Modified slightly from DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com
WOW. Drama at the LAT! There will be no Brian Grazer-edited Current Section this weekend: LAT publisher David Hiller hath killed it, prompting LAT editorial page editor Andrés Martinez to resign, taking it as a vote of non-confidence. Backstory: Martinez has been romantically involved with Kelly Mullens, an exec with Hollywood PR firm 42West, which represents Grazer's production company, Imagine Entertainment. Martinez is the one who tapped Grazer for the position, citing his "notoriously wide-ranging, and often unconventional" interests but sadly, making no mention of his own. Scandal!
Er...scandal? It's not like Grazer is some untested neophyte who needs to prove himself; the LAT was on board right from the start and enthusiastically trumpeted the move. Grazer's slate of contributors had been picked, a mix of academics, luminaries, a Nobel Prize Winner and even André Leon Talley. Whatever one might think about the choices, they are certainly not underqualified. Neither, incidentally, is Grazer.
It must be because Martinez and Mullens kept their relationship a secret, and plotted to abuse his position at the LATimes and secretly recommend to send him to Niger plot to sneak in an underqualified candidate! Er, no, again. According to Nikki Finke, who always has her ear to the ground about such things, Hiller knew Martinez was dating Mullens because he'd met her socially! Turns out Martinez regularly brought her to social functions. Said a Finke source: "Andrés never made a secret of it."
Finke also says that Hiller knew all the details, so killing the section at this late date seemed to give Martinez no choice, and in his words, made his "continued tenure as Los Angeles Times editorial page editor untenable." He also had some harsh words fro the process, which he clearly found head-smackingly ridiculous:
"[T]he newspaper is overreacting today. We are depriving readers of an interesting, serious section that is beyond reproach, and unfairly insulting the individuals we approached to participate in this guest editor program by telling them it is a corrupt concept. How we come about this decision when 24 hours ago the managing editor of this newspaper was assuring me he didn't see a story after I walked him through the facts, and while Hiller maintains we did nothing wrong, is a bit perplexing. In trying to keep up with the blogosphere, and boasting about their ability to go after their own, navel-gazing newsrooms run the risk of becoming parodies of themselves."
Oh, snap. He also called out the paper's management for budget cuts, the newsroom for bouncing up against the editorial wall between news and opinion by lobbying for editorials on certain subjects, and himself, praising his staff and then ending his letter with a simple apology: "I am sorry I let you down." Well, someone should be sorry — this is about the sorriest, moutain-from-a-molehill mess that we can recall seeing of late. The weekend Current section sounded good; Hiller made a big mistake in pulling it.
