The Tribune Co. -- which owns the Chicago Tribune, other newspapes, TV stations and production enterprises (including TV shows and films) now owns the L.A. Times. Before the Tribune Co. bought the times, the previous owner secretly "loaned" MediaNews $50 million to buy competitor Daily News (see MediaNews, above). Even before that disclosure (which was mad only AFTER the Tribune bought the Times), the L.A. paper went through a demoralizing downward spiral of credibility lapses in the late 1990s, culminating with what has become known as the Staples Center fiasco (a special edition of the L.A. Times Magazine without disclosure that the editorial content was linked to a lucrative deal with the new Staples Center), and followed by the dismissal of the publisher and top editor and eventually the sale of the entire company to the Tribune Co. (though, certainly, that was not the only reason for the sale). In the last few years, it has gone through a series of staff downsizings, not necessarily handled in the most diplomatic or conscionable ways. It is still not unionized, with workers "at will" (they can be fired at any time for no reason, and with no appeal or recourse unless they can prove in court that the firing was based on age, sex, religion, or race -- which in a large company like the Tribune can be a daunting task). New hires reportedly are paid much less than their predecessors, and the Times has closed its so-called neighborhood/suburban papers (which on the one hand offered more opportunities to minority workers, but on the other hand paid them only a third or less of what their counterparts at the mother ship made -- yet their work often would show up in the same pages; and those same workers were often placed in a limbo of "two-year minority internships" that were basically low-pay/high-turnover turnstiles). The dust isn't done settling, with advertising challenges and post-9/11 matters still weighing down the books -- but given the conglom's tentacles, the question -- as always -- is: How creative is the bookkeeping, and is the pain being equally shared across the board?