Last week, Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet publicly challenged the Tribune Company’s latest demands to cut the size of his paper’s newsroom. Twenty L.A. civic leaders joined the debate in defense of the Times — the best Tribune paper, and one which brings in about a quarter of Tribune Publishing’s $4 billion or so in annual revenue — and now CEO Dennis FitzSimons has fired back a four-page letter in his company’s defense. The gloves are off in the standoff between the Times and Tribune Co. bosses, and bloggers are predicting that something has got to give.
FitzSimons’ letter “noted that the paper has won numerous Pulitzers during the Tribune’s ownership and spends almost twice as much (as a share of revenue) on editorial than the Otis Chandler regime did,” writes Kevin Roderick at LA Observed. “To rebut the idea that local ownership would be better, he played the Staples Center card — noting that it was under Times Mirror that the Times was embarrassed by a profit-sharing deal with the new arena. Today’s story in the Times by media reporter James Rainey points out, however, that the editor in charge during the Pulitzer-winning reign quit last year in frustration over Tribune budget cutting.”
Indeed, John Carroll, Baquet’s predecessor, stepped down as editor in August 2005 under such circumstances. Taking this into consideration, Shoot the Messenger is elated with Baquet’s resistance now, announcing: “In a rare piece of good news for print journalism, L.A. Times editor Dean Baquet has resisted his bosses’ demands for staff cuts. After 200 job cuts at the L.A. Times in the last five years Baquet told the Times’ management more staffers were needed to provide quality coverage of local, national and international issues.”
The Philadelphia Daily News’ Attytood blogger, Will Bunch, concurs. “We’ve always liked (from afar) journalist Dean Baquet, who’s not only a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter but whose family used to run an awesome soul food restaurant in New Orleans called Eddie’s, where we had the thrill of dining once, back in the day,” he writes. “Dean Baquet is now the editor of the Los Angeles Times, and today he’s a hero.”
But not all are of the same mind. “L.A. Times Editor’s and Publisher’s Defiance Are Firing Offense,” writes Tom Blumer at Bizzyblog. “If it’s not, the people who run the Tribune Co. have lost control of it, and THEY need to go. Dean P. Baquet and Jeffrey M. Johnson have drawn the line in the sand, and have clearly been in open defiance for several months … He should have resigned by now if he really thought the company was going too far, as should have Mr. Johnson. But they are acting as if their newspaper is some kind of indispensable public utility. The public, which is abandoning them by canceling subscriptions at a net rate of 5 percent or more every six months, clearly doesn’t agree.”
At Slate, Mickey Kaus expresses similar skepticism. “Before you rush to agree with LAT columnist Tim Rutten’s self-satisfiedly righteous denunciation of the evil, greedy absentee-owning Tribune Co.,” he writes, “Do you really think Dean Baquet couldn’t put out a high-quality Los Angeles newspaper with a mere 800 editorial employees (instead of the current 940)? The Washington Post operates with about 800 editorial employees. It’s pretty good!”
But regardless of how this all shakes out, Johnson and Baquet’s “defiant stand,” Times reporters Rainey and Thomas S. Mulligan wrote today, “marked a turning point in Tribune’s rocky six-year ownership of the paper.”
Predicting that the duo’s defiance would cost them their jobs, “A top executive at a large newspaper chain” gave this choice quote: “I hope those guys have their career plans well made,” he said, “because you do not tell Dennis FitzSimons and those guys at Tribune you are not going to do something. If you do, you are going to be on the beach, real soon.”
If Mickey Kaus thinks reducing the LA Times staff to 800 is OK, then he's missing the point. The Tribune has reduced the staff again and again at all its papers, closing foreign bureaus and consolidating coverage among many of its largest papers. That may save the Trib lots of money, but it doesn't make for better journalism because it means there's fewer folks watching the hen house. Besides we all know the cuts won't stop at 800. They haven't before and they won't now. I'm not saying Dean Baquet is a hero, but I'd rather have him stand up to the Tribune than back down.
Posted by truetolife on Tue 19 Sep 2006 at 05:21 PM
1200, 1000, 800... staff size is not the problem for the LA Times. The problem is that too many of those left are lying ideologues. As an institution, it simply isn’t trusted as it once was. That’s why its circulation is plummeting. The death of the Times isn’t a homicide from Chicago. It's a suicide in LA
Posted by willinsd on Tue 19 Sep 2006 at 06:29 PM
As a native Chicagoan who has recently had the privilege of reading the LAT more frequently, I must say, the Times is in an entirely different league than our local broadsheet. In fact, it looks like the suits at TribCo are just milking the LAT for its talent and shoving its content in the relatively lightweight pages of the Trib. The lack of original reporting the the Trib is blatantly obvious (in today's front section, a full 15 articles out of 24 are either AP or LAT stories). I guess TribCo is content to shovel other people's hard work into its hometown newspaper and then force those people to make cuts.
Posted by WindyCityCubReporter on Tue 19 Sep 2006 at 11:44 PM
Cutting might make sense if the LAT had the dominance in its market that, say, the Tribune has in its, or if the paper were only covering the city of LA. But that's not the case, and Tribune has never understood that. The "metropolitan area" that is The Times' market is like no other, a massive, five county sprawl with hundreds of city halls, hundreds more school districts, thousands of politicians and millions of people with deep personal and financial interests in the governments of hundreds of foreign nations -- and that's just on the news side. Plus, the LAT is ringed by smaller competing papers that have been eroding its ad base since the Tribune stupidly slashed the LAT's local news operations. Yes, the Internet is part of the problem, but so is the insistence that Southern California is comparable to any other market. This is a question of violating the public trust and Baquet and Johnson have no choice but to stand firm.
Posted by angeleno on Wed 20 Sep 2006 at 12:50 PM
Kevin Roderick forgets that the Staples Center scandal happened when Times Mirror decided to hire someone from the Brilliant World of Business (General Foods, I believe it was) to run Times Mirror and break down that silly wall between Advertising and Editorial.
And yes, that was a hiring decision made under the current crop of Chandlers, who, to all appearances, seem eager to wrest every penny they can from the fruits of their ancestors' labors.
As far as Mickey Kaus' comment regarding the Washington Post being a "pretty good paper." Actually, compared to what it was when Katherine Graham was alive? No, Mickey, it's not a "pretty good paper," it's not even a "good paper." Moreover, comparing the function of the Washington Post with the function of the LA Times is ludicrous. Two very different cities and two very different regions. Yes, Washington is certainly a city of overarching importance both nationally and internationally. Guess what? So is Los Angeles, for entirely different reasons, certainly, but nonetheless still important in ways that much of the U.S. has yet to acknowlege. And Mickey? The Post can get the bulk of its job done within the confines of a very small geographic area a fraction of the size of L.A. County, not to mention California.
Tom Blumer's rant at Bizzyblog is nothing more than a typical Wall Street hissyfit over the revolt of the minions, and the failure of Tribune's Board to deliver "value" to shareholders and verity to Wall Street analysts - most of whom don't understand the media business and never will because it's too infected with icky stuff like nuance and ambiguity and it grosses them out.
Posted by mcQUAIDLA on Wed 20 Sep 2006 at 01:17 PM
CJR's entry is a fair and balanced look at an emotional situation. I appreciate the link.
mcQUAIDLA totally doesn't get it. The LAT has degraded itself with systemic bias that more and more readers are recognizing, even those that aren't looking for it or don't expect it. When subscriptions are declining at 5%-plus every six months, you have to do something. Since the ideologues in the newsroom wouldn't dream of going the fair and balanced route (meaning that the cancellations are bound to continue), and since the suits at the Trib haven't worked up the courage to tell the "journalists" to do their jobs in a fair and balanced manner, the only thing left to do is cut costs to bring expenses in line with declining subscribers.
Also, mcQ needs to ask, if the Chicago Trib is doing such a lousy job, why is it one of the few papers with a subscriber INCREASE in the last reported six-month period?
Posted by Tom at BizzyBlog on Wed 20 Sep 2006 at 01:32 PM
"Degraded itself with systemic bias that more and more readers are recognizing"
Could you give an example of that "systemic bias" please? And, if you're really feeling energetic, how about taking that example of systemic bias and re-doing it in a way that reflects "fairness and balance."
And, do you have evidence that backs up your claim that this "systemic bias" is the reason for the Times losing readership? You're certain, of course, that this decline in readership has nothing to do with the emergence of several smaller, regional dailies within the Times' traditional circ area, right? And you know for sure that those regional dailies haven't gained readers as the Times has cut regional bureaus and regional staffing, thus making it less competitive, right?
And despite declining numbers, can you tell us what the operating profit is for the Times? I heard it was 20 percent, but you may know differently. It's nice to hear that the Chicago Tribune has reported and INCREASE in subcribers the past six months. Maybe it's due to all that fresh material they have access to from the LA Times.
Posted by mcQUAIDLA on Wed 20 Sep 2006 at 04:30 PM
My attempt to give specific links here has failed, so I'll just have to respond to McQ and all else that Patterico.com has had annual rundowns of LAT bias in the past three years, documenting dozens and dozens of irrefutable examples of bias. Once you get to that level, the bias has to be seen as systemic.
Posted by Tom at BizzyBlog on Fri 22 Sep 2006 at 01:12 PM