but is it the real LA?

Clarence Williams won the Publitzer Prize in 1998. You don't know who Mr Williams is or what he did to win the prize? If you don't then you are part of the vast majority.

Clarence is a photographer. He works for the LA Times. In 1997, he produced a photo-essay on children that the system either misplaced or abandoned. He spent five months chronicling the tortured lives of children living with drug addicts and alcoholics.

A photo-essay in the LA Times? This shouldn't be that unusual but it is. How many photo-essays do you remember seeing in your local newspaper? Clarence Williams's essay is the only one I remember from 1997 that appeared in the LA Times. I can't think of any from 1998 either.

Why can't the LA Times do a photo-essay every week? They have enough photographers. For a while last year they did a photo feature once a week. It centered around an idea and the Times photographers would put their interpretation on the theme. Where is this feature today? Gone. And no photo essays this year. None. Zero. I think the LA Times can do better. Don't you?

Photographs can show the real LA better than any word essay and do it in one photograph. Here's my suggestions. Devote pages 4 and 5 of Section 1 to photography. Bring back photos on a theme for one day of the week. Another day devoted to photo-essays. I also want to see what's happening in those great neighborhoods of LA. I don't mean just West LA, but South Central, East LA, San Predro, Downtown, Holllywood, and all the other neighborhoods that many of us have never visited or seen. How about one page with photographs of what went on in LA the previous 24 hours?

Better yet LA Times, ask your photographers what they can do with those 2 pages. Ask Clarence.

I think the LA Times photographers can show us the real LA better than any television news broadcast will ever do. I have given up on local television ever showing us the real LA. Can the LA Times show us the real LA?

copyright 1999 john s krill