To Lose One Editor Decrying Budget Cuts Is Understandable; To Lose Two Is Sloppy, But To Lose Three Such Editors In Three Years Is Just Plain Tragic – Welcome To The Los Angeles Times

Philip M. Stone January 22, 2008

That such a proud newspaper as the Los Angeles Times has now gone through three editors in three years, all gone because they refused huge editorial budget cuts, is as good a sign as any of the sorry state of the US newspaper business – cutting the fat is done, cutting into the meat is ongoing, and they’re even chipping away at the bone.

That James O’Shea has refused to give up $4 million in budget cuts is extraordinary. He was the “company man” Tribune sent to Los Angeles 14 months ago  after previous editor Dean Baquet very publicly refused further big editorial cuts. Baquet in that case was backed up publicly by his publisher, and they both got thrown out by the Chicago bosses. In came James Hiller, the Chicago Tribune publisher,  and a month later James O’Shea, the Tribune’s managing editor, and there is no doubt they had their marching orders to financially straighten out The Times.

A year later and the Sam Zell privatization became final. Zell has publicly said his business plan is to let the local managers manage, make the decisions and live or die by those decisions. It’s basically no more following the orders from Chicago. And Zell is touring the country telling staff at newspapers what they want to hear --the way to make newspapers profitable is not via job cuts but rather by bringing in additional revenue. He even implied that staff numbers may increase in the months to come– particularly in sales.

His message just last week, “Going forward, by definition, there will be a lot of changes. I do not believe that anybody can grow a business by reducing the number of employees. It is not our game plan to, in effect, try and figure out how few people we can have run this business. The focus of everything that we're going to do is directed at one thing: generating more revenue."

And yet here is the Los Angeles Times publisher telling his editor to do with $4 million less than he says he needs to do the job. No doubt Hiller has done his sums on what it will take to earn his 2008 bonus, and perhaps keep his job, and so his orders not to increase the editorial spend which is about $120 million annually. But it would also seem that O’Shea is a man of his word, even if it was corporate who sent him to Los Angeles to follow orders.

When he arrived in Los Angeles he had to face a very unhappy news staff that really liked and appreciated what Baquet and his publisher had tried to do to prevent more newsroom cuts. He told them flat-out not to consider him the “hatchet man from Chicago” and he promised to be honest in deciding newsroom needs –“If I think there is too much staff, I will say so, and if I think there is not enough, I will say that, too.”

He implemented the first part of that quote and the Times cut 70 newsroom jobs last April, but when he implemented the second part of the quote this month it apparently was not what Hiller wanted to hear. The Tribune reported that it was known in senior circles in Chicago a week before O’Shea publicly lost his job that he would be gone. That could well mean it was Hiller’s decision, but that he checked with head office as a cya (cover your ass) just to make sure there were no objections. Apparently he got the green light to run his show as he thinks best.

The Times does seem to be a bit PR sensitive about all this and Hiller is trying to spin O’Shea’s departure not as a “firing” but rather it’s a new Sam Zell world, there’s a new reorganization plan soon to be announced and “Jim and I decided we no longer saw things the same way about how to take the company forward.”

It is very subjective just how many journalists are needed to do whatever the Times believes it should be doing. Do less coverage and you need less people. And if the public still says it’s “good enough” then the cuts win. The Times is the fourth largest US circulation newspaper and circulation stayed stable last year at around 800,000. In the past eight years the editorial count has shrunk from 1,200 to less than 900, and circulation has dropped by one-third.

O’Shea certainly knew what happens to people in Tribune who don’t follow orders but putting his job on the line and for him to draw a line in the sand probably means he believes the newspaper has gone as far as it can go and still produce the type of quality that Los Angeles residents are used to. The Times in its own story about the dismissal quotes George Kieffer, head of the Los Angeles Civic Alliance who asked, “How do you continue to cover the community and provide civic education with these continuing cuts in resources?”

It’s an issue that is beginning to make headlines in the US – not just that newspapers are cutting back — that story has been around for a long time – but rather about what they are cutting back on.

Local town councils and the like are complaining they no longer receive the type of daily coverage they once did. Local people are not being kept informed by their local newspapers what their local government is doing for them. It’s a fascinating complaint because one would think politicians would be happy not to be in the critical eye of the local newspaper and they could get away with what they wanted, but there seem to be a general belief by local officials that is better to have coverage – complimentary and critical – rather than no coverage at all.

Many types of news beats are disappearing. The Chronicle of Higher Education says many newspapers have cut back on covering their local colleges and universities, except for sports.  It complains:

“At the National Education Writers Association, which represents education reporters and editors around the country, the e-mail list for elementary- and secondary-school reporters buzzes with activity while the higher-education list lies mostly moribund. The financial challenges at all newspapers are daunting. Something has to go. Coverage of elementary and secondary schools is closer to readers' hearts, editors argue. Higher education, by contrast, generally operates better and involves lots of out-of-town students. So out goes the higher-education coverage. At many papers, the only reporters covering colleges and universities write about basketball and football.”

Last February the American media sage Walter Cronkite told students at Colombia University that journalists “face rounds and rounds of job cuts and cost cuts that require them to do ever more with ever less. In this information age and the very complicated world in which we live today, the need for high-quality reporting is greater than ever. It's not just the journalist's job at risk here. It's American democracy. It is freedom."

Mr. Hiller, of course, would tell him it’s really all about maintaining margin.