The Los Angeles Times picked up the story today about county Supervisor Dianne Jacob’s legal battle with Sam Zell, the chief executive of Tribune Co., the newspaper’s owner.
We published an op-ed from Jacob this week after it was declined by the newspaper.
Times San Diego bureau chief Tony Perry writes:
Jacob also criticized The Times for not publishing her essay. Nicholas Goldberg, editor of the Los Angeles Times op-ed pages, said he and his staff read Jacob’s essay closely before deciding not to publish it.
He said the paper receives as many as 500 submissions a week and can publish only a handful.
“We recognize that we have a responsibility to cover Sam Zell when he makes news — which we have done on the opinion pages and elsewhere in the paper,” Goldberg said. “But we also feel that we shouldn’t give him excessive coverage.
“… We asked ourselves whether we would publish this op-ed piece about a mobile-home-park owner’s battle with the county of San Diego if it was not about Sam Zell, and we decided we probably would not.”