Mediabistro.com's own David S. Hirschman interviews Los Angeles Times EIC Russ Stanton today and learns that morale is improving, the LAT print edition has a good 35 more years of life and Sam Zell isn't planning to sell the paper any time soon:

He felt like the conditions of our industry, and some of our papers in particular, have declined a lot in a relatively short amount of time -- and I think he's surprised about it, he's not happy about it, and I don't think it was ever in his plan to sell any of the media properties. That said, selling Newsday and the Cubs buys us a tremendous amount of breathing room over the next couple of years, in particular, and will allow us to reinvent what we do and get ourselves back on terra firma, and back in a position where we can grow. I've not gotten any indication at all that they're intending to get rid of us.