Demands for quality

Re “Editor of Times leaves in dispute over budget,” Jan. 21

I was saddened to read about yet another Los Angeles Times editor being forced out as result of his failure to implement millions of dollars in budget cuts in news-gathering operations. Your tumbling circulation should come as no surprise to you. Good journalism is labor- and technology-intensive. Your corporate owners are proving nothing but the fact that they not only know how to destroy a great paper but the morale of its readers, who are increasingly having to turn elsewhere for high-quality reporting.

Jeff Crider

Palm Desert

Maybe if you tried to do a little more fair and balanced reporting and not do so much editorializing off the editorial page, you might not be hemorrhaging readership. Give that some thought next time you have to fire some more people.

Mike Phillips

Rolling Hills Estates

I receive your Internet issue daily. You have a good product, and I like the way you tell the news. Can you really, as a news organization, make the budget cuts proposed and keep the same quality of product?

Charles Carpenter

Dallas

It looks as if new owner Sam Zell’s scheme is going to be a strip-and-flip venture-capital deal after all. After the departure of the second editor in a scant 14 months for not following directives to gut the newsroom, Publisher David Hiller shows that he’s no friend of newspaper readers in Los Angeles and environs, and, presumably, neither is Zell. What’s the game plan now -- convert The Times property into condo lofts at a huge profit so Zell can cash out quickly, dumping the gutted carcass of the paper on the employees?

I’ll put Hiller on notice here: If the quality of the paper continues its decline as it has since Otis Chandler gave up, I’ll just look for my news elsewhere, and you won’t have my credit card to bill anymore.

Robert V.

Scarborough

Lancaster

You should be ashamed of yourselves. Why do you think people buy The Times? It is certainly not to read the Macy’s ads or the classifieds. You seem to have lost sight of why The Times is called a newspaper, but alas, like everything else, the bottom line is all that matters now, whether it is in healthcare, journalism, sports or anything else. I do remember the time when companies at least tried to give the appearance of being socially responsible. It seems we have lost that. Consumerism is now the religion du jour, and The Times contributes to that, as do most of our dwindling news sources.

Bob McLaughlin

San Simeon, Calif.

Does the upper management at The Times really think that all these top editors and publishers you’ve run through lately are putting their jobs at stake for the fun of it? When will the reality sink in that all of these top-notch journalists are trying to do what’s right for the paper, what’s right for the readers and what’s right for the advertisers?

How does a nationally renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper survive? With its newsroom, of course!

Corinna Henson

San Juan Capistrano