The Blog

O'Shea will find readers at the Reader inclined to agree, as well.

-- MrJM

Mike -- Please don't forget that one of Jim O'Shea's first acts at the LATimes was to eliminate the jobs of several dozen highly qualified, if elderly journalists. Most of the buyouts weren't voluntary. That’s because he subscribed to the Tribune mythology that the Times was chronically bloated and its reporters were living the life of Riley. Months later, he probably would have agreed to cut more staff/budget, but he and publisher David Hiller simply couldn't agree on the numbers.

O'Shea knew, though, that he would be losing the big guns needed to fortify his position as someone who could have filled the rather large shoes of Dean Baquet and John Carroll. The leaky ship he inherited was about to sink and, like any rat, he decided to git while the gittin' was good. His farewell letter to the staff said all the right things, but it neglected to mention that he played a key role in the further diminishment of the paper.

In this way, O'Shea was able to go out in a blaze of glory ... just like John and Dean. (The resignations of Jeff Johnson and John Puerner were far more telling, personally risky and vexing to the LA business community.)

That letter was his best and only lasting contribution to the legacy of the once-great LATimes. No one misses him there. He was merely a blip on the radar screen … just as he was as ME of the Tribune, which suffered even more extensive butchering during his tenure.

The Reader has already been devastated, so, maybe, O’Shea can convince his fellow board members to beef up staffing, space and budgets. If he starts tinkering, however, run for cover.

Here’s what O’Shea had to say about the new owner of Tribune Co. just days after the sale – or giant tax dodge – was announced.

“I'm almost five months into the job of editor of this great newspaper,” he wrote, “and I hope my decisions since I've started have earned me some credibility. If I thought this was a bad deal, I would say so. I don't. As with any change of ownership, this transaction carries some risk.

“We are assuming a heavy debt burden and the problems we face have not disappeared. But Sam Zell is a creative thinker and an inventive entrepreneur. A fresh shot of new thinking is not going to hurt us, along as we remain committed to what is really important, our coverage of the news.”

Turns out, it hardly mattered how committed rank-and-file employees were to “what is really important.” Their commitment and ownership stake in the ESOP meant nothing to Zell. Fortunately for O’Shea, however, his LATimes parachute and intact Tribune retirement package provided a cushion no one else at the LATimes would get.

Skeptical makes some good points about O'Shea's brief tenure at the LA Times, especially in light of the latest evidence that good journalism means a more profitable product. One gets the impression that none of these guys, from Zell on down, had even the faintest clue about turning out a better product that would keep or draw in new readers. In many, many cases they simply cast off their best people, apparently taking no more trouble than required to simply look at the salary figures, attach them to a name and then cut the cord.

But O'Shea's digs at the Tribune are telling, too. Its watchdogging is appreciated, but some of it is overhyped and incremental. Chicago right now has no regular outlet for long-form journalism. If O'Shea is as good as his word, we'll begin to see this again in the Reader.

My wife moved here in the 1980s and, she says, learned nearly everything she needed to know about Chicago, and a lot more, by reading the Reader nearly front to back every week. I wasn't quite that avid a fan but I can say that over the years the Reader has given me a far deeper and finer-grained sense of this sometimes wonderful city than either of its big dailies have.

We both have a great affection for this publication and have mourned its decline. Tonight we're hopeful, and we wish you all the best.

I'm not sure I understand Skeptical's point. The Los Angelas Times, as the time of the cuts he mentions, was a huge newspaper that employed thousands of journalists (and had failed at its attempt to become a national newspaper and attract readers from outside of the L.A. area). The cuts at the Reader that O'Shea is critisising brought the staff to around a dozen people. Comparing the two strikes me as rather bizarre.

M. Miner,

Should lovers of the Reader be opening a bottle of champaign or hittin' the tequila?

-- MrJM

And on it goes. Good luck to whomever's still left

I don't expect anything good to come of this, but at least Benji Eason is out of the picture. You'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger boob in the weekly biz. The Readers founders deserve a raspberry, too. You think they would have wanted the paper they built to thrive. Instead they cashed out to the highest bidder and headed for the hills with their pockets stuffed with cash. And the people that worked for them took it up the tailpipe.

Now the Reader will, I predict, be sold several times in the next few years. What a pity.

Sherylwriter, you might want to have a look at Miner's story about the actual conditions behind the Reader sale here: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-s….

And by the way, as they "headed for the hills," the old owners deposited a generous portion of the proceeds into their former employees' profit-sharing accounts.

"And by the way, as they "headed for the hills," the old owners deposited a generous portion of the proceeds into their former employees' profit-sharing accounts."

That they did. And with no fanfare, back-patting, or condescending self-congratulation. It just showed up, and I for one was extremely grateful for it. Granted the accounts as a whole - even with careful management - have taken a beating in the last year and a half, but that's not their or our fault and it doesn't take away from what was a class move. Tough to lose a job after 9+ years, and they may not have necessarily faced the future square-shouldered in 2006-07, but it can never be said that the old owners didn't value us and didn't show it. 'Cause they did.

To IAC: First off, I wasn't comparing the Reader to the Los Angeles Times. There are too many differences between them to mention and almost all of them are obvious.

I hope Mr. O'Shea is true to his word and uses his position on the board to restore the Reader to some semblance of its former glory. Immediately re-hiring some of the Reader's former stars would go a long way to achieving that goal. I'm "Skeptical," because, while Mr. O'Shea talks a good game in advance, he's likely to bail when it stops going his way. It was no secret why he was made the editor of the Times and Mr. Hiller the publisher: they had a track record at the Tribune of playing along with the brass, whose eyes then were on Wall Street, and could be counted on to make the cuts that Mr. Baquet and Mr. Johnson couldn't abide.

There was no good reason for O'Shea to stick around during the Zell era, other than collecting a pay check ... and losing that wasn't a burden for him. He was a Chicago guy and was happy to return home. The Times' staffers he encouraged to keep on doing the good work of journalism weren't as fortunate.

At the time of the first post-Baquet cuts, yes, the number of Times employees was "in the thousands" ... 2,625 to be exact. The number of newsroom employees, however, was about 920, and it would shrink to about 850, down from a high of some 1,200 in the "Velvet Coffin" era. The news hole would shrink 15 percent, at least; features, columnists and political cartoonists would be dropped; the actual size of the broadsheet would be reduced; and a couple dozen reporters/editors would find a new home on the Internet.

These cuts may not impress IAC, but they were sufficient cause for alarm among L.A.'s political, business, activist and advertising communities -- as well as stupified subscribers -- to speak out against them in public and private forums. (Where was the outcry in Chicago when even more drastic cuts were being made?) And, ironically, the worst was yet to come.

At the beginning of O'Shea's tenure, the New York Times had 1,200 newsroom employees and, after a then-recent buyout, the Washington Post had about 750 (with a significantly smaller circulation than the both of the Times). The LATimes currently has about 550 newsroom employees, fewer sections and even less prestige.

This decline had little to do with the LATimes' longtime aspiration to become a national or, even, the SoCal paper of record. Those sank of their own accord, poor distribution, lack of late scores and news, and general disinterest outside Hollywood in the movie biz.

It should be noted that the newsstand price for a daily edition also had gone up to 75 cents, from its time-honored 25 cents, and thousands of readers would lose the daily habit. (Today, you can subscribe daily/Sunday for $110 a year, and get great access to the Internet.)

Unlike Carroll and Baquet, who were hired after the Tribune/Times-Mirror deal. O'Shea did represent the official Tribune opinion that the Times was monstrously bloated and wrong in its stand against the consolidation of bureaus and running more Tribune-produced copy. He got religion when he saw what it took to cover the world, nation and SoCal in something other than the zone-crazed and brief-happy way the Tribune did. Suddenly, he enjoyed having that big, smart and respected staff behind him.

Knowing what Zell had planned -- all O'Shea had to do was consult with his shell-shocked pals back home in the Tower -- he fell on his bayonet. There was no upside in staying.

The Reader could easily benefit from his news sense and drive. Good luck to him and the Reader and readers of the Reader. Board members, remember, are required to be more responsive to investers than customers. Optimism based on O'Shea's self-martyrdom at the LATimes, however, should be tempered.

Anybody who believes that a newspaper like the Los Angeles Times can in this day-and-age have 920 journalists (or 850, for that matter) and thrive in the long term is most likely living in a fantasyland. In doesn't seem persuasive to me to critsisize a former editor for going along with cuts that really look pretty modest considering the current state of the industry. In fact, the cuts made at the time he resigned in protest (at least ostensively) seem really modest as well. If there is anything for which to critisize O'Shea it is that he attempted to make himself into a martyr rather than accepting the fact that newspaper companies needed to severly cut costs in order to reflect the fact that their economic model has changed. The absurdity of having more than one newspaper in the same chain have their own Washington bureau and seperate foreign bureaus in the same country could not continue. The Tribune company is in bankrupcy, for Christ's sake. In my opinion, it isn't even really debateable any longer whether it made sense for the Los Angeles Times (or the Tribune) to have had the number of journalists it once did. Maybe the company would be in better shape if more cuts had been made sooner.

It probably does make sense for the Reader to expand its journalist staff a bit at this time. I do agree with O'Shea about that.

IAC: I'm not sure longtime readers of the LATimes will be appeased by your strictly-business arguments. By those standards, it's OK to trim to the bone; export the copy desk and local reporting duties to India (certain Singleton papers); and require subscribers to call someone in the Philippines for customer service (Tribune and others). I get it. Wall Street must be fed.

In America, when quality doesn't contribute to the bottom line, business demands profit over quality. That's just the way it is. I may not like it ... but I get it. Taking Tribune or any company private occasionally makes that reality mute.

However, none of that excuses shoddy business practice and myopia. During the due-diligence period of the Times-Mirror deal, Tribune Co. inexplicably ignored warning flags waving from the west coast on a billion-dollar tax scam by the Chandlers. In the case of Sam Zell, the trailer-park czar and slumlord convinced himself that he not only could rescue a sinking ship not in his native waters, but he could get other people to pay for it (Tribune employees and taxpayers), as well.

Before the Tribune purchased the Los Angeles Times, it was only a new editor and publisher away from being able -- once again -- to compete with any newspaper in the world ... again, using strictly journalistic standards. Indeed, Tribune Co proved that by pouring money into its new flagship (while pulling money away from the old one); hiring Baquet, Carroll and at least a dozen new top-shelf staffers; firing the execs responsible for the Staples Center debacle and other atrocities; and raising the news and marketing budgets. The immediate result: a nearly record number of Pulitzers; increased prestige; and hope for a better product from subscribers.

Within two months, however, after basking in the afterglow, Tribune executives did exactly what IAC suggests they should have done all along: slash, burn and get back to the business of meeting Wall Street expectations. Mind you, even while bloated, profit margins there had risen to nearly 20 percent, compared with the low-teens in the Chandler era. It wasn't enough for the boys in the Tower.

It was then, and then, only, that Carroll and Baquet realized that the return for their hard work would be a call to eliminate many of the people who helped the paper succeed over the past 30 years (the Otis Chandler era). At first, these editors and publishers (Puerner and Johnson) were able to go along, agreeing that some staff members were hanging on pathetically and were expendable. By the time, O'Shea and Hiller came along, there was only bone to cut. They saw fat where others saw lean and did what they were told.

After the acquisition by Zell, the sky was the limit as to the number of buyouts required at the Times. O'Shea understood this and martyred himself. Hiller was bounced for a strictly business guy from the satellite-TV dodge (David was having too much fun and not focusing on the bottom line). The LATimes shrank and became a shadow of its former self. Readers responded by not buying the paper and advertisers followed their lead.

Even, then, however, the LATimes was and continues to be a much better paper than the Tribune. (Check it out yourself.)

From a strictly business point of view that probably indicates to you, IAC, that there's still some fat left on the bone. You're entitled to your opinion. As a onetime subscriber to both papers, I'll continue to vote with my wallet. If I want to read the Times, I can go to the library or website, and, no, I won't pay for that privilege.

Things might have been quite different if the Tribune had cut the Times loose before the sale to Zell, giving a guy like David Geffen a chance to take the paper -- if not the chain -- private and succeed at lower margins. It's also possible that the Sun-Times might not be the wreck it became if the Fields hadn't succumbed to greed and sold to Murdoch. There were alternative investors around then, too.

We'll see how the new board handles adversity, if any, when it rears its ugly head at the Reader. Let's hope Mr. O'Shea continues to object to the slash-and-burn strategy and makes his feelings known in time for another more, civic-minded interest to consider purchasing the paper, giving it a more fair chance of success, however marginal. (Remember, according the Randy Michaels, NONE of the Tribune papers are losing money. It's the deal that sucked.)

At least O'Shea is a real journalist. He (along with George De Lama) held the Trib's barricades against the charge of the Zell's pander-to-the lowest-denominator brigade for as long as he could. True, the newsroom succumbed in the end. But at least he battled in good faith, and for a vision that was bigger than weightless, hyper-local McNews and an editorial imagination atrophied by clicks-per-day. So don't lose heart quite yet . . . at least not until the next quarterly statement or two, anyway.