Free The Deal from Hell by James O'Shea Page A

legacy. Otis understood that the city he and his ancestors had built needed to be informed and entertained, and he capitalized on the power of his journalists and what they really cared about—their journalism—to provide that information and entertainment, elevating them to an almost mythical status in the newsroom and beyond. Reporters and editors at Otis’ Los Angeles Times didn’t live by the rules that applied
to others. They were well paid, flew first-class on every trip over five hundred miles, and spared no expense on stories. And editors worked hard to make sure it stayed that way.
    Nowhere was the ability of the Los Angeles Times to entertain on better display than in a celebrated feature that Wolinsky and other Los Angeles Times editors would fight to preserve for years: Column One—deeply reported, well-written stories. Through meticulous reporting and lucid writing, Times reporters and editors simply took their readers to places where other newspapers couldn’t or wouldn’t go. When editors needed an arresting profile on a controversial figure like Washington, D.C., mayor, Marion Barry, they called on a stable of gifted writers like Bella Stumbo who would capitalize on the paper’s fat expense accounts to fill its generous news hole with deep reporting and copy that crackled. Stumbo and other Los Angeles Times writers simply spent more time, more money, and more and better words on a story, overwhelming would-be competitors.
    The Times that Otis had inherited from his father was fat—full of ads bought by companies and merchandisers who coveted Otis’ well-heeled readers. At the top of the front page on March 12, 1961, just after Otis became publisher, two numbers—21 and 430—competed for attention with the infamous signed editorial on the John Birch Society. That Sunday’s Times had 21 sections and 430 pages to hold ads for everything from Liquid Snail Killers from the Cha Kent Company to a spread for the Dinah Shore Models Wardrobe at a local department store. Otis built upon that solid foundation to make the paper more lucrative so he could pay his journalists top dollar. He took the Golden Age of Journalism to Platinum. Ads created holes for copy written by those lucky enough to work at the Times .
    To Wolinsky, the Los Angeles Times was more than a fat and happy place to work: “For me, it was a symbol. When you saw the people walking down the street with the Los Angeles Times , it was a symbol that they’d made it in society,” he offered. The paper lured many star reporters westward from newspapers in the East and Midwest, but employed just as many Californians—journalists who’d labored at
smaller papers to land a coveted job at the Times . Kathy Kristof grew up reading the Los Angeles Times and wanted to work there from the time that she decided to be a journalist. “I really didn’t realize what we had until I started traveling and saw other papers. It was a unique paper. There was nothing like it in the country.”
    After graduating from USC, Wolinsky was bound and determined to “land a job at the Los Angeles Times .” After five years of applying unsuccessfully for a roster of Times jobs, he got a break when he was a reporter for The Breeze covering Inglewood, a community in the South Bay, a collection of towns south of the city. The Times had a reporter in Inglewood but her husband was under investigation for a conflict of interest (he had a stake in Inglewood casinos), and Wolinsky applied for her job.
    His moxie paid off. He soon became the South Bay reporter for the Los Angeles Times .“At first,” Wolinsky recalled, with his trademark laugh, “I thought I had made a huge mistake. My editor was Hank Osborne. He’d assign these ridiculous stories. He once had someone cover the marathon and write stories about runners who would stop to defecate in the bushes. He’d have you go out and put