L.A. Times editor O'Shea fired

Keep in mind that Hiller fired Baquet, the previous editor, and hand-picked O'Shea from Chicago as the new editor.

Two other excerpts to highlight from O'Shea's farewell:



If you have to consider closing foreign bureaus and cutting back in other parts of the paper to free up the money needed to cover the Olympics and the most historic political campaign in modern times, well to me that’s no plan for the future, that is not serving the interest of readers. It is simply stupid.

The biggest challenge we face -- journalists and dedicated newspaper folks alike – is to overcome this pervasive culture of defeat, the psychology of surrender that accepts decline as inevitable. This mindset plagues our business and threatens our newspapers and livelihoods. I believe that when Sam Zell understands how asinine the current budgetary system is, he will change it for the better, because he is a smart businessman and he understands the value of wise investment. A dollar’s worth of smart investment is worth far more than a barrel of budget cuts.

 

Did Hiller used to work for Alberto Gonzalez?

 

No. He served in the Reagan Administration under William French Smith.

 

Why so many stand-up editors at the L.A. Times -- and so few at other places? I'm not naive enough to think that more top bosses quitting in protest would stop this madness, but it would make it a little easier to endure, if you knew there were more in charge (until they quit, of course) who don't drink the Kool-Aid and don't just shovel the crap downhill. I don't want to hear about the bosses who, lacking spine, claim that they're committed to "change from within" or some other management-speak.

I know I would walk before I would preside over 20 percent of my staff being shown the door. Hiring so many (cough) "leaders" who don't have the balls or the consciences to strike back at this stuff is a big part of the problem. Newsrooms are run by too many bean-counters and careerists, instead of hardcore journalists.

Can one owner or publisher out there name a single newspaper that has cut and slashed its way to a) better profitability AND b) better journalism? It's like trying to find one lemming that had a soft landing.

 

One of two things needs to happen to save the newsppaer industry.

1) The quick fix is hope that a major newspaper gets nailed with a HUGE libel suit based on something from a "citizen journalist", hopefully it will be a Gannett paper. That will get rid of the whole "citizen journalist" crap and newspapers may actually hire some real staff again.

2) This is gonna take a while and a lot more suffering... The corporations need to get out of the journalism buisness. Basically they need to water them down so much and put them so far in the toilet they have no more staff to cut to "save" money. So they end up selling them at HUGE discounts... pennies on the dollar to what they paid for them. Then when they go back to being family-owned, they need to build themselves back up (if that's even possible, hopefully it is). Newspapers still have the ability to be profitable, but those won't be 30-40% profits like in the 20th century. But they still can make a few million dollars a year, something that doesn't sound like much for a big corporation, but for a family, making $2-3 million a year doesn't sound too bad to me.

But, you gotta spend money to make money... something that seems hard for the Tribune company to grasp.

I know personally my editor wouldn't have the balls to stand up to our publisher like this, most wouldn't

 

Well, Joe, I was on a paper that cut significant staff and the circulation went up. Now I understand there are various tricks that can be used to make that happen short term. And certainly I knew plenty of people who thought the journalism got worse, but it didn't appear readers agreed. My personal feeling at the time was that our journalism got worse in some areas and got better in others, although the whole deal was hardly pleasant and, in my opinion, unnecessary and pretty bad for the paper longterm.

As for the other point, it's O'Shea's life and it's not my place to say whether he should have stayed and made the cuts, although if I were there, I'd rather the cuts be made by someone who knows and respects the staff instead of the cuts being made by a new guy coming from outside. On Romenesko, it looks like they'll promote from within, but who knows? They didn't last time.

 

It's probably a little easier to walk at the Times than other places. I'm sure an editor at the Times is fairly secure financially. The editor of the Podunk Gazette is somewhat less so.

 

Why hasn't this happened yet? It's not like this concept is a few months old. We're a few years into blogs, web comments, general "citizen journalist" debauchery. Have there been any notable lawsuits or settlements?

 

Libel suits are notoriously hard to win.

Don't hold your breath waiting for libel suits to bring your jobs back.

 

Besides, even if the "citizen journalist" idea goes away, it doesn't mean the slash-and-burn mentality will subside. They'd just find some other way to squeeze as much out of the paper as possible before it goes under. Don't count on the demise of "citizen journalists" to bring back jobs for real journalists.

 

It's called falling on a very sharp sword . . . a sword that's gotten a good deal of use Out There, in recent years . . .