Weep Again for Journalism

22 January 2008 |permalink | email article

Chilling is the only word to describe the ouster of another top Los Angeles Times editor. It is the fourth time in less than three years that the highest-ranking editor or publisher at the paper has left for resisting newsroom budget cuts.

What struck me about Sunday’s announcement was that it eerily coincided on the same day with another episode of HBO’s ‘The Wire,’ which fictionally focuses on the raw world of Baltimore politics, corruption, the police, black gangs and the pivotal role of The Baltimore Sun.

The Sun, like The Times, is owned by the financially troubled Tribune Company, taken over last month by Sam Zell, the Chicago-based real estate magnate.

Much of the current television episode occurs in The Sun newsroom. Staffers are assembled for an emergency meeting to hear more bad news involving buyouts and reassignments with the publisher regretfully saying “we have to do more with less”

It is a grim and realistic scene, with The Tribune mentioned more than once. Newsroom employees at The Times have experienced it far too often since the Chandler family betrayed L.A. and sold the crown jewel and the Times Mirror franchise to Tribune.

How unreal is it that two longtime Tribune employees have been fired for refusing more Times layoffs, editor Jim O’Shea now and previous publisher Jeff Johnson? Or that a third Tribune veteran, current Times publisher David Hiller, fired O’Shea?

Zell, contrary to previous Tribune management, favors finding new revenue sources rather than more cuts.

Will he really give The Times and each of the Tribune properties greater autonomy that he’s promised?

514