Will L.A. Times Chaos Affect '08 Coverage?
When Los Angeles Times editor Jim O’Shea was ousted Sunday following a budget dispute, the issue of paying for the paper’s presidential election got pushed to the forefront.
On Tuesday, O’Shea said by phone that he refused to accept a newsroom budget from publisher David Hiller because it did not allocate funds specifically for major 2008 expenses—including the presidential race.
“There’s no money for a political campaign,” O’Shea said. Instead of allocating the necessary $1-2 million for the campaign, he said, coverage would have to be paid out of the national desk budget.
Hiller, through a spokesperson, declined an interview request on the issue of paying for The Times political coverage.
Of course, few blink anymore about newspapers cutting costs. But for all the talk of the 2008 election’s “historic” significance, with no incumbent candidate and increased public interest, that doesn’t appear to be an exorbitant sum.
(And it’s paltry compared to the $17.7 million that Tribune Co. boss Dennis FitzSimons reportedly pocketed in late 2007, when he left the Times parent company).
Hiller wanted to keep O’Shea’s 2007 budget at about $120 million, according to a story on the Times’ Website. O’Shea said that considering increased costs, Hiller’s budget amounted to a $4 million cut for the newsroom.
Nor did it include additional lines for coverage of the presidential campaign or the Olympics in Beijing.
O’Shea said that Hiller’s budget did not take into account revenue he helped generate by expanding the frequency of the paper’s “Image” section, and the budget would only provide a short-term solution—as opposed to examining the costs section by section.
Hiller also turned down O’Shea’s proposal to do a multi-year budget plan because, O’Shea said, “it wouldn’t get to his cash flow target this year.”
“I thought and continue to think the Zell people will look at this more expansively,” said O’Shea, referring to real-estate tycoon Sam Zell, who took over the Tribune company in an $8.2 million buyout last month.
It’s ironic that O’Shea was terminated over budget cuts. When the veteran newspaper editor went to Los Angeles from the Chicago Tribune 14 months ago, most assumed he would not suffer the same fate as ousted editor Dean Baquet, now Washington bureau chief of the New York Times.
Former editor John Carroll and publisher Jeffrey Johnson round out the list of high-profile managers who left over budgetary matters in the last three years.
At the Tribune, O’Shea said that he broke out a separate budget for covering a presidential campaign.
“To say we’re not going to provide funds for that,” O’Shea said, “I really think that’s abandoning your readers. It’s no way to go forward.”
But with less than 10 months until the election, the Times must go forward.
Despite Hiller and O’Shea disagreeing over the budget in recent weeks, several top editors told Politico that they received no instructions to cut back—either before or after the most recent Times fallout.
However, in covering O’Shea’s termination, the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times all mentioned the issue of paying for presidential coverage as a factor.
“I don’t want to imply that we’re spending money like drunken sailors,” said the L.A. Times’ National Editor Scott Kraft, “but we’re engaged in a muscular full-throated effort to cover the campaign.”
Under Kraft, the 2008 campaign desk is run day-to-day by two national political editors: Aaron Zitner, in Washington D.C., and Tom Furlong, in Los Angeles.
Zitner said that like most news organizations the Times editors routinely ask themseves whether they have the adequate staffing level, but—so far—”no one has ever said to me you need to cut back, you need to travel less.”
That sentiment was echoed by deputy national editor Furlong, who said, “I guarantee that no one has said one word to me about cutting back on expenses.”