Editor Jim O’Shea Out at LA Times

That nice Jim O’Shea is gone from the LA Times, after what seems like only a few months. Quiet guy, kept to himself. The paper said so:

For the past few weeks, there has been a lot of internal Times gossip about O’Shea’s seeming distance from the newsroom operation. Basically, some people thought he wasn’t there even when he was there.

O’Shea had been in the top job for only 15 months, and was fired for resisting more of those budget cuts, just like his predecessor, Dean Baquet. While these proposed cuts weren’t as drastic as the previous, only about $4 million, out of a budget of $120 million, David Hiller canned O’Shea for his reluctance. O’Shea was said to have concerns about the paper’s ability to cover both the presidential election and the Beijing Olympics.

Spring Streetologists will note that this the fourth departure of a high ranking editor or publisher in three years.

Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor & Publisher magazine, notes how closely this follows The Wire.