Job-cutting dispute costs job to LA Times editor

A clash over job cuts with the company cost Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet his job. Tribune Co. ousted the editor less than a month after the paper's publisher, Jeff Johnson, was forced to leave following a dispute for the same reason.

The report on the Los Angeles Times website says that James O'Shea, the managing editor of the Chicago Tribune will replace Baquet on Monday. O'Shea will be reunited with David Hiller, who took over for Johnson after serving as publisher at the Tribune.

The top two executives of Los Angeles Times initially resisted pressure from Tribune to fire more staff at the newspaper but eventually had to leave. In an endeavor to cut down expenses, Chicago-based Tribune has been trying to shrink the 940-person workforce. When Johnson was replaced, Baquet said he would stay on and try to convince the Tribune to increase its investment in the paper.

According to the LA Times, Baquet, 50, refused to cut the newsroom jobs and was consequently forced to resign by Hiller. This was planned to be announced on Thursday but rushed after the news leaked.

Baquet and Johnson distributed memos to staff opposing the cuts, making their battle public in September. A petition addressed to Tribune management was signed by more than 400 reporters, editors and business-office workers asking to put on hold further newsroom job-cuts.

Minutes after the news broke on the Wall Street Journal's Web site Baquet wrote an e-mail to his staff confirming his departure. “By now you've seen the Wall Street Journal story on L.A. Observed that I'll be leaving the paper," Baquet wrote. "Believe me; I didn't want it to come out this way." Baquet said he would address his staff later in the afternoon. "And do me an even bigger favor. Let's do a hell of a job on the election tonight," he wrote.

Reporters were taken aback by the news story and many of them have written Tribune to support Baquet . "Dean was someone who was held in the utmost personal regard by a great many people in the newsroom," Times reporter Mark Z. Barabak said Tuesday. "It is a very sad and difficult and uncertain time here."

Tribune shares fell 62 cents to $31.62 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.