Ink think: Michael Kinsley, L.A. Times opinion editor, sees changes in the role that newspapers have traditionally played in shaping the public debate.MICHAEL Kinsley Michael Kinsley (born March 9, 1951 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American political journalist, commentator television host and liberal pundit. Primarily active in print media as both a writer and editor, he also became known to television audiences as a co-host on Crossfire was a pioneer in online journalism Online journalism is defined as the reporting of facts produced and distributed via the Internet. An early leader was The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. , founding the Microsoft-published Web journal Slate.com in 1995. Now, he is working for that oldest of media, newspapers, as editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times Morning daily newspaper. Established in 1881, it was purchased and incorporated in 1884 by Harrison Gray Otis (1837–1917) under The Times-Mirror Co. (the hyphen was later dropped from the name). . Kinsley has become the target of USC An abbreviation for U.S. Code. law professor Susan Estrich Susan Estrich (born Susan Estrich December 16 1952) is a lawyer, professor, author, political operative, feminist advocate and commentator for Fox News. Estrich grew up in Marblehead, Massachusetts on Boston's North Shore. , who claims that he doesn't have enough women writers on the page; Kinsley responds that he's striving to improve the balance and that it's now time for her to back off. He splits his time between Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. and Seattle because his wife, Patty Stonesifer Patty Stonesifer is the Co-chair and President of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In 1997, Bill and Melinda Gates asked Stonesifer to launch the Gates Library Foundation, [1] which later merged with the William H. Gates Foundation in 2000. , is president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Melinda French Gates (born Melinda Ann French on August 15, 1964) is a former unit manager for several Microsoft products: Publisher, Microsoft Bob, Encarta, and Expedia. In 1994, she married Bill Gates, founder, chairman, and former chief software architect of Microsoft. Foundation. Question: Do you see the Internet replacing newspapers as the primary source of news in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. ? Answer: When I was at Slate, there was a controversy about Microsoft putting newspapers out of business. There was lots of fear in general that the Interact was going to wipe out newspapers. I was a skeptic. Now I'm back in print and I really do believe that it may happen. Q: What does that mean? A: There is something big going on and we don't quite know what. I don't think newspapers as they exist now are going to be here as they are now. Newspapers as institutions are going to continue in some form, they ought to dominate the news. But I find it hard to believe that in 10 years you're going to have trucks delivering huge rolls of newsprint around and have presses turn them into huge printed pieces of newspaper and trucked to houses all over Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, . Q: Do you think newspaper editorial pages have lost some of their impact in terms of shaping public opinion? A: We've had a lot of discussions about that. I think the role of unsigned editorials has diminished and the role of signed op-ed pieces and the Sunday section may not have diminished, but it certainly hasn't increased. Q: What do you think of blogs, some of which have been harshly critical of you and the Times? Do you see them supplanting the traditional newspaper editorial page as a forum for civic discourse? A: I think blogs are absolutely great. They could well put us out of business--not newspapers, but newspaper opinion pages. I think newspapers do news better than any other medium out there, but I think blogs do opinion better than newspapers. It's the interactive nature of them. It's the immediacy of them. (The late New Yorker magazine journalist) A.J. Liebling said freedom of the press is for those who own one. Now just about anyone can own one. Q: Susan Estrich has a blog that harshly criticizes you for what she said was a lack of female and local voices on the op-ed pages. Former Times reporter Kenneth Reich has a blog that accuses you of dumbing down the editorial pages and giving short shrift short shrift n. 1. Summary, careless treatment; scant attention: These annoying memos will get short shrift from the boss. 2. Quick work. 3. a. to local issues. How do you deal with the criticism? A: It comes with the territory in two senses. In the first sense, if you're doing a good job with opinions, you're going to upset people. In the second sense, if you dish it out, you'd better be ready to take it. There are limits, and I thought what Susan Estrich did was more than I should have had to take. In general it does not bother me. Q: What of the criticism that the Times doesn't publish enough women's opinions and favors national issues over local ones? A: On the women thing, I've said all along that we need to improve. If you saw (media critic) Howard Kurtz Howard Alan Kurtz (born 1 August 1953 in Brooklyn, New York [1]) is an American journalist, , author and media writer for the Washington Post. Kurtz is the host of CNN's Reliable Sources and has written for The New Republic, the in the Washington Post, of the three national newspapers with op-ed pages, we are the best (in terms of publishing women). We're not where we should be, but we're better than The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times or the Washington Post. On the local issue, if you look at our editorials, we cover local issues plenty. I haven't broken it down, but most of our editorials are on local issues. On our editorial board--which by the way is half women--the passions are disproportionately local: the school board, the mayor's race. There's lots of stuff on local issues on the op-ed page also. The final point I'd like to make is Los Angeles is the second-largest city in the country. It's really bush-league to care about where the writers are from. I think we should cover our community and I think we do. Q: What are the most significant changes you're making? A: We hope there's going to be a lot of changes in the online product. Right now it's basically shovelware--the opinion section at least. I went and registered the domain opinionla.com. We may never use it, but I hope we do. There's no reason we shouldn't post every letter that we get. I was thinking last week--I was writing my column and it was getting too long and I would have to cut it for the paper, but I thought about calling the Web people and asking if they could post the whole version. Q: Some critics question your commitment to Los Angeles since you spend much of your time in Seattle. Do you feel grounded here? A: Not enough. One of the reasons I took this job was I thought it would be really cool to get to know Los Angeles. This isn't something that was a bolt from the blue. I thought I was going to live here when I went to work for (law firm) Gibson Dunn (& Crutcher LLP LLP - Lower Layer Protocol ). It's not ideal--this time-splitting thing --and it's one of the reasons we added this editorial page (editor) position. Andres (Martinez) lives here and he's really into this place. Q: Turnout in last week's election was less than 30 percent. What do you think accounts for the political apathy? A: Part of grumbling but not doing anything about it is a national vice. I wouldn't pin that on L.A. Seattle is sort of a farcically far·ci·cal adj. 1. Of or relating to farce. 2. a. Resembling a farce; ludicrous. b. Ridiculously clumsy; absurd. far civic-minded place. I guess that compared to Seattle, Los Angeles seems like a chaotic place. L.A. is a much more vibrant place--the chaos and the cacophony and the arguments are part of that vibrancy. Q: Has technology helped you overcome the challenge of running an opinion section in Los Angeles while living part-time in Seattle? A: To be really honest, it's fine. It's certainly not something we could have done 10 years ago. The telephone is really an underappreciated asset. We also have e-mail of course. It is not quite as smooth as the operation at Slate where we had offices in New York and Washington and Seattle and we had a copy editor in Cincinnati and a columnist in Berlin and it truly didn't matter where you were. Location matters more here. Being part of Los Angeles is a big part of the Los Angeles Times. Q: Do you see yourself primarily as a caretaker of Times editorial philosophy, or as someone brought in to make a distinctive mark on the editorial and opinion pages? A: I'm going to try to publish editorials that are right. All I have is my own judgment as to what is right. What matters is getting it right now, not what we may have said in the past. Having said that, I haven't bigfooted my way in here on every issue. Do we care about what they said 20 years ago? Not really. Before I was hired, we talked about my politics and the paper's politics and they're pretty similar. It's basically a mainstream editorial line. Sort of normal Democratic Party positions. Q: Do you regret that the Times, consistent with its longstanding policy against endorsements in presidential races, sat out the 2004 contest between President Bush and John Kerry  Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism. ? A: I'm willing to bet that we endorse in four years. It's an anomaly, an historical accident, really, that we didn't endorse. We talked about changing that, but by the time I got here the decision had been made. I felt strongly that we needed to take a position but it had been decided already not to do so. Q: You've run full-page cartoons on the front of the Sunday Opinion section and added humor columnist Joel Stein Joel Stein (born 23 July 1971) is an American journalist. He is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a regular contributor to TIME. Stein grew up in Edison, New Jersey and attended J. P. . It has been suggested that you're giving the editorial pages a pop-culture sensibility at the expense of serious opinion. A: There is a danger when you try to make something lively you can make it pathetic: an elephant trying to do hip hop hip-hop or hip hop n. 1. A popular urban youth culture, closely associated with rap music and with the style and fashions of African-American inner-city residents. 2. Rap music. adj. . We're trying to be as lively as we can without being over the top. I'm not hip and I don't think Bob Sipchen--the editor of that section--is hip either. I hope he's not offended by that. INTERVIEW Michael Kinsley Title: Editorial and Opinion Editor Organization: Los Angeles Times Born: Detroit, March 1951 Education: B.A. from Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate section and oldest school of Harvard University, founded in 1636 by the Massachusetts Legislature. The College is instructed by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which also instructs the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. , attended Oxford University and graduated from Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (colloquially, Harvard Law or HLS) is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard Law is considered one of the most prestigious law schools in the United States. with a J.D. degree Career Turning Point: Getting hired at The New Republic in 1977 instead of practicing law Most Admired People: Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll, former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, Washington Monthly Editor Charlie Peters, 19th century economist Henry George Hobbies: None Personal: Married, two stepchildren |
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