[UPDATE: Jamie Gold's idiotic reply below]

Earlier this month, Jason Song of the Los Angeles Times offered a pro-illegal immigration propaganda piece called "For an illegal immigrant, getting into UCLA was the easy part". It generated a few hundred emails from their readers, and now Jamie Gold - that paper's feckless "Readers Representative" - offers an round-up of reaction where she can't find anything wrong (link). Summary: she seems to be taking disingenuous lessons from Clark Hoyt of the New York Times. Note also this:

"It's not either/or," responds California Editor David Lauter. "The thinking on why we did the story is pretty straightforward: illegal immigration is a major issue of public concern in California. One aspect of that issue, which has been very hotly debated, is whether students who are undocumented should be allowed in California's public colleges and universities. That issue has been debated in the Legislature and is currently the subject of a court case challenging California's tuition policies."

I left the following (HTMLified) comment:

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I've read literally thousands of articles about immigration matters, and I have yet to see a single article offering a similar portrayal of the trials and tribulations of a U.S. citizen who can't go to college because an illegal alien got the aid or spot they should have gotten. And, it is indeed an "either/or" matter: there are only a limited number of college spots and only a limited amount of college aid. Any aid or spot that goes to an illegal alien was taken from a U.S. citizen. Even the LAT should be able to understand that, but if they can't here's an animation illustrating how that works: link.

Articles like the one from Jason Song are a dime a dozen; cookie cutter articles just like the one from Song have been printed in papers from coast to coast. See a partial list here, and to see how similar these articles are to one another, click the 'side-by-side' link.

Let us know when the LAT starts printing sympathetic portrayals of those U.S. citizens negatively impacted by the policies that the LAT supports.

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UPDATE: It took the LAT almost 24 hours to approve comments on their post, and when they did my comment wasn't among those they approved. I suspect that the reason for the delay is - not to put to fine a point on it - to try to fool as many people as possible. I sent an email about the status of my comment to Jamie Gold, and she replied with the following idiotic response:

Hi, Chris, and thanks for your note. We do try to get back to people who send comments but whose comments aren't posted. A few that we received did not include e-mail addresses, so in those cases I was unable to respond. I therefore don't know if you received my response or not (your name and email address don't match the addresses or names I saw). In case you didn't receive this, here's the thinking: The journal is a bit different from other blogs at latimes.com in that we tend to be a bit more stringent in deciding what reader comments get posted. The journal is a conversation about how and why Times editors and reporters make the decisions they do in covering the news. That means that the posts we write are often based on questions and criticisms that readers have about coverage. And in general, we try to publish reader responses that focus on their opinions and thoughts on how the L.A. Times covers an issue, vs. the opinions that readers have about the issue itself. Clearly, the two can't be completely separated; someone's thoughts on how the Times covers the issue inevitably reflects his or her thoughts on the topic itself. But the readers' rep journal tries to keep the emphasis on how the paper covered the story.

We also try to maintain a civil atmosphere, so we try to stay away from name-calling or vulgar language. Again, I don't know what comment you sent, so I'm not sure that applies.

Thank you again for reading, and for taking the time to send a comment to the readers' representative journal.

As for why she's an idiot:

1. As anyone can see, my comment is completely on-topic both to the article in question and to their follow-up.

2. My comment obviously doesn't use vulgar language.

3. The email I sent her made it very clear that I'd posted the comment I left online and included the URL to this post. To see the comment, all Gold had to do was visit this URL.

4. I posted the comment using my Typepad account, which doesn't require me to enter an email address into the LAT's form. Presumably Gold had access to that email address and I haven't received an email from them. Even if Typepad didn't provide any way for her to get in touch with me, she could have left a comment at this URL or found some other means to get in touch.

5. Several years ago, I sent an email to Gold regarding them using Armando Navarro as a quote source, including a link to an AmericanPatrol.com summary page and suggesting they review his past thoughts. Gold wrote me back and told me they don't use such sites as sources. Here's the kicker: the page in question consisted of four links to local newspaper stories, one of them being... the Los Angeles Times.