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.
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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.
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