"I was surprised and delighted when the Los Angeles Times asked me to guest edit its Current section, because it gave me a chance to work with the L.A. Times and these seven extremely talented writers — Nobel laureate Eric Kandel, Vogue's editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley, psychologist Paul Ekman, social scientist Dalton Connelly, attorney Martin Singer, urban planner Sam Hall Kaplan and artist Shepard Fairey," Grazer said.

"Working together, we came up with a collection of essays and art that I think readers would have found genuinely stimulating and would have added to our understanding of our ever-changing culture. My hope now is that we can find another way to present the results of our efforts to the audience it deserves."

Given the way events have played out over the past 24 hours, we're doubtful that the Times would accept the mogul's initial idea for finding an audience for his contributors' hard work, a special advertising section in Sunday's paper entitled, "Brian Grazer Salutes His Favorite Stifled Voices: A Brian Grazer Production." Instead, Grazer will make the respectful gesture of offering to take a symbolic one-dollar option on each of the killed pieces, with the promise of a much larger sum should he decide to dumb down any of their essays for a feature film adaptation directed by longtime collaborator Ron Howard.

• Grazer caught in a difference of opinion [THR]
• Previously: Brian Grazer: The Lost Intro [Defamer]
• Complete Grazergate Coverage [Defamer]

With the LAT's unfortunate decision to callously discard all the hard work superproducing guest editor Brian Grazer had put into his masterfully curated Sunday Current section just because the paper caught a faint whiff of possible publicist-related impropriety, we feared that the words of introduction that Hollywood's Grand Inquisitor of Interesting People so painstakingly dictated to his assistants for later transcription might be lost to history. (Luckily for his support staff, their notoriously quixotic boss abandoned a poorly conceived plan to have his introductory remarks on his editorial mission pressed into a clay tablet in cuneiform—an idea that grew out of a brief obsession with producing an action-thriller set in ancient Sumeria—ultimately tasking them with translating his scattered thoughts into comprehensible English instead.) But thanks to LA Observed (and someone on the inside with access to the Times's editing system), Grazer's Lost Introduction has been preserved for as long as these blogowebs exist:

For virtually all of my professional life, I've made my living - and my name - as a movie and television writer-producer. But what I've really been doing is pursuing a 25-year journey of curiosity. Curiosity informs everything I do. The prospect of exploring unfamiliar subcultures, meeting smart people who look at the world in new and interesting ways, learning more about how things (and people) work - that's what inspires me.

So when The Times invited me to guest edit an issue of the Current section, giving me creative freedom to choose whatever writers and subjects I wanted, I couldn't resist. In the end, I whittled the list to a few of the areas I find currently intriguing: the dynamics of popular culture, the relationship of matter to mind, and the effect of morals and mores.

In short, what makes us the way we are in a constantly evolving world? It's a question that's fascinated me for as long as I can remember, and one I expect to continue asking for the rest of my life.

LA Observed also has a statement from the LAT publisher apologizing to Grazer for the pain he and his contributors have suffered during this scandal; perhaps in time, their squandered output will surface on the internet, allowing us all to evaluate how Imagine's resident Big Thinker responded to the guest-editing challenge before bringing the paper to its knees.

• What Grazer would have said [LA Observed]
• Previously: Grazergate: Guest-Editing Producer Tears Apart The 'LAT' From The Inside [Defamer]

• Grazergate, the episode [LAT Opinion L.A.]
• Times' kills Sunday Current section guest edited by Grazer [LAT]
• Editor resigns over killed opinion section [LAT]
• Previously: Grazergate: Blockbuster Guest Edit Imperiled By Accusations Of Publicist Influence! [Defamer]

This morning brings terrible—terrible!—news for the Hollywood community, who had been universally atwitter about the Very Special Guest-Edited Sunday Current Section superproduced by Brian Grazer that was scheduled for this weekend's LAT, opinion pages so jam-packed with action, adventure, and quirky material reflecting Grazer's legendarily restless, spongelike intellect that early tracking projected the paper to gross nearly $40 million in its opening frame. Tragically, the blockbuster project is now threatened with cancellation since it has come to light (Grazergate™ courtesy of LA Observed) that the editor of Times' editorial page is dating a publicist whose firm represents Imagine Entertainment, Grazer's movie studio/thinktank hybrid, a potential conflict that has many in the newsroom lighting their hair on fire, poking out their eyes with letter openers, and loudly wailing about having to toil in a town dominated by an entertainment industry bent on hijacking local journalistic institutions for their own nefarious, guest-editing ends.

LAT publisher David Hiller today admits to hand-wringing over whether the paper will run an extremely boring note disclosing that the internal diddling of a publicist in no way influenced Grazer's selection as Editor for a Day or just dump Sunday's disputed Current section entirely:

"I believe, based on everything that I have seen, that we have only the appearance of a conflict here," Hiller said. "I believe that the selection of Grazer was not based on this relationship. We have an appearance and not a case of actual undue influence.

"We want to do the right thing for our readers and for the paper," Hiller added. [...]

"If this thing was killed over this, I think it would be an indication of the moral bankruptcy of the Los Angeles Times," publicist Allan, boss of the flack entangled in this mess] Mayer said. "If the newspaper is so fearful of what uninformed people think that it would allow itself to be stampeded in that way ... I think it would be a very sad day."

The true tragedy in all of this, of course, would be that a publicist was made to cry about a newspaper allowing itself to be stampeded by the uninformed, unwashed masses, rather than by a qualified public relations firm offering expert stampeding services to deep-pocketed entertainment industry professionals eager to demonstrate the breadth of their intellectual curiosity. If printing Grazer's possibly tainted Current section could prevent a single flack tear rolling down a scandalized cheek, any ensuing, uncomfortable questions about conflicts of interest and journalistic standards will have been worth it.

More on this story here, here, and here.

• Relationship may undo Times section [LAT]
• Hiller buys time on Grazergate [LA Observed]
• Grazergate [LAO]
• An LA Times Affair [DHD]