A role on The Apprentice!

TheLos Angeles Times has not only dumped the special Sunday section that was to be guest-edited by producer Brian Grazer but is now examining past opinion sections to see whether other assignments smelled of conflict.

For those who don't follow media controversies, editorial page editor Andres Martinez resigned in a huff—on his blog, no less—last week after the Times killed the Currents opinion section that was assembled under Grazer's auspices. The reason was not that it's profoundly embarrassing for a major daily to turn over a section to a prominent figure in an industry that this paper is supposed to be covering in its own backyard. No, the reason is that Martinez has been playing slap-and-tickle with a publicist who works for Grazer.

Certainly Martinez was painfully clueless about the conflict issue in this case. But the relationship-with-a-publicist tree obscures the forest—that is, the embarrassing idea on which the whole exercise was based. The Times has reported that Publisher David Hiller canceled plans to invite future guest editors that included Hiller's friend and associate, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, as well as ex-Lakers star Earvin "Magic" Johnson, and Melinda Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (Rumsfeld was a former director of the Tribune Company, which owns the Los Angeles Times.)

As if all this weren't embarrassing enough, now we have an NBC press release announcing another prestigious association for the Times. We'll pass along the first couple of paragraphs verbatim:

Candidates for NBC's "The Apprentice: Los Angeles" try their hand at advertising this week by creating a newspaper supplement for The Los Angeles Times promoting a new brand of mouthwash on Sunday, April 1 (10-11 p.m. ET).

This week's task is delivered at The Los Angeles Times' printing facility, where Trump is joined by his daughter, Ivanka, and two executives from Smartmouth, a new brand of mouthwash. The candidates are asked to design, photograph and create a supplement for The Los Angeles Times advertising a new product that keeps breath fresh. While one team adopts a sexier approach for the supplement, the other trusts science. The losers face Trump in the boardroom, and the winners get a gourmet dinner they'll never forget prepared by some very special surprise guests. 

It's tempting to wonder if the gourmet dinner is goose cooked by the executives who thought this was a good idea.

The episode was shot over the summer (and approved by Hiller's predecessor), so clearly it long predated the current brouhaha at the Times. But what possible benefit the Times could have hoped to reap lending its facilities and name to a faltering NBC-Universal show is not clear. A spokeswoman for the paper says she doesn't see any issue because no money exchanged hands. "Given the fact that the show's based in L.A., if they were going to think about reaching the L.A. audience, they had to come to the Times," she says. "I actually think it's kind of cool that it's running this weekend. Life goes on."

Maybe the paper will get to avail itself of Trump's services. After all, somebody needs to say that signature line.

(Full disclosure: I have written for and discussed employment with the Los Angeles Times in the past.) (link)