The Twitter profile for LA Times DC bureau reporter Matea Gold resolutely states: “I still believe in newspapers.” But perhaps not those being coveted by Rupert Murdoch and a pair of Koch brothers.

In what could be interpreted as hedging her bets, maintaining control of her professional fortunes or a little bit of both, Gold is staying in DC but moving up in terms of the daily Beltway newspaper she writes for, as money and politics reporter for the Washington Post.

Warm wishes are flowing across Twitter to Gold, proof of how well-liked a journalist she is. That’s how we first caught up to the news. Kevin Roderick has the Post announcement memo. He also spoke to Gold, who seems to confirm ever so slightly that the transitional aspect of Tribune Co. had something to do with this.

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We’re guessing that The Nation‘s Eric Alterman did not write the headline for his op ed about LA Times and Tribune Co. newspapers prospective owner Rupert Murdoch.

In the piece, Alterman cites various articulated views about the potential Murdoch-LAT match, including a pair of reporters for the Baltimore Sun and Chicago Tribune who ultimately view Murdoch as a “newsman.” From there, he writes:

True, but by the same logic, Jack the Ripper was a lover of the ladies. Murdoch may be a “newspaper man,” but he is surely not a man who respects honest journalism or even the laws of society as they apply to it (or much else, for that matter).

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Pink Slips For A Dozen-Plus Daily News Staffers (Capital New York)
The New York Daily News is now undergoing what employees of the tabloid have been fearing for weeks: Multiple insiders tell Capital that layoffs hit the newsroom Wednesday. FishbowlNY Two veterans of the paper — Albor Ruiz and Joanna Molloy — were among those let go. Ruiz had been with the Daily News for 19 years; Molloy for 15. Other names in the bunch include Christina Boyle and Robert Gearty, both reporters. NY Observer Rumors have been circulating for some time that a round of pink slips was imminent at the Daily News. Although this is the most significant number of layoffs since editor-in-chief Colin Myler took over in November 2011, there has been a slow trickle of departures over the past months. Features editor John Oswald left in March and features reporter Jacob Osterhout vented his rage in a goodbye email after he was let go earlier this spring.

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Remember those folks, like Robert Altman, who swore they would move away from the U.S. if George W. Bush was elected President in 2000? Well, thanks to a recent LA Times awards dinner, there’s now a local newspaper equivalent to that defiant promise.

According to a fun little report by Huffington Post LA associate editor Kathleen Miles, who just this past weekend was part of a panel discussing the future of the LAT, there’s a new “I love my *cough* job…” short-form at the paper. It’s spelled *Koch*:

Facing the elephant trunk-on, columnist Steve Lopez from the podium said, “Raise your hand if you would quit if the paper was bought by the Koch brothers.” About half the staff raised their hands.

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Ha ha. Hillel Aron, ably working the LA Times transition-phase beat for LA Weekly, warns that today’s reported rumblings should probably be taken not so much with a grain of salt but rather a dollop of it. Nonetheless, with Tribune Co. reps having recently hinted they would prefer to find a single buyer for the company’s entire daisy chain of newspaper assets, this makes a lot of on-newsprint sense:

Multiple sources tell LA Weekly that Charles and David Koch — the infamous right-wing billionaire brothers — are considering an offer on either the Tribune Co. newspaper group, which includes the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun or the entire Tribune Co., which includes more than 20 stations like WGN and KTLA Channel 5.

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Timing is everything. Just a few days before this week’s LA Weekly article “Who Will Buy the LA Times?” by Hillel Aron, CNBC broke the news that JPMorgan and Evercore will be handling the sale of the paper and other Tribune Co. assets.

That context gives the piece some extra urgency, and from this excellent bit of work by Aron, we were most struck by the following:

Richest Man in LA vs. Richest Man in the World: Aron references Patrick Soon-Shiong (pictured) in connection with former mayoral candidate Austin Beutner’s effort to put together a stealth group of combined LAT buyers. Surprisingly (at least to us), nowhere in the article does Carlos Slim come up, the man responsible for the relaunch of Larry King and much more. Aron confirms to FishbowlLA that it was not a case of being edited out; “no one ever mentioned Slim,” the writer says.

Two Shades of WSJ: The article characterizes Rupert Murdoch as the man who could potentially outbid everyone, with media expert Ken Doctor telling Aron the Wall Street Journal owner remains the odds-on favorite to acquire the newspaper. Doctor also thinks the two publications’ editorial and ad operations could be streamlined in a number of intriguing ways.

Which is perhaps ironic, because Aron also reminds that Times publisher and Tribune Co. CEO Eddie Hartenstein took a lot of flack internally for his decision to allow the Journal to print at the LAT, bumping the paper’s daily schedule down and “ruining its time-zone advantage over east coast papers.”

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It was not exactly the snazziest 22 months of former Page Six scoop-meister Richard Johnson’s career. And with today’s announcement that News Corp’s iPad endeavor The Daily will officially fade to touch-screen black December 15, his tenure as west coast bureau chief is set to end with a whimper.

Adding insult to injury, Nikki Finke in her write-up this morning pours some more cold water on his biggest initial Flash splash:

In a memo to staff today, The Daily’s Jesse Angelo and Greg Clayman ridiculously boasted that despite “great original reporting, excellent design and custom interactivity… Unfortunately we have not been able to build a big enough audience fast enough to make our business model work.” (Great reporting? They posted a photo of me that was somebody else.*)

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A day after KPBS relayed Doug Manchester’s possible interest in acquiring the LA Times, there is news of a much bigger media mogul sniffing around this city’s prized daily newspaper. According to LA Times reporter Meg James, her new boss could potentially turn out to be none other than Rupert Murdoch:

News Corp. executives have had preliminary talks with debt holders about acquiring the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, according to two ranking News Corp. executives and others familiar with the situation.

These people cautioned that talks are in the early stages, and that a deal is by no means certain… On trips to Los Angeles, Murdoch is known to mark up the newspaper with a Sharpie pen to illustrate how he would design pages.

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This morning, there are already two new interviews with high-profile ex-Scientologist Marty Rathbun about the Cruise-Holmes divorce.

Village Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega, the single biggest media thorn in the side of the Church of Scientology, chats with Rathbun about the latter’s experiences handling the Nicole Kidman split while at the Church a decade ago as well as Rathbun’s general thoughts on how Cruise should handle this third instance. Meanwhile, Radar Online assistant managing editor Jen Heger talks to Rathbun about some clandestine intel gathering about the church that he says has been going on at the Holmes family end for at least four years.

This holiday week, expect more fireworks as the church battles its biggest PR crisis yet, framed by a now-infamous Rupert Murdoch tweet. Many new readers are hitting the blogs of Rathbun and Ortega – hard. Over the weekend, Rathbun posted a devastating primer, highlighting ten key prior pieces of coverage about Cruise, church leader David Miscavige and the slave labor reportedly caught in the middle of their rekindled bond.

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When journalist-turned-marketing-executive Robert Montemayor was first referred by a friend to the dean of Rutgers’ School of Communication and Information to discuss a possible teaching position, he quickly realized that Jorge Reina Schement was once on his LA Times list of go-to academic sources. Now, several years after joining the faculty in 2008, Montemayor and Schement are preparing to launch the Latino Information Network at Rutgers (LIN@R). It is a database that in all likelihood will become a trusted source for a new generation of newspaper reporters.

“There are a lot of statistics floating out into the marketplace these days about Hispanics in the United Statics,” Montemayor (pictured) tells FishbowlLA via telephone. “I read these stories and a lot of them are, unfortunately, alarmist reporting. The numbers, the numbers, it’s always about the numbers.”

“Our goal in short strokes is really to tell the story behind the numbers,” he continues. “We have all these Latino experts around the country who certainly have the ability to explain sociologically, anthropologically, politically or educationally, why these numbers are the numbers that they are. I think that’s what’s missing.”

Montemayor jokes that his decision to leave the LA Times in 1984 after being part of a Pulitzer Prize winning team for Meritorious Public Service was sort of like Ted Williams hitting a home run in his final at-bat. Convinced by a former mentor to earn his MBA, he did so at UCLA and then went on to work in the circulation and marketing department at Dow Jones. As such, he presided over launch of WSJ.com.

“The idea of putting Wall Street Journal content behind a paywall was very controversial,” Montemayor recalls. “In the marketing department, there were many discussions about whether we should or shouldn’t, quantity vs. quality vs. monetization. In retrospect of course, the newspaper business has been trying to replicate what WSJ.com has done.”

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