Posted on 09/15/2006 5:52:26 AM PDT by abb
he editor of The Los Angeles Times appears to be in a showdown with the paper’s owner, the Tribune Company, over job cuts in the newsroom.
In a highly unusual move, Dean P. Baquet, who was named editor last year, was quoted yesterday in his own newspaper as saying he was defying the paper’s corporate parent in Chicago and would not make the cuts it requested.
The paper’s publisher, Jeffrey M. Johnson, said he agreed with Mr. Baquet. “Newspapers can’t cut their way into the future,” he told the paper.
The number of jobs at stake is unclear but the paper, the fourth largest in the country, has eliminated more than 200 positions over the last five years from an editorial staff that now numbers about 940.
“I am not averse to making cuts,” Mr. Baquet told the paper. “But you can go too far, and I don’t plan to do that.”
The paper reported that Scott C. Smith, president of the Tribune Publishing division, had asked the paper’s executives to come up with a plan for trimming their budgets, but when Mr. Smith visited Los Angeles late last month, they had produced no such plan.
Mr. Baquet “made his opposition to further cuts clear and said there was no need for further discussion,” the paper reported.
A spokesman for Mr. Baquet and Mr. Johnson said they would have no further comment.
Mr. Smith said in a statement: “In this rapidly changing media environment, we are all working together to best serve our communities, customers and shareholders.”
It is rare for an editor to go public with a position on internal budget battles and for the editor’s own newspaper to report on it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Fire the editor. He's an employee too.
Ping
"The editor of The Los Angeles Times appears to be in a showdown with the paper’s owner, the Tribune Company, over job cuts in the newsroom."
How are they going to cut newsroom jobs at Reuters and Al Jazeera? There are no newsroom jobs at the LA Times, there is no newsroom.
Related...
Tribune, Chandlers May Be Near Deal to Unwind Partnerships
The assets have been at the center of the family's battle with the company, which owns The Times.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tribune15sep15,1,5219915.story?coll=la-headlines-business
Having seen something like this first hand in a previous life I can tell you that this is a death spiral. Keep cutting content and you are weakening your product. Keep losing money and eventually there is no product. With the Internet and the various marketing opportunities it provides people no longer can depend on print alone for advertising. That the LAT is so biased they have driven away revenues which compounds the problem.
The Chandlers had very astute financial advisors - the family sold TimesMirror (parent of the LA Times) to the Tribune years ago before the full effects of the Net hit home.
Dean will soon be unemployed.
related.
Local Leaders Urge Owner of The Times to Avoid Cuts
A civic group says more newsroom layoffs would erode the newspaper's quality and undermine its role in the region.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-times14sep14,1,7312571,full.story?coll=la-headlines-business
Definitely a death spiral.
They just do not get it.
I talked to a guy I know in the graphics division of our local New York Times franchise and his take was the complexity of serving two masters- the new online website version of the paper and the old print version.
My rebuttal (politely) was old garbage in new bottles.
One policy they have is to shield rape accusers by printing anonymous accusations.
Why would anyone go to the online version to read virtually the same racket protection policy when it is easy to go to half a dozen other sites where they publish the real scoop on the rape allegations including the name and background of the accuser?
He gave me the deer-in-the-headlights look
Best regards,
I guess that "rising cost of newsprint" excuse don't hunt no more.
He gave me the deer-in-the-headlights look
They will never understand th concept of "free information" via the internet. Adapt or die--that's why they're called the "dinosaur media" (among other things).
Good, now they can waste their time beating each other up.
LELAND Well, I'm sorry. There's just no way that we could keep you on.KRAMER I don't even really work here!
LELAND That's what makes this so difficult.
1,140 editorialists at one newspaper?!?
I'm sure they could still work there - they just wouldn't get paid anymore...
More quietly, Davidson Kempner Capital Management, which specializes in buying stock in troubled companies or those undergoing big changes, bought a 1.45% stake in the second quarter.
Interesting.
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