Last winter Los Angeles Times editor Jim O’Shea was let go for resisting staff cuts. “Newspapers are a manufacturing industry,” O’Shea told Neiman Journalism Lab “At some point, you’re gonna cut it to the point where you won’t be able to get the thing out the door because you don’t have enough employees.”

Current editor Russ Stanton&#151who has dismissed nearly 300 of the paper’s employees&#151didn’t see it quite this way. “Let’s just say that I don’t think the revenue picture has been improved enough to justify the size of the newsroom.”

The two were brought together by the Neiman Journalism Lab to duke it out.

Russ Stanton and Jim O’Shea discuss staff cuts at The Los Angeles Times from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.