L.A. City Councilmen Would Divest Pension Money From a Potentially Koch-Owned Tribune Co.
...Anyway, the City Council story is one of many reasons why politicizing pension funds is a bad idea. And this whole sale-rumor story is turning out to be an interesting exercise in smoking out the interests and fears of a deep blue city in decline mode. As LA Observed's Kevin Roderick pointed out, the head of the Courage Campaign, which is spearheading efforts to block Koch ownership of Tribune, "happens to be running an independent expenditure committee promoting Garcetti's campaign for mayor." That would be the same Garcetti just endorsed for mayor by the L.A. Times. The important thing here is to make sure things around Spring Street don't get too political.

Newspaper guild: The LA Times must not be sold to the Koch brothers and their “harsh right-wing positions”; Update: LA Dems threaten Times investors over Koch sale
... Three Los Angeles City Council members — including a candidate for mayor — asked their colleagues Tuesday to consider pulling city pension money from the investment firms that own the Los Angeles Times if they sell the publication to buyers who do not support “professional and objective journalism.”…

“Frankly what I hear about the Koch brothers, if it’s true, it’s the end of journalism,’’ said [Councilman Bill] Rosendahl, a former broadcaster. “I don’t want to see Los Angeles, the second-largest city and the biggest region in the nation, not to have a quality newspaper.”…

“We cannot support the sale of the Times to entities who Times readers would view as a political transaction first and foremost, turning L.A.’s metropolitan daily into an ideological mouthpiece whose commitment to empirical journalism would be unproven at best,” Rosendahl wrote in the motion. “A newspaper isn’t just a business it’s also a civic trust.”...