack Obama get elected.

i feel that i am so lucky because these are some of the smartest and sharpest minds in the entire game.

old cohorts who are now here there and everywhere. we are so spread out but tonight we were together mixed in with the young writers, some of whom, weirdly, i know too.

i am so happy, which is weird because i thought i was gonna be so sad. i thought i was gonna cry the whole time.

this was my dream job. this is where i had hoped i could work at for so long.

this is where i wrote about on this blog time after time after time, never truly believing i would ever work at

and then when i was gone, a place i had thought had totally forgotten about me.

i was so wrong. i am always so wrong.

turned out people did remember me. and some knew me who had never met me.

we talked and hugged and i drank and we took so many pictures and i even got a few parting gifts. which is crazy because the whole thing was a gift.

you can dream. you can tell everyone what you want. and at some point you might even get a shot at what you want.

and then its all about working working working to feel like you belong.

to feel like you deserve to be there.

i may never feel that way no matter how great our results were, but i was there.

i was in the game.

i got to see the thing from the inside

and i am so grateful, it’s crazy.

but you know whats really crazy? that in a few weeks this will all be gone.

the place where so much happened.

where everything and everyone happened

it will all be gone.

just more square footage to be rented out.

life is so bizarre

ask for what you want, then french kiss it.

yesterday amber an i went to the LA Times because we learned that there were only two official tours remaining of the building before the paper moves to El Segundo.

thankfully my boss understood that im insane and the only days off that i want are for weird things like this and not trips to maui.

but to get a tour of a fascinatingly rich and complex building like the LA Times from a 40-year veteran of the paper like Darrell Kunitomi is a priceless gift.

he has seen it all, met everyone, worked with everyone, and experienced all the very high highs and extremely low lows of the greatest paper west of Manhattan.

it was a bittersweet tour because with every fact, photograph, and piece of equipment was an asterisk that said THIS TOO WILL BE GONE WHEN THEY MOVE.

the root of the problem was executive after executive from Chicago has done its best to ruin the LA Times, plunder its riches, lay off its people, and finally sell its majestic building and hoard the profits.

so now the paper is a tenant in a building that they also share with the likes of Uber(!) and they are forced to pay $2 million a month in rent. meanwhile the new owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong owns a building by LAX and he would rather spend millions renovating it so that the paper can work in a modern place… rent free.

because life is crazy, it just so happened that Dr. Patrick (as people now call him) was in the building yesterday because he was officially announcing the sale and the new Executive Editor. the newsroom was joyous with anti-Tronc signs, cake, and bubbly.

the tour was not allowed to join in the celebration, as this was their moment, which is understandable, but damn did i want to be in there with some of my former colleagues. The Mayor even showed up.

i did splinter off from the group when we made it to the Entertainment section which is where the Sports Dept used to be. Gerrick Kennedy, Randall Roberts, and Alison Dingeldein all greeted me and i got to chat briefly with my pal Todd Martens.

when we finished the tour Amber and I were filled with emotion because… that’s it. That cool building will be ruined, basically, with stupid condos or offices that will not change the city the way a 100+ year old paper can. and all the memories that people with way more time spent on Spring Street will be heard and not seen.

so we went to the nearby Redwood Bar, where Timesmen and Timeswomen have escaped to since the days of rotary phones. and there we hid out in the dark, listening to classic rock, and eating fish tacos.

i love the LA Times so much and the people who made it and make it what it was and is and it’s so sad that this sad story never ends. even with a prince of a billionaire trying to make things better. maybe it will be better. maybe the new place will be a turning point.

lets hope.