For the last two weeks, I have been travelling in Australia with my son Nick, a Hawthorne and Beverly High graduate. On Saturday January 17, I received a call from Andy Licht. Andy is a good friend and we served on the Planning Commission together. He also served on the Traffic and Parking Commission and is currently the Vice Chair of the Cultural Heritage Commission.

The reason that he called was that he was excited to tell me that he is running for the City Council. In recent months, Andy and I have spoken about the fact that he was considering running. And we have spoken about some of his ideas and one that I consider important, increasing individual accountability for City accomplishing Council objectives. I consider Andy a strong candidate and wish him well with his campaign.

***

These are some thoughts on the press and news media, the “Fourth Estate”, and its importance, past, present and future.

The term “Fourth Estate” is a reference to the European Estates General. There were three: the nobility, the clergy and the commoners. It was observed centuries ago that there was a fourth, the press, that was the most important of all. It still is as it performs the work of a watchdog.

Those of us, including me, who are print newspaper junkies, lament the demise of so many daily print newspapers in recent decades.

In 1980, the population of the United States was 226.5 million and there were 1,745 daily newspapers with a daily print circulation of 62.2 million. In 2025, the population of the United States is estimated at 343 million and there are only 938 daily newspapers with a daily print circulation of 20 million. Stated differently, in 1980 one daily newspaper was sold for every three persons; in 2025, one daily newspaper was sold for every eighteen persons.

I miss those days when we had lots of newspapers to choose from and I could pick up the Herald Examiner to see what Alan Malamud had to say about the local sports scene or get the Valley Green Sheet or an L.A. Times neighborhood section. Then the Los Angeles Times weekday issues were routinely 100 pages or more and if it wasn’t in the L.A. Times, it didn’t happen. Today, the Los Angeles Times is approaching uselessness as a news source.

This is not to suggest that we are now living in a news vacuum. Newspapers are read electronically and there are countless online sites that tell us what is going on in the world. Some are more reliable than others. Television news is often produced for entertainment value and seems less objective and reliable than in the past. When Walter Cronkite said at the end of his nightly broadcast on CBS Nightly News: “and that’s the way it is”, you could be confident that that’s the way it was. Not so much now from MSNBC, CNN or Fox News, let alone those outside of the mainstream.

The news business is definitely different now but that doesn’t mean that it was better in the past.

Today, our federal government is led by someone who could charitably be described as the Exaggerator in Chief. His relationship with the truth is interesting.

But no one is fooled much by politicians’ hyperbole or fantasy because lots (but by no means all) of the media is all over that aspect of their behavior. When the Exaggerator speaks, we are fully aware that whatever he says is that is arguably at odds with what is objectively occurring, because, fairly or unfairly the media lets us know.

In the past, this has not always been the case despite ubiquitous print media.

When the government lied to us, we did not know because print media simply repeated the what was said.

During the mid-to-late 1960’s the government told us that we had to fight in VietNam to prevent a domino affect in all of SouthEast Asia AND we were winning. Then came the Tet offensive in early 1968 including the televised spectacle of VietCong troops invading the

U.S. Embassy in Saigon. The ultimate disclosures caused anti-war sentiment to explode and President Johnson, who had been very popular until the truth was revealed, decided not to run for re-election.

More than 58,000 American troops died.

Similarly, in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001, the U.S. invaded Iraq in early 2003 claiming that Saddam Hussein had “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMDs) and started the Iraq War. Our government relied on sloppy or non-existent “intelligence” to make those claims and, generally, the print media repeated the incorrect and arguably intentional false claims. There were no WMDs.

Over 4500 American troops died in the Iraq War and the middle east has been profoundly disrupted to this day. Notably, in 2004, the NY Times published a luke warm apology to its readers for its role in building public sentiment in favor of our invasion based on a false premise.

Today, the world of journalism is different.

In 2018, Patrick Soon Shiong acquired the Los Angeles Times which had endured a chaotic ownership over the preceding years.

At the time, he announced that he would make substantial investments in the Times’ coverage and focused specifically on sports. He said that he would make it a “sports paper of the nation” as befits a region that is a world sports center. In 2023, very substantial cuts in the sports pages occurred. The

Times and its sports pages are shadows of their former selves and rarely provide much news of any type.

But as one door closes, another opens.

On January 26, 2026, the California Post will commence operations as a print and online daily newspaper. This is an offshoot of the New York Post owned by News Corp (Rupert Murdoch) and, like the New York Post, will be a tabloid. The editor in chief will be Nick Papps and he will report to Keith Poole, the editor in chief of the New York Post, who will oversee both papers.

The California Post fittingly will have headquarters on the Fox lot in Century City and promises to “replicate The New York Post’s style of bombastic reporting, sports coverage and celebrity gossip from a California perspective.” As an aside, in the late 1950’s, I was a great fan of the Post’s sports page. The Post had three sports reporters named “Leonard”, Leonard Koppett, Leonard Lewin and Leonard Shecter (who collaborated with Jim Bouton to write the groundbreaking inside story of the life of a major league baseball player, “Ball Four”).

So, no matter your politics, if you love old-fashioned freewheeling journalism with a heavy dose of spice, you have a treat in store.

Now the California Post will not be an unalloyed treat as it is a Murdoch newspaper. But it is a very amusing one.

And before I tell you the best part, I will review for you some of the contents of the December 31, 2025 issue of the mother ship, the New York Post. For openers, the banner front page headline was: “Mamdani taking office as de Blasio 2.0: Same Crap, Different Year.” No kidding, that was the front page headline.

The point being that the newly elected socialist arguably pro-Palestinian New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani will be another version of a prior mayor Bill de Blasio who was a somewhat controversial figure.

In another column, Mamdani was referred to as a “socialist repo baby” (whatever that is) who would be “a singularly radical mayor hellbent on shredding the policies that have kept Gotham afloat.”

Interestingly, the Mayor who Mamdani is replacing is Eric Adams, who preceded succeeded de Blasio, also no paragon.

He was indicted for miscellaneous alleged corruption but was pardoned by the Exaggerator in Chief.

The December 31 issue also featured a full page story about an NFL player accused of physical abuse of a female chef who had the temerity to ask to be paid for her work.

A major attraction of the NY Post is its “Page Six” gossip page which in the December 31 issue was inexplicably on page 16 and reported far more than you wanted to know about the boats owned by the “ultrarich” (were you aware that Jeff Bezos’ mega yacht has a wooden sculpture of his new wife Lauren Sanchez on the prow?) and Mel’s Gibson’s latest separation.

One of my favorite parts is the Post Opinion page which featured “The Year in Whoppers – A diary of disinformation and the delusional.” This led off by reporting that President Biden had touted lower prices and commented that “given his mental decline, maybe he thinks he really did lower prices.” This is all great stuff and far more than I can summarize.

On a more serious note, there are some potentially useful parts of this paper. It includes a detailed listing of all of the primetime offerings on all regional television channels. The LA Times stopped that some time ago but this perhaps this goes unnoticed because the Times does not provide a table of contents.

More importantly, the Post has a 17 page sports section fully covering every major sport and some not-so-major ones.

Importantly, it has been announced that the California Post has just hired away from the LA Times, two of its best Dodgers reporters, Dylan Hernandez and Jack Harris. And they are looking for more.

A stated objective of the California Post is to fill the vacuum left by the dwindling Los Angeles Times. It is beyond the capabilities of my broken crystal ball to predict how this is likely to play out.

But for now, it will be interesting to watch.

***

While in Australia, I read with dismay of the appalling behavior of two members of the Board of Education at an early January meeting that shows the wisdom of the advice that it is better to remain silent and be suspected of being a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

Russell Stuart has taken to referring to people who disagree with or criticize him or properly address his misconduct as “haters” who are so blinded by hatred for him that they don’t appreciate his contributions and level false criticisms. This is wrong for several reasons. No one hates Mr. Stuart and his reference to parents of students or other residents as “haters” is both untrue and unwise . Mr. Stuart is accorded all the respect that he deserves.

However, there are people, quite a large number in my estimation, who are embarrassed by his public behavior and the fact that he seems to think that using District funds for unneeded sports uniforms or sending him to out of town conferences on subjects far beyond his purview or expertise is somehow in furtherance of improving academics. And there is legitimate concern about his displays of anger and hostility towards critics. Perhaps some improved self-awareness and a bit of anger management counseling is in order.

Judy Manouchehri also seems to lack self-awareness. She implies that it is perfectly ok to make outrageous, false and defamatory statements about two of her most highly qualified colleagues because she delivers those statements with a syrupy sweet tone of voice. It is not ok. The baseless substance of these attacks far outweighs the form. And it is particularly destructive because it makes the cohesiveness and harmony, that she hypocritically advocates, almost impossible to achieve.

My main concern is that the behavior of these two members of the Board of Education will cause us to lose prematurely our two most qualified members who did not sign up to endure the abuse and personal attacks that repeatedly occurs.