Transportation News Reporting

[Transit Coalition]

Bad News on the Transportation Beat: LA Times writer Steve Hymon out; 10:45 AM Monday March 23
The has been milling in the background for the last several months.

(via e-mail): Steve Hymon to Bart Reed:

I've been laid off effective Sunday, March 22, and am no longer using or checking my LA Times email address. If you need to reach me in the future, I'm at [e-mail].

Reporting from Kevin Roderick (LA Observed):
L.A. Times staffers affected by today's cuts began getting calls at home yesterday, with one of them transportation writer Steve Hymon. He posted confirmation of his layoff on his LAT email address. This is one of the names I meant in my comment this morning.

Hymon was part of the Times reporting team that won a public service Pulitzer in 2005 for stories on King-Drew medical center and wrote a weekly notes column for awhile out of City Hall. More recently he has been covering transit issues and was writing the paper's Bottleneck blog until it was folded into L.A. Now in December. There are people and a few blogs in town that followed his reporting on transportation issues quite closely. Don't know yet what will be the future of that beat at the ever-slimmer Times.

[kenalpern]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

[James Fujita]

I really don't get what's going on over there. I'm sure there's some financial bean-counter reason, but still....

They can waste paper and ink on that silly Sunday fashion/ style "Image" section, and yet here's a guy who is doing some truly useful community reporting (and few things in L.A. are more useful or important than traffic, transportation and transit)....

*shakes head in disgust*

The transportation beat ought to be up there with schools, crime and politics.

[bluelineshawn]

I think that we all saw that coming when they merged Bottleneck Blog with the LA Now or whatever it's called. He's contributed much less since then.