L.A. Times Fires Chief Editor
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 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.
Be respectful of others and their opinions. Inflammatory remarks and inane leftist drivel will be deleted. It ain’t about free speech, remember you’re in a private domain. My website, my prerogative.
If you can't handle using your real email address, don't bother posting a comment.
Why, is readership and advertising revenue down?
January 20th, 2008 at 9:16 pm