Nelson to the LAT:
Posted on 01/20/2008 1:32:27 PM PST by BurbankKarl
Los Angeles Times editor James O'Shea was fired just 14 months after he assumed the post, over a budgetary disagreement with publisher David Hiller, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Mr. O'Shea's exit comes little more than a month after the Times' parent company Tribune Co. was taken private in a $8.2 billion buyout. Chicago real estate magnate Sam Zell won effective control in the buyout and became chairman and CEO of Tribune. The Chicago-based company owns several newspapers, including the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune and Newsday, as well as a chain of TV stations. A Tribune spokesman couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Mr. O'Shea, who had been editor of the LA Times since November 2006, is the third successive editor of the paper to leave over budgetary issues.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
LOL.
Ahhhhhhh! Does that hurt my feelings? /s/
O'Shea: "But I don't want a cut in pay."
Hiller: "Yer fired."
“...over a budgetary disagreement with publisher David Hiller...”
Oops! Did he accept a few conservative sponsors for advertising revenue? *SMIRK*
What’s the problem? LA Times has been good to the fish wrap and bird cage industries.
PWNED.
The one bright spot is cartoonist Michael Ramirez.
The LAT is run by the GOP RINOs?
gracias!
the los angeles times reads like your left wing professor’s
lectures when you were in college.
http://www.investors.com/editorial/cartoon.asp
ping
What this means is a whole sackful of layoffs are coming. The publisher wanted the editor to do the deed, but he wouldn’t do it. That’s how the other two firings came down.
Prediction: Many, many layoffs about to hit at the LA Times. I call it good news.
When someone invented the idea of putting toilet paper on a roll, the LA Times became obsolete.
The Publishers keeps hiring the Editors to fire people, the Editors agree, then won’t do it. They should make me Editor, I’d have no problems firing their entire staff.
Liberal editors can be found behind any dumpster.
“The Publishers keeps hiring the Editors to fire people, the Editors agree, then won’t do it. They should make me Editor, I’d have no problems firing their entire staff.”
The problem is that it is a death spiral. When you cut unique content, then you cut the reasons to buy the paper. Therefore, circulation declines, revenue declines accordingly, and yet another rounds of cuts is then needed.
There are some alternatives. First, you can fire veteran expensive staff (like any are making great money?) and hire a bunch of promising noobs straight out of college. Some are bound to be good.
Second, the tact that CNN seems to have taken, is to conclude that your traditional base isn’t meeting your needs, and you diversify the content. CNN seemingly has dropped much of its biased coverage lately, even putting Glenn Beck it is prime spot. Accordingly, their ratings have started to rise.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/business/media/21latimes-web.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
January 21, 2008
L.A. Times Editor Is Forced Out
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
The top editor of The Los Angeles Times has been forced out for resisting newsroom budget cuts, executives at the paper say, marking the fourth time in less than three years that the highest-ranking editor or the publisher has left for that reason.
The removal of the editor, James O’Shea, by the publisher, David Hiller, mirrors the odd spectacle of a little more than a year ago, when Mr. Hiller’s predecessor, Jeffrey M. Johnson, was fired for refusing to make layoffs. Both of the dismissed men were longtime employees of the Times’ owner, The Tribune Company, which was taken over last month by Samuel Zell, the Chicago-based real estate magnate. Both were expected to rein in the fractious Los Angeles paper but instead sided with the newsroom and lost their jobs for it.
The departure of Mr. O’Shea appears to contradict statements by Mr. Zell, who is now chairman and chief executive of the financially troubled Tribune Company. He has repeatedly criticized the previous regime of the financially troubled company for trying to improve the bottom line by cutting, and has said that he believes the path to profit lies in finding new revenues, not paring back existing revenue sources.
Calls to Mr. O’Shea, Mr. Hiller and a spokeswoman for Mr. Zell were not returned.
Sources within The Times said that the dispute arose from Mr. Hiller’s desire to cut the newsroom’s expense budget during the heated presidential campaign, a time when such expenses usually spike. Editors and reporters say that Mr. Hiller told them in a meeting in November that he wanted to reduce the head count somewhat by the end of this year. All of these people were granted anonymity so they would talk about internal matters they were not authorized to discuss.
snip
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