I’ve been reading the Los Angeles Times my entire adult life, and I’m fairly sure I’ve never seen anything weirder — and stupider — than what it has done on its sports section cover the past two days.

Did someone kidnap Randy Harvey? He’s the sports editor there, last I heard, and I can’t believe any of this was his idea. Has the newspaper received demands from his abductors?

Or did something go horribly wrong twice, and it just happened to be on consecutive days?

To wit:

Tuesday a.m., May 20: Big hed across the top: “Can they save their sports?” A drop hed/readout that goes, “David Carter, executive director of the Sports Business Institute at USC and Times columnists weigh in on Crosby, Parker and Big Brown, who are breathing new life into the NHL, WNBA and horse racing.”

OK, sounds like a big, thorough package. I don’t buy the premise, but I’m willing to go along with the bit. I’ll read this.

Three columnists, in columns 1, 3 and 5, with vertical art of Sidney Crosby, Candace Parker and Big Brown in sticks 2, 4 and 6. Three grafs from each columnist on the cover, and one graf from this Carter dude, below each picture.

And that’s it.

I started reading Dwyre, who I think is a very nice columnist, and I got to the end of the third graf … when I realized there was no “jump” line. The column didn’t continue. “Oh, what an embarrassing mistake!”

And then I noticed Helene Elliott (on Crosby) and Kurt Streeter (on Parker) didn’t jump either, and … HEY, WAIT A MINUTE! THEY PLANNED THAT!?!? They gave the top half of the section to that?

Stunningly unfullfilling. Remarkably lame. Never before has LAT given so much display to so little journalism. This was just shockingly thin, even by, say, USA Today standards.

I can’t even imagine being the guy who thought this up and then called the three columnists and said, “Give me your best 28 lines on this topic.”

Probably no coincidence top-dog columnists Bill Plaschke and T.J. Simers weren’t involved. The former would have had a meltdown; the latter would have ridiculed them.

Then Wednesday, May 21. A six-column (on an eight-grid) hed that reads, “It’s Showtime” … and, again, this huge hed is over … NOTHING. It’s not a real story. It’s a glorified graphic in a newspaper. Somebody has decided that, hey, isn’t it marvelous and amazing that the Lakers are playing the Spurs in Staples Center at the same time that “American Idol” is finishing up across the street at the new Nokia Theater?

Yeah. Wow. Amazing. “There Will Be Traffic.” That’s basically the story. Though there is a glorified caption, under a picture of Nokia in the foreground and Staples in the back, that attempts to “twin” the events. The third graf begins, “Common links?” Well, none, other than geography.

This is awful. I’m embarrassed, and I don’t even work there. Some Tribune Co. maniac must be forcing this on real newspaper men. Two days running of what, I’m told, are called “charticles” … and if I’m a writer of prose I’m scared to death that something horrible has just happened to the section I work for.

Maybe this is a function of a loss of news hole? A back-formation of not having any inside space? “We can’t continue Elliott, Streeter and Dwyre inside, so let’s stop ’em at 28 lines and tell people, ‘Yeah, I meant to do that.”’

At the very least, I thought each of the day’s packages should refer to something significant, preferably meaty, on the LAT website. But no. That was it. The “charticle” … and nothing but the “charticle.”

Man. Maybe it’s a good thing I’m out of the business, if this is where it’s headed.

Let’s hope it’s all just a failed experiment, and we wake up tomorrow and look at D1 and it’s back to being actual journalism.