Whoo boy, LAT, this does not look good. According to The Smoking Gun, the alleged FBI documents the newspaper relied upon in their bombshell report accusing Sean "Diddy-Puffy-Puff Daddy-Sean John-P.Diddy" Combs's associates of having carried out the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur were forged. The culprit? Incarcerated con man named James Sabatino, a portly wigga with a vivid imagination and a desperate need to inject himself by any means necessary into the great hip-hop events of the latter 20th Century. From The Smoking Gun's report:

Tribune CEO Sam Zell's plan to cut 400 to 500 jobs from his newspaper fiefdom—including 150 positions at the Los Angeles Times alone—could be good news for some eager younglings. Rumors are mounting that LAT publisher David Hiller is hot to replace all those costly veteran reporters with J-School kids just hungry and indebted enough to work for scraps. If you've heard anything, kindly hit the tips button. [najp.org]

An exclusive story in the LA Times today says that P. Diddy, aka Puff Daddy, aka Sean "Puffy" Combs, the hip hop superstar and head of Bad Boy Records, knew in advance about a 1994 ambush in which rap icon Tupac Shakur was shot five times and robbed in a New York recording studio. According to the story, a promoter and talent manager who were friendly with Puffy set up Tupac because they were angry about his insolent posture towards NYC and its hip hop heavyweights. The key facts:

LA Times publisher David Hiller, the corporate emissary the Tribune bosses in Chicago sent out to California to handle all the editor-firing, is a bit of a dork. He got all goofy and excited over the fact that the paper got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last year, which convinced the jaded LAT newsroom that he is a total touristy nerd who will never really grasp the City of Angels. He manages like a pussy, mumbling inaudibly about what his long term plans and mandates are before springing the hatchet on angry editors, according to lots of anonymous interviewees in a New York Times profile today. They also say he has sent notes about individual stories to reporters (a huge no-no for a publisher), and is considering putting the paper's entire Sunday magazine section under the control of the marketing department. On top of all that, he likes to sing corny songs. Whew! A weak manager, muddling around without a strong long-term plan, trying to endear himself to his inferiors in an annoying, kind of nerdy fashion. Who does that remind you of? New York Times publisher Arthur "Pinch Pinch Pinch" Sulzberger Jr., of course! Observe this list of Sulzberger's greatest Hiller-like moments:

Deposed Los Angeles Times editor James O'Shea describes as "voodoo economics" the idea that tightening of newsroom spending is necessary to the survival of newspapers. We don't want to be too pedantic here, but wasn't that expression used in an wholly different context? When coined by George Bush the Elder, in his campaign for the 1980 Republican nomination, voodoo economics was a description of Ronald Reagan's fiscal recklessness. Which is an accusation one can certainly not levy against the LA Times' owners, the penny-pinching Tribune Company.