As the New York Observer notes, Artley follows in the footsteps of our own Richard Rushfield, who was LATimes.com entertainment editor up through July, and in the wake of the head of the Times' online advertising, Juliana Jaoudi, and the head of online entertainment advertising, Jennifer Van Hook, both let go in the past week.

Formerly editor of IHT.com, Artley was part of a team of outsiders general manager Rob Barrett brought in after he was hired in 2005 to remake the site. Her departure, then, could lead to greater control by the newspaper's print side of the heretofore relatively independent website.

On Sunday, the Calendar section will be wrapped in a four-page supplement designed to look like LA Times content, LA Observed reports. In reality, the content is advertising copy for the movie The Soloist.

To make the supplement especially confusing, it contains a Q&A with an actual columnist for the newspaper, Steve Lopez, whose book inspired the movie.

The Soloist, by the way, is about a journalist "disenchanted" because "the newspaper business is in an uproar." The journalist (Lopez) becomes inspired by a street musician, writes a series of columns about him and becomes determined to turn the guy's life around.

But no one reads the columns, because they come buried under and surrounded by lookalike ads. Wanting for readers, the newspaper goes bankrupt; the street musician languishes in obscurity, destined to live out his days penniless and alone. (We're joking about this terrible ending, of course. Like that could ever happen.)

One writer who was targeted by Blago said "no one in any capacity at the Tribune, its parent company, its financiers, nobody” tried to influence him.

The editorial page editor said, “I had no inkling at all. We had no idea that he was allegedly bringing this kind of pressure."

The editor-in-chief of the Trib told the Times he agreed with this statement put out by Tribune Company:

No one working for the company or on its behalf has ever attempted to influence staffing decisions at The Chicago Tribune or any aspect of the newspaper’s editorial coverage as a result of conversations with officials in the governor’s administration.

None of this rules out the possibility that Zell might have planned to cut individual people down the line, but that seems unlikely, considering how desperately he needed that Cubs deal to go through.

• Barack Obama. Blago wanted to sell Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder.
• Rahm Emanuel Obama's incoming chief of staff was the one Blago wanted to negotiate with—he hoped to get stuff from Rahm in exchange for picking Obama's preferred candidate. Also Rahm maybe alerted the feds!
• Tony Rezko This Chicago fundraiser and felon raised a fortune for Blago, and a smaller fortune for Obama back in the day. From Blago he got plum appointments for associates and friends, and lord knows what else.
• Sam Zell Blago was unhappy with the Chicago Tribune's coverage of how corrupt he was, so he told the owner of their parent company, Zell, to make them cut it out. Zell, who needed the state's help to unload the Chicago Cubs, allegedly agreed to look into it. Zell also connects us to Lee Abrams! Abrams is Zell's friend and Tribune Co's insane "Chief Innovation Officer." He will hopefully have a crazy memo about this soon.
• John McCormick This is the Tribune editor who was mean to Blago all the time. Supposedly Zell agreed to have him "restructured" out of his job in exchange for state help with Tribune's bankruptcy, but this didn't actually happen.
• Patrick Fitzgerald the dreamboat US Attorney who's bringing Blago down is known as a tenacious prosecutor, and he was already famous for his role investigating Plamegate, the weird old scandal in which Bush administration officials leaked the name of a covert CIA operative to journalists to damager her husband's credibility. That scandal, as we all remember, ended up with Times reporter and terrible hack Judy Miller going to jail rather than revealing to Fitzgerald that her source was Scooter Libby, even though Libby had already given her permission to reveal this.
• Jesse Jackson Jr. It's sill possible that "Senate Candidate 5" is Jesse Jackson, Jr. Even if he isn't, he's a family friend of the Obamas (specifically his childhood friend Michelle) who is seen by many as a front-runner for Obama's vacant seat. So Blago would obviously have been in contact with him regarding the seat, and what Blago wanted in exchange for giving it to him. Meanwhile Jackson's brother Yusef was an investor in a magazine called Radar with pervy billionaire friend-of-Clinton Ron Burkle!
• Also Jesse Jackson Sr was on The Oprah Winfrey Show, as was Kelly Preson, who was in Death Sentence with Kevin Bacon!

From the 76-page FBI affidavit:

At various times, in exchange for the Senate appointment, Blagojevich discussed obtaining:

A substantial salary for himself at a either a non-profit foundation or an organization affiliated with labor unions;

Placing his wife on paid corporate boards where he speculated she might garner as much as $150,000 a year;

Promises of campaign funds – including cash up front; and

A cabinet post or ambassadorship for himself.

Thankfully the feds have been wiretapping Blagojevich for a month or so. "I want to make money," Rod said to John Harris, his chief of staff.

You know who'll be thrilled to hear the news of Rod's arrest? The good people at the Chicago Tribune and the incompetent people at Tribune Co. Part of Blagojevich's brilliant money-making scheme involved withholding state aid to the ailing, now-bankrupt Tribune Co, unless they fired editorial board members critical of the governor. You know what is amazing? That after Rod talked to "Tribune Owner" and "Tribune Financial Advisor" regarding their attempt to offload the Chicago Cubs to the state, they called him back and promised to fire the deputy editoral page editor of the Tribune. Great fucking work, Sam Zell.

In a November 11 intercepted call, Harris allegedly told Blagojevich that Tribune Financial Advisor talked to Tribune Owner and Tribune Owner "got the message and is very sensitive to the issue." Harris told Blagojevich that according to Tribune Financial Advisor, there would be "certain corporate reorganizations and budget cuts coming and, reading between the lines, he's going after that section." Blagojevich allegedly responded. "Oh. That's fantastic." After further discussion, Blagojevich said, "Wow. Okay, keep our fingers crossed. You're the man. Good job, John."

In a further conversation on November 21, Harris told Blagojevich that he had singled out to Tribune Financial Advisor the Tribune's deputy editorial page editor, John McCormick, "as somebody who was the most biased and unfair." After hearing that Tribune Financial Advisor had assured Harris that the Tribune would be making changes affecting the editorial board, Blagojevich allegedly had a series of conversations with Chicago Cubs representatives regarding efforts to provide state financing for Wrigley Field.

Barack Obama, wisely, distanced himself from Blagojevich during his run for the presidency. But the wonderful thing about the Chicago political machine is that basically no one elected to anything in that town is clean. Good thing for our President-elect that he won the election before Patrick Fitzgerald made his move.

As committee members dithered in the intervening decade, the once all-important award became a booby prize. The New York Times reserves a wall in its glitzy midtown-Manhattan headquarters for all of its Pulitzers; it is now attempting to mortgage that wall, and the rest of the building, for $225 million. The Tribune Company, whose newspapers likewise play home to many Pulitzers, has filed for bankruptcy. There seems to be some correlation between a newspaper's number of Pulitzers and the depth of its financial crisis.

Which makes sense, if you think about it, because the kind of public-interest journalism that the Pulitzer committee rewards requires an oversized newsroom, with writers working on stories for months or years. It also requires a thoroughly snobbish definition of "public interest," which does not have much to do with what the public is actually interested in.

The good news: Most online publications won't be eligible! In a press release, the committee says it will only consider online news organizations which "are primarily dedicated to original news reporting, are dedicated to coverage of ongoing stories and that adhere to the highest journalistic principles." Considering what the pursuit of the Pulitzer has done to past laureates, any website still excluded from the race should consider itself a winner.

Except instead of a house it's a giant newspaper company, and thousands of journalists at the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Florida Sun-Sentinel and other papers stand to lose their jobs. Apparently Tribune's insane newspaper savior Lee Abrams is going to have to send even more rambling and pointess memos to get them and their advertisers out of the  "fear/acceptance zone."

Bloomberg predicted all this, as usual, by listening to fancypants Wall Street analysts, with their attention to things like fiscal solvency and balance sheets and other things of zero interest to new media visionaries like Zell and Abrams.

Tribune paid off some debt by selling Newsday to Cablevision for $632 million. But it still needs more cash to avoid going into default, and several of its big ideas look dubious amid the economic meltdown: selling the Chicago Cubs (S&P is skeptical and Tribune delayed the sale , originally to come by the end of the year, until spring), issuing securities on the moribund commercial paper market and selling the properties now housing the LA Times and Chicago Trib (commercial real estate is in the toilet).

Driving this whole firesale mentality are continued declines in newspaper advertising, which Zell apparently didn't count on, and which radio-industry clown Abrams couldn't correct. Operating profits declined 83 percent companywide in the most recent quarter, according to the Journal.

Tribune's best hope at this point is that its lenders will decide the company is in better shape than most other distressed debtors and give it some breathing room, rather than lose all their money in bankruptcy. The lenders have supposedly been "amicable" with Tribune thus far, according to the WSJ, but demoralized empoyees won't be so forgiving the next time Zell comes around to cuss them out.

UPDATE: Leverage with creditors might be precisely the point, actually. Writes the Times this morning: " Analysts and bankruptcy experts say that the hiring of advisers, including Lazard and Sidley Austin, one of the company’s longtime law firms, could be a just-in-case move, or a bargaining tactic" (emphasis added). On the other hand: "As the economy weakens, other lenders have become more aggressive about forcing debtors into bankruptcy when they believe such a move is inevitable, to preserve a company’s valuable cash reserves."

I think many editors are concerned about the new financial rate model that AP has rolled out," Earl Maucker, editor of the Sun Sentinel, said about the notice. "It is a natural approach for us to take a hard look at that. Are there other alternatives out there that would provide the depth and breadth of coverage we need?"

Although Tribune can't get out of its contract for two more years, it's planning to terminate deals for all nine of its daily newspapers, including the Sun-Sentinel, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. The company's concerns likely mirror those of other newspapers grumbling about recent changes at AP and about, in the words of the Wall Street Journal this past June, the organization's "perceived insensitivity to newspapers' financial hardship. The AP requires a seven-figure annual payment from most large newspapers, and it makes it very difficult to opt out of certain services."

Sensitivity to America's dying newspapers, which fancy themselves (not entirely inaccrately) as guardians of the noblest journalism traditions, is all well and good. But it seems likely AP will largely continue in its new direction of softer news for newer platforms: While the print world stagnated, AP's revenues have tripled in the last 20 years.

Because last year, Tribune CEO Sam Zell asked Google to quit indexing and displaying headlines or pay up. How should Google have responded? By telling the IT guys at the Sun-Sentinel to edit the robots.txt file on the server that would presumably stop the Googlebot in its tracks. (Photo by AP/Charles Rex Arbogast)

• A reporter at Income Securities Advisors was Googling for routine bankruptcy information and came across an old Chicago Tribune article about United's 2002 bankruptcy.
• The article, however, was posted on the website of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel with a fresh date and a map of Hurricane Ike, making it appear new.
• The article was linked in a summary of bankruptcy filings on Income Securities's page on Bloomberg.
• Bloomberg sent out an incorrect headline noticing the bankruptcy.

The Times coverage makes it sound like Bloomberg proactively published the news, rather than just carrying the Income Securities item passively.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal shed light on this issue:

The Income Securities report was made available to Bloomberg users as part of the content provided from a variety of news services, Web sites, blogs and other sources, a Bloomberg spokeswoman confirmed. She said Bloomberg's own news service didn't pick up the article.

For reporters in the Bloomberg's high-pressure newsroom, being late on a story is shameful in much the same way being incorrect is shameful. Through relentless and well-documented indifference to the humanity of its own staff, the wire service may have simply frayed nerves to the point where such errors have become inevitable.

But the opposite is also possible. Perhaps it takes a tyrant to keep a machine like Bloomberg running properly, and it is the softening influence of Norman Pearlstine, veteran of the comparatively sleepy world of Time Inc. magazines, that has undermined the financial wire's credibility.

Bloomberg preeminent tyrant (and Pearlstein predecessor) Matthew Winkler would not doubt frame it that way. But is it so? Our ears are open.

[Times]

"Pissed off" is among crude language regularly removed from Times coverage as part of what McCoy acknowledges is "a conservative standard" when it comes to publishing coarse or vulgar remarks...

Clark Stevens oversees the style and usage guidelines at The Times... "It's a phrase we've all heard, and most of us have used. But is it essential to the story (or the quotation) here, and is it consistent with the overall tone and image we want to project to our readers? I think that's where conservative judgment prevails in favor of not using it..."

The policy for the first time takes into account the online world vs. the print world. As McCoy wrote in her cover note to staff when she distributed the updated guidelines on obscenity and taste, "A less formal voice may be appropriate in online stories and on blogs (as is often the case in feature stories too), but a conversational style is not an invitation to abandon The Times’ high standards by introducing gratuitous obscenities."

So whether it's on latimes.com or in print, curse words and crude language are supposed to be used only when they are essential to conveying an important point of the story.

Thanks for keeping everyone excruciatingly up to date on your slow-motion embrace of Web culture, LA Times, rather than boring us with stories about, say, philandering politicians and their mistresses!

[LA Times via Romenesko]

“I’m kind of relying, my client is relying, on just the inner workings of that station,” said [Brent Williams, account supervisor at Karsh/Hagan, the advertising agency that arranged the deal]. “Not that editorial would ever give a heads-up to sales or be expected to give a heads-up to sales, but these are professionals. They do realize that some businesses’ brands, some businesses’ reputations, could be at stake in terms of how commerce and news are interacting here.”

Setting aside how the deal complicates reporting on certain topics, one also can't help but note how it highlights those parts of the news operation already considered journalistically weakest. For the Las Vegas station, the second part of the morning newscast can be sold for product placement, but not the first, since... the first contains the real, actual, trustworthy journalism? At other stations mentioned in the Times story, the entire morning newscast is marked off this way.

The stations are moving forward with the product placements despite the fact that the national news divisions ABC, NBC and CBS have ruled out such practices as misleading. It's almost enough to make one wonder if the local affiliates care more about ratings than presenting a balanced, helpful newscast.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll take a break from all this journalistic hand-wringing and enjoy a crisp, cool Miller High Life. It is truly the champagne of beers!

[Times]

Bose’s $350 QuietComfort 3 model, introduced in 2006, has a fold-flat design for easier portability, ensuring sonic isolation as you navigate the melting pot. And the $300 QuietComfort 2 can now be augmented with a “mobile communications kit” for your cellphone.

The headline for the column is "The Silence Generation." The subhead? "QuietComfort Headphones." The "TM" is implied.

Then there's the Times' T Magazine, ostensibly about style but at heart a celebration of products and consumption itself. It followed in the footsteps of the Financial Times' shamelessly named How To Spend It, and is so fabulously profitable that it will be aped by the Wall Street Journal in the form of WSJ. magazine.

Your typical hack at an elite newspaper, one suspects, is not so much opposed to selling out to crass commercialism as he is opposed to doing so ineffectively, without an elegant sheen of respectability and fig leaf of journalistic contemplation that makes a money-grubbing endeavor so much more palatable to the writerly ego. Sales jocks could never understand off such a maneuver. They are way too honest.

Mr. Michaels said that, after measuring journalists’ output, “when you get into the individuals, you find out that you can eliminate a fair number of people while eliminating not very much content.” He added that he understood that some reporting jobs naturally produce less output than others.

He said that The Los Angeles Times produced 51 pages of news for each journalist there, while the figure for two other Tribune papers, The Baltimore Sun and The Hartford Courant, is more than 300 pages.

Zell's ribald personality must seem a lot less charming to his charges now that he's wielding a large, bloody axe.

[Times, Romenesko]

In her Chavez profile, Hall did eventually, if briefly and obliquely, reference the missile charges against Chavez. She also included two sentences, near the end of her article, about Chavez's suppression of opposition media. But the article's few skeptical notes were overshadowed by the warm overall tone and Hall's smile in the accompanying picture.

The Sentinel editor has near-complete autonomy at her newspaper, per orders from CEO Sam Zell and his insane radio henchmen, who have allowed leaders at other Tribune papers similar freedom. But some buttoned-down types in Orlando are not happy with what she's done with her power.

There were the near-topless photos she ran of Ashley Dupre, call girl to former Gov. Eliot Spitzer. All well and good on, say, Gawker, but, to one disgruntled email tipster, the photos were "newsless ... but hey, digital pasties covered her nipples, so its okay, right?"

Hall also stirred local controversy by running Annie Leibovitz's semi-nude photos of Miley Cyrus alongside a front-page story about the teen star's scandalous spread in Vanity Fair.

There is, at least, a certain logic to running the Dupre and Cyrus photos. American newspapers could use more sizzle, and Hall seems intent on providing it. All well and good.

But if she's going to be the hard-charing tabloid editor, Hall should have made sure she lived up to that persona in the interveiwed she scored with Chavez, a controversial world leader especially visible to readers in South Florida. At the very least, she should not have done a complete 180 and soft-pedalled the guy.

Next time, Charlotte, consider sending your pushy photographer and cussing boss for the big sit-down. They'd undoubtedly make a feisty interview team — just the thing for a would-be controversial newspaper.