I can sympathize, we (Fairfax Media) recently cut 550 jobs (5% of the workforce) and the major issue raised by staff and our industry was the impact on quality journalism.
IMO it’s a classic globalization scenario – in the golden era of journalism, we (print media) were fearful of the one-paper town. The LA Times accomplished that and basked in the classifieds advertising “rivers of gold” for decades but now we’re at the next revolution, where we’re afraid that one online news website will rule them all.
RE: The LA Gangster series… I’d argue on behalf of the Times that they believe the majority of their audience is interested in a multi-part story on LA crime. I know I’ve rolled my eyes countless times when my company publishes scandalous/ribald content on the front page (or web homepage) but time and again, they prove to attract the most readers.
Perhaps the pretense of publishing quality journalism is enough to fool readers these days?