Imagine the outrage if this were RJ Reynolds or General Motors getting a column killed on the state of its industry, instead of the L.A. Times:

The bug at the bottom of the Calendar front in today's Los Angeles Times says columnist Patrick Goldstein is on assignment. Not true. His The Big Picture column for Tuesday was killed, apparently by associate editor John Montorio. Goldstein's offense was to propose that the Times follow the lead of the U.K.'s Mail on Sunday (which distributed 2.9 million free Prince CDs) and partner with older artists to give away music in the paper. He argued it could help make the Times website a destination for fans and reduce the need for front page ads (which the editor of the Times himself calls a huge mistake.) Seems reasonable enough for a column, and Goldstein was on the Spring Street Committee that was tasked with coming up with innovative ideas:

It’s time we embraced change instead of always worrying if some brash new idea — like giving away music — would tarnish our sober minded image.

Still, the piece was spiked on high after sailing through the desk. The banned column fell into our hands and runs in full after the jump:

Read the rest--given the sorry states of both the recording and newspaper industries, Prince's synergistic marketing strategy is certainly worth experimenting with. And if the L.A. Times thinks they they can keep their remaining readers snowed into not believing that their industry is in trouble, that speaks volumes about what their management thinks of their subscribers.

But then, that shouldn't be entirely surprising at this point.