L.A. Times editor O'Shea fired

Agreed. But will anyone from Tribune get it? If not, that's a lot of quality journalists sacrificed in vain.

And the JRCs and Dean Singleton schools of thought will help Tribune feel better about what it's doing. That's disgusting, but ...

 

Boiler plate column bitching about the decline of journalism standards in favor of the bottom line coming in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ...

 

If the "bottom line" is increasing revenues, I don't think you can say the cuts were in favor of the bottom line. Cuts haven't helped turn newspapers around yet and I don't see it happening in the future.
Investors are merely buying newspapers for their cash flow, like some meth-head ripping off bleachers and guard rails to get cash for a "fix."

 

Answering in reverse order: Those days, like Pong, are gone. And it'll stop when there are no more broadsheets as we know them, and that day is coming. Don't know when, but it's inevitable. Hate it, especially since I've spent 36 years in the biz, but it's inevitable.

 

decrying the "business-ization" of newspapers is like wailing about the "business-ization" of sports.
The latter was pretty clear from the time Babe Ruth was sold to the New York Yankees.
The former long before that.

When someone pays $8.2 billion for something, they don't look to increase spending, not matter how "journalistically noble" the reasons might be

(and c'mon, the Olympics are hardly on par with a presidential election. I've seen the LA Times' Olympic machine in operation and it could afford to trim to few dollars)

That being said, I'm all in favour of strong editorial budgets, but let's not pretend that cost-cutting is a "new" financial trend

 

If newspapers were a current presidential candidate - the candidate would be written off as having no chance.

 

The candidate most closely resembling the newspaper industry, of course, is Fred Thompson.

 

Looks important, sounds important, but in the end, people aren't buying it.

 

O'Shea's goodbye memo is here. The highlights:

 

Funny, that sounds like a firing to me.

 

James O'Shea's son is a friend of mine....nice guy (he's not in the newspaper biz, he's working on a Ph.D. in biology). Buddy of mine who works at the Trib says that O'Shea had a rep as being one of the few decent human beings in upper management there.
The whole thing is extremely depressing...the fact that a major newspaper in a huge city is gutting itself. This industry is just committing suicide in slow motion.

 

Dead solid perfect.