LA Times Kills Hiltzik Column

LA Times columnist and blogger Michael Hiltzik has lost his blog and column due to his using Internet pseudonyms to comment, once on his blog and several times elsewhere on the Internet.

From the Times editors: By now most of you know that Mike Hiltzik has acknowledged violating the paper's ethics guidelines. He did so by using pseudonyms to post a single comment on his blog on latimes.com and multiple comments elsewhere on the Web that dealt with his column and other issues involving the newspaper.

Because of this violation, we are discontinuing Mike's column in the newspaper, Golden State, and his blog of the same name. In addition, we are suspending Mike without pay for a period of time. At the end of the suspension, he will be reassigned.

Killing a column is a serious step. We don't take it lightly. Mike did not commit any ethical violations in his newspaper column, and an internal inquiry found no inaccurate reporting in his postings in his blog or on the Web.

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The Web has created new opportunities for newspapers. It is undoubtedly a big part of our future. It is a competitive and chaotic world. The most important attributes we bring to that new world are our reputation, our integrity and our determination to put out a great newspaper that behaves in accordance with the highest ethical standards.

I'm glad he didn't lose his job. I imagine this was a tough call for the editors and they did what they felt was required. I also wonder if such a punishment would have been handed out were it a more popular, more widely read columnist.

I still see it as more of a personal failing than a professional one, owing to the nature of his comments to and about himself and his paper. No point in piling on. The Internet can take a toll from people. Often it brings out our very worst. That's one reason why I opted to blog under my own name.

No doubt I have commented and posted some things over time I regret and might even cringe over now, though not too many. But because I did it as myself I learned from them. I doubt I would have learned anything from those experiences if I hadn't been forced to own them internally because I was visible from without.

Comments

[Patterico]

Good points.

[gahrie]

They over-reacted. Suspending his blog, and disavowing his practice of sock-puppeting should have been enough. (Unless they discovered further ethical violations in their investigation)