Stanton named editor of the L.A. Times (Deck Chair Re-arrangement Alert)

Los Angeles Times ^ | February 15, 2008 | Thomas S. Mulligan and Martin Zimmerman

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Russ Stanton, a 10-year veteran of the Los Angeles Times who has been in charge of invigorating its website, on Thursday became the newspaper's 14th editor.

Stanton will lead a staff chafing from the recent exit of its third editor in less than three years and worried about job cuts. Former Editor James O'Shea and Publisher David D. Hiller parted ways Jan. 21 after a disagreement over whether the editorial budget should shrink.

The 49-year-old Stanton referred to "the high turnover rate in this job" in remarks he delivered in the paper's third-floor newsroom in downtown Los Angeles.

"Like most of you, I was attracted to this great journalistic institution because of its size, reach and reputation," he said. "I have grown tired and am now hopping mad over this seemingly endless 'Groundhog Day' nightmare. We in the newsroom need to figure out how to break this self-defeating cycle before it does indeed result in our defeat."

Hiller picked Stanton, a former Times business editor, over two other in-house candidates: Managing Editor John Arthur, 60, and Editorial Page Editor Jim Newton, 44. Hiller said the "decisive factor" in tapping Stanton was that he could "best lead change in the newsroom at a time of really amazing change and tumult" in the industry.

Hiller also shook up The Times' business side Thursday, with the departure of his most senior subordinate and the elevation of other executives.

The changes came two months after an $8.2-billion deal took Times parent Tribune Co. private in a partnership between Chicago billionaire Sam Zell and an employee stock ownership plan. Although Tribune is profitable, the deal left it laden with $13 billion of debt at a time when the economy is sagging and advertising revenue is steadily declining at the company's newspapers and television stations...

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[Drango]

who has been in charge of invigorating its website...

Dude, that PAY for content worked real well didn't it? What happened?

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/business/media/15paper.html

February 15, 2008
New Top Editor for Los Angeles Times, the 4th in 3 Years
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

The Los Angeles Times named a new top editor on Thursday, Russ Stanton, three weeks after the previous editor, James E. O’Shea, was forced out for resisting another in a series of staff cuts.

Mr. Stanton, who has been running The Times’s Web site, will take charge of an deeply unsettled newsroom that in less than three years has lost three chief editors, all of whom publicly protested the shrinking of the news staff.

Many editors and reporters resented the treatment of Mr. O’Shea — not to mention his predecessors — and for years the newsroom has been at odds with the paper’s publisher, David D. Hiller, and its corporate owner, the Tribune Company.

Mr. Hiller also named Jack D. Klunder, who has been in charge of the newspaper’s circulation department, to the new post of president of the newspaper, overseeing all the business operations. And he announced that David P. Murphy, who has headed the newspaper’s lagging advertising sales department, would be leaving.

Both moves were welcomed by people throughout the paper, who see Mr. Klunder as the most capable of its business executives and Mr. Murphy as a divisive figure.

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[allen08gop]

Go Dave Hiller — a Republican if anyone cares to check his campaign contributions.

[Uncledave]

Stanton will lead a staff chafing from the recent exit of its third editor

So Stanton and the 3rd editor were getting it on?

[Milhous]

With Republicans like Hiller who needs Democrats?

It looks like Hiller mostly supports the Giuliani/McCain/Bush wing of the Republican Party. Hiller's apparent lack of financial support for the likes of McClintock and Hunter reminds me of Buff Chandler, late wife of a former LA Times publisher, who constantly fretted over the supposed unchecked anger of conservatives and supported Pat Brown over Ronald Reagan.

Even a genuine conservative at the Times would find it exceeding difficult to influence employees who fancy themselves as doing the Lord's work by providing a "social conscience" to the great unwashed (eg working class taxpayers).

[Grampa Dave]

He has to feel like Custer’s next in line did while the Indians were winning.