By Maya Trent · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer (2011) · Wayback archive →
In late January 2011, the New York Times had just run a piece characterizing the LA Times’ struggles, and LA Times editor Geoffrey Mohan had written back hard — calling the piece “a dagger in the backs of good journalists who have survived a withering battle.” NYT public editor Arthur Brisbane’s emailed response was the kind of cross-coastal media-criticism artifact the 2011 newspaper ecosystem still produced.
Then
The Times piece had landed at a moment when the LA Times had just won the 2011 Public Service Pulitzer for its Bell corruption coverage — making the framing of “struggle” feel particularly tone-deaf to the LA staff. Brisbane didn’t fully defend the Times piece; his email did some of what public editors did — acknowledged the valid criticism without committing to a formal retraction.
Now
The LA Times has gone through far more transitions than the NYT in the fifteen years since: Soon-Shiong purchase 2018, El Segundo relocation, 2023 and 2024 layoff rounds. The NYT has substantially grown across the same period — Trump-era subscription surge, Cooking/Games/Audio franchises, Wirecutter and Athletic acquisitions. The comparative-trajectory question the 2011 exchange surfaced has been answered, painfully, in favor of the East Coast paper. The public editor position itself was eliminated by the Times in 2017.