Los Angeles Times Editor Is Fired After 14 Months on Job, Source Says

Wall Street Journal ^ | 1/20/08 | EMILY STEEL

[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.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Well the CNN approach, if true, would be fine. The J-school staff might help them, but they are more slanted than the veterans.

[abb]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oshea21jan21,0,1815384.story?coll=la-home-center
From the Los Angeles Times
L.A. Times editor O’Shea dismissed
By Thomas S. Mulligan
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

2:34 PM PST, January 20, 2008

For the second time in 15 months, the editor of the Los Angeles Times has been fired for refusing to impose budget cuts ordered by his publisher.

Times Publisher David D. Hiller fired Editor James O’Shea following a confrontation in which Hiller directed O’Shea to carry out $4 million in cuts, according to a person familiar with the situation. The move didn’t become public until it was reported today by the Wall Street Journal.

The turmoil has erupted one month after the closing of the $8.2-billion buyout of Tribune Co., The Times’ parent company, by an employee stock plan and Chicago real-estate baron Sam Zell. Zell was out of the country today and unavailable for comment, a spokeswoman said.

Zell has said that his goal would be to find ways of increasing Tribune’s revenue and that unceasing cost cuts were a “dead end.” However, he also has said he would give greater power to regional executives such as Hiller to act as they saw fit to cope with plunging advertising revenue.

O’Shea arrived at The Times from the Chicago Tribune in November 2006, a week after Hiller’s firing of Times Editor Dean Baquet in another budget dispute. Hiller, former publisher of the Chicago Tribune, took over as Times publisher a month earlier, succeeding Jeffrey M. Johnson, who had been ousted by his superiors at Tribune’s Chicago headquarters over the same issues.

snip

[Milhous]

Zell has said that his goal would be to find ways of increasing Tribune’s revenue and that unceasing cost cuts were a “dead end.” However, he also has said he would give greater power to regional executives such as Hiller to act as they saw fit to cope with plunging advertising revenue.

"dead end" LOL.

Everybody was grave yard dancing (HUUH!) (WHOO-HA!)
Those sharks were fast as lighting (HAAA!) (WHOO-CHOP!)
And though it was a little bit frightening (HUUH!) (HOO-HOO!)
But they cut with expert timing. (HAA!)

[abb]

Just in case you didn’t remember the tune.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJQu97_Xwiw&feature=related

[purpleraine]

I don’t think the Times carries him anymore.

[Milhous]

Note prognosis at end and profits 53% below the same period a year earlier.

LOS ANGELES TIMES CUTS ... ITS EDITOR

Los Angeles Times editor James O’Shea has been fired 14 months after he assumed the post, over a budgetary disagreement with publisher David Hiller.

O’Shea is the third successive editor of the paper to leave over budgetary issues.

His predecessor, Dean Baquet, was ousted rather than make cuts requested by Tribune’s then management.

In July 2005, John Carroll had quit under similar circumstances.

Before joining the LA Times, Mr. O’Shea was a managing editor of the Chicago Tribune.

Los Angeles Times had a newsroom staff of more than 1,100 people at the start of this decade, but the number has declined to between 800 and 900.

Its weekday circulation has dropped from 1.1 million to about 800,000.

The profits of the Tribune newspapers in the first three quarters of last year were 53 percent below the same period a year earlier.

What’s next?

More cuts in all the Tribune papers.

More editors fired.

[abb]

What’s next?

[Milhous]

[ken21]

the los angeles times reads like your leftist professor’s class lectures.

[ken21]

right.

ramirez rattled the hollywood leftists and they dumped him.

i see his cartoons now in investors business daily, published in l.a.

[BurbankKarl]

Zell is going to sell of parts of the company. He is already shopping the property of KTLA, the CW station.

[abb]

update.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-oshea21jan21,1,362429.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage&ctrack=1&cset=true

Times editor to leave paper

James O’Shea is the fourth senior executive to depart over a budget dispute in recent years.
By Thomas S. Mulligan and Dawn Chmielewski
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

January 21, 2008

The editor of the Los Angeles Times will leave the paper in a dispute over newsroom cuts, becoming the fourth senior executive in less than three years to depart after resisting budget reductions.

James E. O’Shea, editor since November 2006, said Sunday that he was forced out after disagreeing with Times Publisher David D. Hiller’s plan to shrink the newsroom budget.

“We did not share a common vision for the future of the L.A. Times,” O’Shea said.

Hiller disputed the notion that O’Shea had been fired, saying his exit was part of a larger reorganization plan being put in place under The Times’ new ownership. The paper’s corporate parent, Tribune Co., was bought out last month in an $8.2-billion deal engineered by Chicago real estate baron Sam Zell.

“Think of it as the changes made at the start of a new presidential term,” Hiller said. “In the context of these changes, Jim and I decided we no longer saw things the same way about how to take the company forward.”

O’Shea had told senior editors that he opposed the constant drumbeat of cuts in response to falling advertising revenue.

The push and pull over budgeting is a long-running story at The Times, which has seen its editorial staff shrink in the last eight years to less than 900 from about 1,200. At the same time, the paper’s weekday circulation has dropped to about 800,000 from more than 1 million.

snip

[abb]

www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-paper_monjan21,0,110501.story
chicagotribune.com
3rd L.A. Times editor fired
Ex-Tribune newsman resisted budget cuts

By Phil Rosenthal

Tribune media columnist

January 21, 2008

For the second time in 15 months and the third time in 1 1/2 years, the top editor of Tribune Co.’s Los Angeles Times has left the paper in a dispute over newsroom budget cuts.

Times Publisher David Hiller has fired James O’Shea, 64, the former Chicago Tribune managing editor who replaced Dean Baquet as Times editor in November 2006, sources familiar with the situation told the Tribune on Sunday.

Hiller and O’Shea declined to comment.

Both the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times are owned by Chicago-based Tribune Co., which last month completed its $8.2 billion transaction, led by billionaire Sam Zell, to take the company private. A spokeswoman for Zell, now Tribune Co.’s chairman and chief executive, said he would have no comment.

The paper made no official announcement Sunday about O’Shea’s exit, and it’s not known whom Hiller will appoint the next editor of the Times, Tribune Co.’s largest paper and the country’s fourth-largest paper by weekday circulation, trailing only the national newspapers USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

O’Shea’s exit became public in a report on the Journal’s Web site Sunday, but sources indicated it was determined more than a week earlier after O’Shea balked at the reductions Hiller wanted. The Los Angeles Times reported that the issue was $4 million in cuts.

snip

[Grampa Dave]

“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.”

Milhous, time to recycle those pictures of “Here’s Jack again and the Aztec in action.

[Milhous]

[Milhous]

[Milhous]

[Milhous]

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks for posting those classics for “Good Morning to America’s Mediots. We have a few pictorial scenes re your future in the MSM!”

[potlatch]

Lol, good for you Milhous!