Larry Wilson: The fight to keep a free press free

When we were in our early 20s — that period when you’ve graduated from college, and are figuring out what to do — Susan Seager and I were copy messengers in the grand old Los Angeles Times building downtown.

Really three buildings patched together over many decades, Times Mirror Square took up the entire block between Spring, Broadway, First and Second. It was an amazing maze, and the old and the new edifices were patched together with doors and hallways that sometimes it seemed only we copy kids knew every inch of...