I'm not privy to the story behind the story of Editor Jim O'Shea's firing at the
Los Angeles Times. However, even before he amplified on it in a
stinging farewell speech to the newsroom, O'Shea packed a punch in his mild intitial comment that he and publisher David Hiller, "didn't share a common vision for the future" of the paper.
If indeed Hiller even has one. And his talkative new boss, billionaire Sam Zell seems, so far, to be bringing mostly borrowed money and nostrums to the party.
Hiller is a prolific memo writer and
led one a year ago promising changes "that will help move us toward our vision of a true multimedia enterprise -- delivering news and information across channels, all through the day, to meet evolving needs of readers, users and advertisers." Fine, but both that vision and the detail that follow are mostly catch-up to Web site upgrades the rest of the industry had executed a year earlier.
For his part, Zell talks positively, aphoristically -- but also vaguely -- about his plans. Reporting on his get-acquanited tour of East Coast properties last week,
The Morning Call of Allentown
called his remarks a "pep talk." There is not a discernible road map there.
Also giving a publisher like Hiller authority to pick or fire the editor is not new but a reinforcement of Tribune practice. Given how little of use has flowed out to the satellite properties from Chicago in recent years, Zell is at least being canny to undescore decentralization and do-it-yourself home market improvements. Tribune newspaper sites began to get better two years ago when the company phased out an outmoded design and software all had been forced to use, letting the individual newspapers chart their own course.
Hiller may have hinted at the real story in a July memo where he said first-half profits, once reliably at 20% or better at the Times, had fallen to the low teens. The third and fourth quarters were worse still industry-wide.
That is a disturbing earnings trajectory for management, whether in L.A. or Chicago. Maybe it suggests swallowing hard and not sending a platoon of reporters, columnists and videographers to the Olympics this time.
The Olympics coverage question is also the long-time L.A. identity crisis in miniature. Can the paper pursue national and international distinction with the economic base of a typical metro (and none of the special advantages the Washington Post has gained with corporate diversification and a top-of-the-line Web presence)?
Tribune seems to lavish creativity and care on its flagship namesake in Chicago, never quite saying, but treating L.A. as Fort Lauderdale only bigger.
That may argue for a fresh look at selling to a home-town Los Angeles mogul like David Geffen or Eli Broad. They at least have a jump on the vision thing with the formulation "a paper as great as our city."
