L.A. Daily News reporter Bob Strauss has filed a story titled “This Year’s Oscar Tumult Reflects Awards Show’s Changing Culture.” It’s basically a post-Ratner, post-calamity assessment of All Things Oscar, right here and now. Oscar telecast producer Brian Grazer, AMPAS honcho Tom Sherak and Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone are quoted. And me.

“It’s really the awards season that people who love films live for,” said Jeffrey Wells, editor of the website Hollywood-Elsewhere.com. “Finally, you get to see a lot of pretty interesting films released from late September through December. This is when your movie-lover blood is up, and the Oscars have simply become the last awards show of the season, they’re the finale. It doesn’t mean that they’re the most important.

“The Oscars mean something in historical context, I respect that and that’s what drives it. But it really has come down to just being the last event in a fairly long procession that really begins with the Toronto and Telluride Film Festivals in late summer.”