The Los Angeles Times editorial page editor Andres Martinez has resigned after it was revealed that he was dating a publicist representing Hollywood producer Brian Grazer -- whom he had selected as the first of several guest editors of the paper's Sunday Current opinion section.

From a journalistic standpoint, it was a bad call to select Grazer while you're dating his publicist. (Yes, that's an understatement.)

But Martinez's going-away blog post contains this bit that, if true (and I have no reason to doubt it is not), points to a far deeper institutional problem at the Times.

Among the biggest possible conflicts of interest a newspaper can enter into is to have the same people involved in news coverage running opinion pages. I am proud of the fact that Jeff Johnson, Dean Baquet and I fully separated the opinion pages from the newsroom at the Times. I accept my share of the responsibility for placing the Times in this predicament, but I will not be lectured on ethics by some ostensibly objective news reporters and editors who lobby for editorials to be written on certain subjects, or who have suggested that our editorial page coordinate more closely with the newsroom's agenda, and I strongly urge the present and future leadership of the paper to resist the cries to revisit the separation between news and opinion that we have achieved. [emphasis added]

This is why I've been beating the drum for journalistic transparency for several years. The Times' institutional bias is readily apparent to even the most casual reader of that publication and yet the paper -- and the Times isn't alone in this -- apparently believes that its reputation will suffer more by admitting the bias then by honestly acknowledging it and vowing to work hard to be fair and balanced.

The Times very well may need to do some serious housecleaning if it has any reporters or editors who think that it's OK (our encouraged) to breach the wall between news and opinion. You can bet the same journalists would scream bloody murder if advertising reps walked into the newsroom and started lobbying for softball puff pieces of certain advertisers. Yet, they apparently see nothing wrong with lobbying the editorial page in similar fashion.

It's also a little scary that reporters or editors would think that any such lobbying would be necessary -- after all, it's not like the Times editorialists are so politically different than the newsroom staff.