US: Los Angeles Times publisher fired

Posted by John Burke on October 6, 2006 at 12:38 PM

Because he announced publicly his refusal to cut more jobs at his paper, Jefferey M. Johnson, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, was asked to resign. The paper's parent company, Tribune, is under considerable pressure from shareholders to cut costs and improve its stock market value. With Johnson out, Tribune will take control of the paper it purchased in 2002 and which makes up 25% of its overall revenue.

The paper's editor, Dean Baquet, who also refused more job cuts, was not fired and did not step down from his post. Although it is possible that he could still leave, Baquet is hopeful that he can now work with other management to minimize job cuts and reform the budget. If he had been fired, it was speculated that many senior editors would have walked out the door with him in protest.

The fiasco demonstrates perfectly the stress on America's publicly held papers and echoes the rapid disbanding and sale of the country's second largest publisher, Knight Ridder, last year.

Source: New York Times

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