LA Times Editor Fired Over Dispute (3rd Since 2005)

[Hissyspit]

Source: Associated Press

Jan 20, 7:42 PM EST
LA Times Editor Fired in Dispute

By JOHN ROGERS
Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- 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 in 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.

- snip -

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.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LA_TIMES_EDITOR_FIRED?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

[melody]

1. I think I'd rather be a Yankees manager or a Fox producer than an LAT editor

Talk about a short stay.

[LaStrega]

2. This story hits close to home for me ...

Roughly 75 people have been cut from our (Star Tribune) newsroom since last summer. All together over 500 people have been let go, and we've been forwarned that more will follow. Newspaper is a dying industry ... I'd best start looking into another career choice ... or find me a sugar daddy.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Thank you for your post. People forget that newspapers have employees...

just as other companies, and any post about one of them usually brings responses limited to villifying the newspaper. This story hits very close to home for our family, too. Working reporters are not getting rich, as you know well. Most of them, in my experience, are on our side politically. Their jobs are in continual jeopardy, like those of most everyone else in Bush's America.

This continuing turmoil at the L.A. Times is profoundly troubling for those who work there and depend on the Tribune Company for a paycheck.

[msongs]

3. and yet, every day there is more trash advertising supplements stuffed in the Times nt

[mrdmk]

4. We canceled our subscription about 6 months ago, the paper keeps showing up in our driveway

without a bill.

Go figure! :shrug:

[fujiyama]

5. The paper used to be pretty good

I think it recently took a rightward shift though and hired real idiots for their editorial section like that Jonah Goldberg.

[Joe Bacon]

6. When Otis Chandler died, so did the Los Angeles Times.

Ever since the Chicago Fibune bought it, it's gone totally downhill and mutated into the Lies Angeles Times.