Bad morning for the Times*

LA Observed reported early this morning that the Los Angeles Times will kill its California section. Local news will instead be folded into a single reconfigured A section. The shrinkage comes on the heels of a 25 cent rise in the newsstand price.

*Updated: An excerpt from LAO:

The move will apparently be spun as an enhancement in local coverage, but Times officials are bracing for howls of protest from print readers who already have been canceling subscriptions over the paper becoming thinner and less well edited.

-snip-

For the journalists, this is another big hit. They already work under the constant threat of layoffs — department heads have reportedly readied their lists, awaiting the final count from [Publisher Eddie] Hartenstein — and there's not much confidence that things will ever get better. Morale totally blows, especially in Metro, the department most hurt by losing the section.