LA TIMES FIRES TOP EDITOR
The newspaper industry isn't what it once was.
Even before the present real estate slump, advertising revenue was falling at many newspapers due to circulation drops related to competition from the internet.
In addition, with the real estate industry having a tough time, ad revenues from that major and usually reliable segment of our economy are falling at many newspapers.
As a result, newspapers are scrambling to make changes and stay profitable. This often means cutting staff.
The LA TIMES announced today that it had fired its top editor, James O'Shea, after O'Shea refused to cut staff.
O'Shea had been brought in to replace another editor who had previously refused to cut staff. You'd think O'Shea would have gotten a clue from that earlier firing, but maybe--we're just speculating here--he thought he was too valuable to be fired.
Both O'Shea and his predecessor are newspapermen. Our guess is that both found their identities and sense of self-worth in that word "newspaperman" and that they simply couldn't adapt to changing business circumstances. LINK
WHAT ABOUT THE DAILY PILOT?
The Daily Pilot is owned by the LA TIMES, which in turn is owned by the Tribune Company. Tribune recently went private and is now under the firm control of real estate magnate Sam Zell.
Zell and his team are calling the shots at the LA TIMES and they're the ones who fired O'Shea.
Zell is not a newspaperman and the industry does not appear to have an emotional hold on him.
Will things be changing at the Daily Pilot as a result of the new ownership of Tribune?
Time will tell.
The CM PRESS has not always been happy with the Daily Pilot. In fact, we cancelled our subscription because we didn't want to help support a newspaper that so often takes political positions in Costa Mesa that we feel help the dark status quo forces that are fighting improvement.
Notwithstanding the above, it does seem to us that the Pilot may be getting a little more even handed in the way it handles Costa Mesa matters. If so, we'd hate to see the Pilot go away.
Since Zell can probably be expected to make his decisions based on unemotional business facts, we hope that Tom Johnson's recent statements about the Pilot being on solid footing are correct and that he's not just whistling past the graveyard.
It seems to us, speaking very generally now, that newspapers such as the Pilot, that serve one or two communities in depth, may be bright lights in large media companies such as Tribune, because such newspapers are often better able to compete for local ad dollars due to their local focus.
Such local newspapers haven't had to compete as much with the internet as have their larger cousins, whose main thrust has been to deliver international and national news. Because of the internet, these larger newspapers are now delivering old news; often many hours after internet users have already read it.
Old news is no news, and no news is bad news for newspapers.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
