Posted on 01/20/2008 7:52:17 PM PST by jdm
LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Times fired its top editor after he rejected a management order to cut $4 million from the newsroom budget, 14 months after his predecessor was also ousted over a budget dispute, the newspaper said Sunday.
James O'Shea was fired following a confrontation with Publisher David D. Hiller, the Times reported on its Web site. The story didn't say when the confrontation took place.
Times spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan said the newspaper would have no comment.
O'Shea's departure comes just a month after the Times' parent, Chicago-based Tribune Co., was taken private in an $8.2 billion buyout by real estate magnate Sam Zell.
The departure also follows that of his predecessor, Dean Baquet, who was forced to resign after he opposed further cuts to the newsroom budget in 2006.
O'Shea, then the Chicago Tribune's managing editor, was brought in to replace him.
At the time, he asked the news staff not to see him as "the hatchet man from Chicago" and promised to fight to ensure the Times would "remain a major force in American journalism."
"If I think there is too much staff I will say so," O'Shea told the paper's editors and reporters in 2006. "And if I think there is not enough I will say that too."
O'Shea is the third Times editor to leave the newspaper since 2005, all of them departing in disputes with management over how much to cut the news budget.
When Editor John Carroll left in 2005 he was replaced by Baquet, who was then the Times managing editor. Hiller, who had worked with O'Shea in Chicago, then brought him out to replace Baquet.
Before coming to the Times, O'Shea had been managing editor of the Tribune since February 2001 and had worked at the newspaper in various capacities since 1979.
Before joining the Tribune he had been a reporter, editor and Washington correspondent for the Des Moines Register.
ping.
Violins? Hit it!
Not exactly a dupe post, but I see you’ve seen this already...
Beat me by 56 seconds or something!
What are journalists qualified to do as replacement work?
I sure don’t want to eat anywhere they’d be hired to cook.
Yes but yours has the appropriate “Dinosaur Media” tag.
OHH ABBBB
(Hey MSM/DBM!) “I gots tears in my ears, from lyin on my back... cryin over yew!!!” (snort!)
What are journalists qualified to do as replacement work?
Hey, do you want some fries with that?
Boo Hoo...
Anywho, does anyone think a Conservative could run one of these rags and make a dime for themselves and the Shareholders?
“Hey, do you want some fries with that?”
Oh please, say it aint so!
I dont want one of those things anywhere near my food. You cant scrub them clean. You know what kind of diseases those things carry?
Sheesh. Three reporters for the police beat, two for City Hall, and two for miscellaneous local stories and puff pieces.... voila!, the paper only needs seven reporters. Pipe in the rest of the news from AP, UPI, and Reuters. How hard can it be to run the LA Times newsroom?
No Loss!
“What are journalists qualified to do as replacement work?”
Get a paycheck from a pseudo non profit controlled by rats, who hate America. Then, the former mediots can continue to lie and spin and hate America.
When these mediots become paycheckless , there will be no tears from this old man. Just another grin!:)
It’s not the reporters, it’s the marketing staff that will take you under.
No, it's appropriate to fire the editor. He's responsible for the content, and therefore the quality of the product.
And the product SUCKS!
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