There's plenty of caterwauling over this story about UCLA medical school's plunging reputation, which is attributed to a DEI takeover of the admissions process and a curriculum that elevates social justice and research concerns over practical medical knowledge. I share these worries, but the subject is covered, to put it mildly. (Either way, read the story. It's a doozy.)
A collateral issue, heretofore unexamined, is why this ran in The Washington Free Beacon rather than the Los Angeles Times. It's not as if the Times is averse to giving beloved local colleges the third degree; the Times has been on the University of Southern California like white on rice, including its medical school. And the Times won a Pulitzer for its series going hammer and tongs on King/Drew Medical Center - in part over similar concerns about race - when people gave a shit about Pulitzers.
Ten minutes of searching yielded no stories about UCLA's medical school at the Times, nor a mention of The Free Beacon's piece. (I could be wrong. The Times search engine sucks and Google suffers from "enshittification.") There is some handwringing about the Palestinian protests on campus - a low-cost, gimme story currently enthralling the Fourth Estate - as well as a report on UCLA chancellor Dean Block appearing before Congress as a byproduct of those protests. That's what the Times thinks readers are interested in when it comes to the Bruins.
There are reasons for this, of course - none of them good, and one not entirely a reflection of the Times so much as American journalism as a whole. The one with flashing lights is the story isn't sympatico with the Times' editorial philosophy, which puts it politely. The eight sources who spoke with The Free Beacon's reporter, Aaron Sibarium, either didn't bother to contact the Times because of an entirely reasonable assumption the Times wouldn't be interested or they contacted the Times because of an entirely naive assumption it would be interested and were then rebuffed. (The story obviously undermines the Times' faddish assumptions about race.)
Another reason that makes the Times slightly less culpable is the story's arguably no layup. Given the denuded state of most newsrooms, the Times included, every minute spent on this one story means a half-dozen lesser ones don't get written. The Times is in the business of publishing every hour of the day. One could argue it made a tough choice about allocating scarce resources, a challenge it has discussed publicly in a general way. It's no secret the newspaper business isn't what it used to be.
While I appreciate print journalism is suffering in part due to circumstances beyond its control, I'm not buying the shallow pockets excuse. Sibarium is an excellent reporter and it's astonishing he hasn't been poached by a major newspaper, but it's no slight to him the story seems gift wrapped. There are eight sources, internal data, and school correspondence. A reporter sometimes digs this sort of material up against tough odds, but it's usually handed to her. It is catastrophic to the Times' reputation it wasn't on the gift list or, worse, returned the gift.
Even without a generous donation of sources and correspondence, it boggles the mind the Times hadn't taken a peek at the medical school. It's no secret the place had suffered a collapse in standing - UCLA med school has slid from sixth to 18th on the big board* - so it's incumbent upon a town's largest newspaper to examine why that's happened to the town's largest college. (Hell, if someone made a few calls he might discover there are reasons beyond DEI and curriculum for the reputational decline!) I doubt many subscribers would blanch at one less story about people who think they're mermaids when the result is one more story about something important. Not a tough call!
The Times is on the ropes. It loses tens of millions annually. Its staff is of the free-range sort, which gives the product an ad hoc feel**. Its owner seems diffident and while I've long felt this interpretation is cartoonish, it's becoming more difficult to argue he hasn't handed the paper over to his lunatic daughter, a person susceptible to every progressive notion on Twitter***. It misses big stories with distressing frequency, which means getting scooped by an out-of-town publication has become a storied tradition at the Times.
Here's guessing the question isn't whether the Times is sold so much as when. Its owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, could sell it soon, either to Alden Capital**** or, far less likely, to a rich guy like David Geffen or a consortium thereof. Or he lets his daughter run riot, loses another one- or two-hundred million, and then sells it to Alden Capital or a wealthy magnate.
The paper is toast. The only question is how dark will it be served.
*I am aware of and sympathetic to objections to ranking universities, but rankings don't mean nothing! Given what's revealed in Sibarium's piece, the only question is why UCLA is ranked as high as it is!
**Its staff is all too enthralled with LARPing labor union shenanigans as well, which is nothing if not a sign of impotence in the face of the industry's coming oblivion. If there's anything more useless than a newspaper guild, I've yet to discover it!
***It's difficult to understate Twitter's ruinous effect on American journalism, but that's another story.
****A sale to Alden Capital would be no different than a 10- to 20-year liquidation.
Comments