New Tribune chair dumps CEO

Things could get real interesting at TPUB, real fast. Key questions: 1/What becomes of all these NYT exes that Griffin assembled as his executive team? 2/What becomes of Tribune's California presence?

CEO Jack Griffin is out at Tribune

 

As for the latter, let's hope it's soon to end with Broad or someone buying up the LAT and installing Beutner back to run it.

 

And as for question No. 1, I'd expect the new boss to scrutinize the cost-effectiveness of Denise Warren, the digital guru who is being paid mid-six figures while rank-and-file employees who've managed to survive layoffs and buyouts have gone without raises for years.

 

Sadly, it is very rare for a new CEO to go after high priced executives unless they have a more expensive buddy they want to bring in as a replacement. The peons are always the first to go.

 

LA Times got six passes to cover the Oscars.

New CEO and chairman each took two of the passes. Publisher was all set to do the same -- which would have left the Times with zero reporters covering the event -- until he finally succumbed to arm-twisting.

Oscar spotlight a dim one for hometown L.A. Times

 

I don't see the problem. As long as the execs and their dates blog, tweet, take photos and videos and file on time, they should be allowed to go.

 

Normally, I'd agree -- except that the new people in charge are Chicago guys and the chatter is that they want to make the company more Chicag0-centric. Griffin was a New York guy, and Warren used to be with the New York Times.

Then again, because of golden parachutes and the like, it might be very costly to let Warren go shortly after cutting ties with Griffin, which undoubtedly involved some sort of payoff.

 

Top Tribune executives said to be on the way out in house-cleaning

 

Tribune Publishing Company - Tribune Publishing Co. Reports Fourth Quarter 2015 Results

Cutting from the top. All publishers fired except the LA Times publisher, who has been moved to corporate. Digital guru Denise Warren out. Ferro donates his Sun-Times stake to charity like an unwanted old car.

 

I was wrong. The new CEO consolidated the Editor and Publisher jobs. SO he did reduce high priced head count along with offing Warren.

As someone who is frequently wrong but always opinionated I saw some interesting items in the press release. The company acquired the LA.com website. I am not sure who owned it but that would seem to indicate that the company is interested in staying in the LA market. So I would guess that means that the company still wants to acquire the OCR.

An donating Sun-Times stock to charity? Another ominous cloud for the Sun-Times.

 

That's quite a rapid ascent for Bruce Dold at the Chicago Tribune. Two weeks ago, he was editorial page editor. Then Gerould Kern went away and he was promoted to editor. Now, he's editor and publisher.

Not a huge deal that the two top jobs are being combined in Fort Lauderdale because the now-ex-publisher announced his retirement late in '15 and said he'd leave no later than Sept. 1, 2016. So he gets to start retirement a bit early.

 

Every nine months or so the Lauderdale publisher would hold a "town hall" meeting in the newsroom where he would go over the financials and all the really neat revenue initiatives that were in the works. Meetings were always generally positive in nature. Two or three weeks after the meetings would come the news about layoffs.