Once upon a time newspapers had these guys called columnists. They wrote around two or three times a week, about anything that came to mind — the weather, baseball, some homeless guy they just met, anything really — and what they had to say was really important, because ... well, we're not really sure. But it was!

Then the Internet came along, and all of a sudden there were people writing about all sorts of things, and they were paid a lot less money to write a whole lot more often than two or three times a week.

Now you'd think that newspapers, struggling to cope with falling advertising revenue and an aging readership, would jettison these costly, not-very-productive columnists. But you would be wrong. The Los Angeles Times, for example, has 24 columnists and critics, according to its website (its list may be incomplete, as it omits Jonathan Gold), all but one of whom — Sandy Banks — are white, in a city that's 50 percent Latino. Only six are women in a city that, according to my calculations, is roughly 50 percent women. And let's just say there's a lot of gray hair in those online photos. (Updated below)