Michael Linder

Creating a brand new news department at a Los Angeles radio station making a run at resurrection seemed too good to be true, a rare opportunity to upgrade Los Angeles journalism as other news organizations were shrinking. Amazingly, the radio station had never had a news department in eight decades on air.

Where to begin? I embedded myself at Los Angeles City Hall, acquiring a bureau steps from Council chambers and equipped with live, hi-fi broadcast lines to break important news stories as soon as they happened.

I documented the City of LA’s downsizing and service-slashing, sorted through a messy DWP rate hike scam, watched in amazement as Council stumbled through medical marijuana regulation, saw rent control advocates Tazed on the marble floors of chambers, called out council members on shared sacrifice and witnessed Richard Alarcón’s indictment on perjury and voter fraud charges — tweeting and blogging along the way.

Seemed the right thing to do in an era when there’s plenty of talk about transparency in government but precious little accountability showing through.

Beyond City Hall, hundreds of other stories were breaking.

As Laker rioting flared following the team’s NBA championship game, I got up close and personal with out of control fans in a breathtaking night of live, format-breaking reports on John Phillips’ show. Got so deep into Bell that the BBC World Service picked up on my coverage of flagrant corruption there. Broke the first reports of the Station Fire from a chopper over the then-tiny blaze. Chronicled Antonio’s Villaraigosa’s foibles and freebies.

The radio station broke new ground, a first in its 85-year history. Our scrappy little news shop won more Golden Mic awards this year than all-news leviathan KNX. Kevin Roderick of LA Observed declared us a player in the City Hall press corps, leading an effort to overturn new restrictions on reporters.

But new priorities have emerged. Programmer David G. Hall who’d invited me on board, a fervent believer in the necessity of journalism, has been replaced by management that considers local news a “service feature” rather than the lifeblood of a talkradio station claiming to serve its community.

Hall gave me the freedom to cover stories I thought important regardless of when or where they broke. I could dive deep into nuance and detail during in-depth segments with the station’s whip-smart talk hosts. Until last month when I was sacked by cell.

Management had made no plans to replace me, but there’s talk of perhaps bringing on a per diem or part-time reporter to pick up the slack while my salary, insiders say, paid for a pricey new talk host. The station’s year-old City Hall Bureau has been dismantled evaporate as a promising prima facie news source reverts coverage focused mostly on routine news conferences.

What’s next? I’ve produced lots of radio and television and I’ll find another challenge. But what happened at this station is symptomatic of a wider phenomenon as news institutions shrink and the ranks of journalism’s foot soldiers dwindle. To this reporter, the body blows to American newsgathering will become a hallmark of this century as surely as steam, steel and world war dominated the last.

And so it goes.

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