In the Los Angeles Times’ new Golden State Blog, columnist Michael Hiltzik responds to our posts and a comment by Insider that his column does not belong in the Business section.

… two of today’s commenters (Brady Westwater of lacowboy.blogspot.com, commenting at the “Manifesto” post, and the anonymous “Insider” of independentsources.com, commenting at “On Anonymity”) cavil that even though it appears on the LA Times business page, my Golden State column isn’t a conventional business column—or, pace Insider, a business column at all.

Insider, in fact, once compiled a list of 30 days of the Golden State column, grading each one as business or not-business and concluding that most were not-business. I regarded this as an extremely presumptuous exercise, but in acknowledgment of Insider’s courtesy of joining my blog’s discussion I won’t repeat here some of the language I used to describe the exercise at the time. Nor will I pull rank by saying it’s my column and it’ll cover what I want; I concede that the reader has an interest in how I pick my subject matter.

So let’s address this issue now.

Both commenters are implicitly trying to define the topics an LA Times business column should cover. I suspect their views might not match, but in any case they’re certainly too narrow. …

What I’ve always appreciated about the LAT’s business coverage, going back to when I first started at the paper more than 20 years ago, is that it defines business broadly. It’s not limited profiles of companies, portraits of business leaders, or reports on, say, business disputes in court. It includes consumer issues, economic issues, and, importantly, government policy. Insider groused about Golden State columns that covered California tax policy—that’s not a business topic? Insider complained about columns I wrote criticizing Gov. Schwarzenegger’s voter initiatives and fund-raising—those aren’t germane to California’s business and economy? Insider even complained about a column on the stem cell program, even though it’s designed to funnel $3 billion into California businesses.*

It seems to me that what Insider really objects to when I write a “political” column isn’t that it’s not strictly about business, but that it expresses a viewpoint with which Insider disagrees. Similarly, when I get emails from readers complaining that my opinion pieces should be sequestered on the opinion page and not the business page, it’s always the color of the opinion, not that it is an opinion, that bugs them. (Generally, the emailers who agree with my opinions complain that the column isn’t published on Page One.)

Anyway, here’s the deal: The column will continue to define business broadly—indeed, it will define California business broadly, reflecting me own broad range of interests. There will be business profiles, discussions of Sacramento policy, consumer issues, even national affairs. These are all fair game. … To Insider: I await my next report card.

* We’ll note that Insider did not object to this one, for the exact reason Hiltzik uses — Insider wrote “This column is all about the politics of of stem cell research but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt because the issue does have the possibility of being big business in the region.”

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2005 at 12:39 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under LA Times' Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.