Dateline>City of Angels

This past year saw the demolition of L.A.’s celebrated Ambassador Hotel. Sadly, the coming year may see the destruction of another historic downtown landmark. LAObserved reports that the classic Julia Morgan-designed Herald-Examiner Building now faces the wrecking ball. (In a town already widely known for bulldozing its architectural heritage at every turn, this news can’t be sitting well with preservationists.) The building, which allegedly boasts a spectacular interior, has stood forlorn near the corner of 11th and Broadway since the Hearst newspaper folded in 1989, essentially leaving the Los Angeles Times to run amok as the city’s sole paper.

It’s hard to say which ending is more ignoble — that of the building or the newspaper itself. During its waning years, the once-proud Herald resorted to a level of dumbed-down, sensationalist reporting that would even make today’s local TV news teams wince. In 1987, for instance, when a disgruntled passenger brought down a PSA airliner in Central California, other media outlets tactfully used words like “gruesome” to describe the debris field. By contrast, the Herald compared the carnage to “raspberry jelly.”