The Los Angeles Times is suffering some hard times.
Massive staff layoffs, circulation losses, reorganizations and, since the paper was purchased by the Chicago Tribune awhile back, some Angelenos have begun referring to the paper as the Chicago L.A. Times.
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![]() Barbra Streisand honored at 2001 Emmy Awards on CBS |
And now this: Barbra Streisand has canceled her subscription – and gone public with her reasons.
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On her website, the singer publishes her open letter to the editorial page editor of the paper explaining why she took this dramatic step.
"The greater Southern California community is one that not only proudly embraces its diversity but demands it," she writes. "Your publisher's decision to fire Robert Scheer is a great disservice to the spirit of our community."
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Just for the record, Scheer is an ultra-liberal white male – hardly in short supply in the newsrooms of major metropolitan news organizations.
"Robert Scheer's column, with its often singular voice of dissent and groundbreaking expositional content, has been among the most notable features that have sustained my interest in subscribing to the L.A. Times for many years now," she continued. "Apparently, previous leadership at the L.A. Times had no trouble recognizing Mr. Scheer's journalistic prowess in that they nominated him for the Pulitzer Prize."
While much of the letter as eventually published in the L.A. Times was excised for space reasons, the paper did include Streisand's big finish: "My greatest fear is that the underlying reason for Scheer's termination is part of a larger trend toward the corporatization of our media, a trend that we, as American citizens, must fervently battle for the sake of our swiftly diminishing free press."
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