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LA Times publisher fired for not firing people
Posted on October 5, 2006 4:19 PM
Jeff Johnson told The Tribune Company to go to hell when the publisher told him last month to make cuts at the Los Angeles Times. I'm not sure if he said "go to hell" but it's a lot more fun to think that he did.
He said no, and that earned him the disfavor of one of the big three newspaper companies. Buh-bye, they said. The paper's editor, Dean Baquet, had also resisted the cuts, but he must have resisted the thought of losing his job even more, as he's decided to stick around while keeping his options open...
Times editor Dean Baquet told an editors meeting at 11:30 that he can work with new publisher David Hiller. Baquet had coffee with Hiller this morning and apparently was told to make his strongest case for the Times fending off deep newsroom cuts.The new publisher isn't a newsman by trade. LAObserved said Hiller is a Harvard lawyer who worked in the Reagan Administration alongside Ken Starr and Rudy Giuliani. Hiller's idea of a compelling front page story was an entertainment piece about chefs feuding over foie gras in Chicago.
If you listen real close, you can hear the concept of journalism over puffery nip off to a corner of the LA Times newsroom and shoot itself.
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