In an era when we celebrate local everything, why criticize new L.A. superintendent, a local pick?

[...] that understates how suspiciously local King is.

Our police chief Charlie Beck, for all his progress in crime-fighting and diversifying his force, labors under the sense that he was an internal candidate not in the same class of out-of-town predecessors.

Hollywood has organized itself as an exclusive club so distant from the diversity around it that it has turned the Academy Awards, with another slate of all-white acting nominees, into a joke.

Over the past generation, our sheriff’s department, police department, the Dodgers, and various other institutions have been subjects of outside takeovers.

Both papers damned her credentials with faint praise (the Times editorial called her “obviously capable” twice) and advised her to pick fights — the tactic that backfired on several previous superintendents.

Times columnist Steve Lopez wrote that the school board chose “a good, low-profile soldier rather than a strong, independent voice, and for now at least, I find that disappointing.”

The reality: with all our diversity and strange ways of governance (from ballot initiatives to our hundreds of commissions), California’s institutions are getting more complicated — making it harder for outsiders to step in.

At San Diego Unified, Cindy Marten, an elementary school principal elevated to superintendent, has made political mistakes but also has made dramatic improvements in training and personnel, including the replacement of more than 70 principals and vice principals.