Dump the snores. Who reads the book section, really? Review books that people read, and do it online.

Don’t publish game summaries of the Lakers, Clippers, Dodgers and Angels –who reads those? The sports junkies got their news hours ago. Give the reader commentary, rumor, and calumny, and lots of readers’ boards.

When it comes to “opinion,” publish most of the paper’s commentary from writers inside of zip codes in which you deliver. Drop the anonymous pulse-killers of the unsigned editorials. Give them bylines or let them go. And please, no more out-of-state professors. The national writers publish on national forums, but the local voices need the exposure and bring with them local audiences. Obscure academics from faraway cities don’t need –and local readers don’t want—a chance to impress on the west coast. In Los Angeles there are hundreds of talented writers the papers routinely ignore. Why?

Finally, let me introduce you to Patterico, Kevin Roderick, Bill Bradley and Cathy Seipp.

Here are four extraordinary talents in your backyard, each with a significant readership the paper needs.

Patterico is the greatest ombudsman a paper never paid,. Imagine the huge credibility you would gain if you matched his DA salary plus 25%, and told him “Swing away” at LATimes.com. That. Would. Be. Bold.

Roderick ticks me off at least once a month, but he’s the go-to-guy for LA, the single best city-specific blog in America, and you are trying to invent what he has already perfected. Why? The old guard is gone. You don’t have to inherit their mistakes. Go pay him what he wants and brand him as the Times’ own.

Bradley is by far the best political reporter in California. He’s interesting and connected and doesn’t care where the chips fall.

And Seipp --she is read and loved by center-rightists across the Southland. Her account of her battle with cancer is moving and her commentaries on all other subjects funny and on point. This isn’t hard. Buy her blog and brand the paper as willing to bring on board the talent it manifestly doesn’t have and the appeal it cannot manufacture from within.

The Los Angeles Times could be a great, great news organization –if it would only give up pretending to be a great newspaper.