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

a nickel, a dime, and a quarter on the sidewalk and when someone would stop and pick one up, you were supposed to interview them and write a story about what they picked up and why. I thought, ‘This can’t be the famous LA Times .’”
    Even though most journalists native to Los Angeles coveted jobs at the Times , some balked at taking a job in a bureau such as the South Bay, one of several where reporters were referred to derisively as “zonies” by those lucky enough to hold jobs at the big newsroom on Second and Spring Streets. “The editors downtown were a little snooty about taking stories from the bureaus,” said Kristof, who went to work at the Times as a college intern and would become one if its star financial columnists. “You were just not taken that seriously.” Kristof said the zones were considered somewhat of a backwater at the Times . “They were fully staffed but they used to publish only three times a week. You could get your pants kicked off because you could write a story and it might not appear until three days later.” Wolinsky was transferred from
the South Bay to Orange County, which was considered another “zonie” bureau, but opportunity struck when the Times needed someone to help cover the sprawling Los Angeles County beat.
    A highly regarded and respected Los Angeles journalist, Bill Boyarsky, who ran the City County Bureau, was everything that Wolinsky wanted to be. He recalled, “I met him at a journalism conference before I got to the LA Times in 1977. He was a smart writer, urbane and sophisticated, someone who had written books and won journalism prizes. He was my hero and my mentor.” The Times had hired Boyarsky off an AP picket line, and his solid journalistic practices soon made him one of Otis’ newsroom confidants, someone who appreciated and understood that the values Otis had embedded in the newsroom were not something to be taken for granted, but a legacy to be embraced and passed on to younger journalists who would listen to him. “Bill said if things worked out at the City County Bureau, I might be able to stay,” remembered Wolinsky. So, in 1983 he started covering the board of supervisors for Los Angeles County.
    The City County desk also represented a near-death experience for Wolinsky.
    There were a lot of people on vacation, so [they asked me to help edit] an investigative project by two reporters, one in LA and one in Sacramento. It was a story about . . . a lawyer who had used his connections with the administration of [former California Governor] Pat Brown to get some zoning changes for some property in which he had an interest. We worked on the story for a long time, and finally it ran on page one in the left-hand corner. I was so proud. And then I walked into the newsroom and saw one of the reporters in his editor’s office. He looked ashen. I knew something was wrong.
    As it turned out, many of the details in the 1985 story and the picture that ran in the paper were of the wrong person.

    Parts of the story confused a law professor of the highest standing, who had the same name, with the craven wheeler-dealer. “I figured my career was over,” said Wolinsky. “We did a page one correction the same size of the story. It was incredible. I don’t think anyone ever saw anything like it. I think they paid him a settlement, too. All of the bigwigs went over the story. There were a lot of similarities; they had the same name; they were both lawyers; one worked for Pat Brown, the other for Jerry Brown; one reporter was in Sacramento and the other in LA; they never got together when writing it.” Rather than fire him, the Times kept Wolinsky on, reckoning that his was an honest mistake, one any reporter could have made. This was, after all, Otis’ paper—a deeply paternalistic operation that stood by its staff even when the waters were rough.
    To make it to the top of a