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Welcome to ETP's new feature, "Baseless Rumor And Wanton Speculation," wherein we will rumor-monger and prognosticate on media goings-on so that we can say "I told you so" if we turn out to be right.
This past September, at a book party for Arianna Huffington's On Becoming Fearless, ETP was introduced to a well-known media critic. In a conversation about the state of the New York Times, he predicted that Bill Keller would be ousted as editor-in-chief within a year and that Dean Baquet would be tapped as his replacement. We subsequently referred to this information as the most obviously wrong piece of media gossip we were ever likely to hear. (Mind you, this was before there was any public indication that Baquet would be forced out at the LAT and at a time when Keller, relatively speaking, was out of the spotlight for any perceived missteps, such as the delay in publishing the NSA wiretap story or the decision to publish the SWIFT banking story.)
As today's Baquet-LAT-NYT news unfolds, current events may be in the process of vindicating that critic. Today's LAT piece suggests that NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger has been courting Baquet for something -- for what, it's not entirely clear. Baquet has suggested to friends that he has his eye on Washington bureau chief, but there's reason to be slightly skeptical about that. For one, Sulzberger and Baquet have been close for a very long time; for another, as New York magazine's Joe Hagan delicately put it in a recent piece, Keller, "famously, was not Sulzberger's first choice to be in charge" after Howell Raines was pushed out. And there's been no real indication that Keller and Sulzberger's relationship has warmed over time.
Meanwhile, Keller's response through the paper's spokesman to the LAT's inquiry — "We have not offered Dean a position" — is strangely defensive, although it may just involve the typical semantic games (i.e., Keller has been in talks with Baquet about ousting Philip Taubman, the current Washington bureau chief, but he technically hasn't offered him the job). But there's another possibility: If Keller hasn't offered Baquet a job, well, has Sulzberger offered him one?
Hard to say. But that previously-disregarded bit of speculation from Media Critic Guy may not have been as stupid as we thought.
— Ankush Khardori
(Bonus speculation that could easily be disproven: Eli Broad, with or without Ron Burkle, will submit a bid for the LAT within days. A recent Vanity Fair profile (alas, unavailable online) painted Broad as something of a cultural egoist — a guy determined to leave a big imprint on the Los Angeles area. Plus, David Geffen and him? They don't get along so much.)
