L.A. Times drops 3rd Editor

James O'Shea, The editor of the Los Angeles Times has been fired because of a dispute over newsroom budget cuts. He is the third editor of Tribune Co.'s Los Angeles Times to have left the paper in the past 30 months. O’Shea had held the post for only 14 months.

A veteran of the Chicago Tribune, O'Shea had replaced Dean Baquet as Times editor in November 2006. The news paper cited an unnamed source on its website saying that the editor was fired by publisher David Hiller after he refused to carry out some $4 million in cuts.

Both Hiller and O'Shea declined to comment.

The L.A. Times is Tribune Co.'s largest paper and the country's fourth-largest paper by weekday circulation, trailing only the national newspapers USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. No names have been suggested as yet for filling the vacant post.

The newspaper issued a statement late Sunday saying that like all newspaper companies, it was "facing major challenges in charting a course that will be successful for the future".

For that, the paper said, it will carry out some significant organizational changes “to put us in the best position to succeed." O’Shea’s exit is the consequence of these changes.

Tribune Co. the parent company of the Los Angeles Times also owns the Chicago Tribune. Last month, it completed $8.2 billion transaction, led by billionaire Sam Zell, to take the company private.

With the deal Tribune was restructured as an employee-owned company funded largely by debt.

In recent years media companies have experienced rough times because of adverse newspaper advertising environment. The Times, like many others has cut staff and editorial resources.

Sources at the Times, which Tribune Co. took over in its 2000 acquisition of Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Co., said since hat this is a presidential election year, the timing is also somewhere responsible for the disagreement between Hiller and O'Shea. But unlike past budget disagreements, this one not revealed to most of the newsroom and did not play out in public.