Baskadia

After 21 years as investigative journalist at the Los Angeles Times, Paul Pringle is master storyteller who knows how to hold the reader’s interest.

The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist’s new book Bad City: Peril and Power in the City of Angels is a riveting page turner that goes deep inside three massive scandals that he and his colleagues had to battle to break, despite overwhelming evidence of skulduggery and countless, attempts by local officials, USC administrators and even LA Times editors to bury scandals and protect USC.

If you’re unaware that we live in a plutocracy, this book is a wake up call. If you’re interested how large organizations protect the rich, powerful and themselves, this almost cover up playbook that anyone can understand. Pringle uses no fancy language or contorted prose. I never had to reread a sentence to understand its meaning.

Pringle also shows how the LA Times, under the ownership of Tribune lost its way. He explains how Ross Levinsohn hired Lewis D’Vorkin to try and save the newspaper with a “strategy naked in its aim to slash the staff and replace much of our reporting with lowbrow clickbait produced by underpaid freelancers, which was what D’Vorkin had done at Forbes.”

Expect one of the studios to snap up the option on this one quickly. The first perp Carmen Puliafito’s story would make a gripping motion picture or streaming series. Pringle survived through Ross Levinsohn and Dave Mahrahaj’s mastheads and is still writing for the LA Times. Perhaps it’s time to resubscribe to the LA Times? And not for a way to start the barbecue.

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