 In a 1990 investigation of minority recruitment at the "Los Angeles Times," journalism investigative reporter David Shaw found that the zone sections had become "a training ground of sorts for the main paper" and that that practice had "helped create the paper's poor reputation with minorities" because they had to start in a suburban office rather than downtown.During the 1992 Rodney King Riots, African American reporters who were working on the suburban sections were "hastily dispatched into trouble spots while the predominantly white Metro staff stayed in the newsroom," according to Greg Braxton, one of those black reporters.Many of them felt they were "cannon fodder," Braxton wrote.