Nelson to the LAT:
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.
gracias!
the los angeles times reads like your left wing professor’s
lectures when you were in college.
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.
Liberal editors can be found behind any dumpster.
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
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
update.
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