Kenneth Reich didn’t know me, but I knew of him. He was in the L.A. Times newsroom in the fall of 1975 when I was a wide-eyed intern there, and I saw him all the time in the run-up to (and coverage of) the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Practically nothing was a news story, before that Olympics, until Kenneth Reich had reported it.

Reich retired from the Times a few years ago, and since then he had been writing a blog in which he regularly blisters “the evil Tribune Co.” for the decline of LAT as a world-class newspaper.

Reich died in his sleep this morning, according to laoberved.com, but not before posting one last time before going to bed.

I’m sure he had more to say, and more cogent points to make. But it seems somehow poetic that, at 70 and in failing health, he still cared enough to insist on the rescue of the Times … and showed it with his last post only hours before he died. A post that ended on a hopeful note.

Here is a link to his website.

I find it interesting that he and I were doing something vaguely similar — bios on former staffers. He cited far more people than I have (and LAT is a far bigger newspaper than the Sun ever was), which we both seem to believe is a fitting way to try to memorialize a little bit of what once was … and is being lost.