Arnold! Buy Us! Please!
As some of you may have heard, there's a little turmoil inside ye olde L.A. Times — and the entire newspaper industry — about what our future is, and I don't think I'm exaggerating that the old joke about being wrap for yesterday's fish is suddenly looking like one of the more optimistic options out there. While in Mexico City on a gubernatorial trip last week, our own Peter Nicholas asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger about his take on the industry's travails. Here's what Arnold said:
"I think — don't take this as a fact — but I think it was as much of a challenge as was videos and TV to the movie industry. All of a sudden you saw a drop in the movie business, but in the end it picked up because the movie business figured out a way of how to make movies maybe more exciting and to separate themselves from what was on TV. And to separate the time when they come out on DVD and all those things.
"So they worked around it enough that the movie business picked up again. And they sold the idea that there was something very romantic about it. You go with your family to the movie house, you park your car, you get all the food, the popcorn and you sit down and make it an event. They sold the idea that children love to go outside the house. I know this in my own house. We have a private screening room, but they'd rather go outside than watch a movie in the screening room. That's just the way it is. They're very good in selling that now — to make it an event. So I think that the same will happen in the paper ... business also....
"We're teaching our children to read the paper in the morning. We started with their favorite section, with Patrick it's sports. One of the girls looks for the fashion thing, and the other looks for the movies. They pick their section. We're teaching them that when they get up in the morning and come down and make breakfast, read a page. Whatever your favorite page is. We want to create this thing that you get addicted to it. You have your coffee in the morning and you have to read rather than just go on the Internet.
"And I think there's something nice about that tradition. You still can go on the Internet to get it. But it's like me reading the news briefings — I still have to read the paper. I get the L.A. Times and go through it page by page. And go through the whole thing because it's the long version — it's the tradition."
Perhaps coming soon: Subscribe to the L.A. Times and get Steve Lopez, a free a bag of popcorn and a soda, all supersized on Sundays. (Except if Lopez is on the Cruz Bustamante diet.)
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