By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 23, 2008; C07

By now, the script at the Los Angeles Times has become as familiar as a bad low-budget movie.

A new editor is brought in, promises of journalistic excellence are made, financial reality intervenes, and before long the editor is banished, leaving behind a stunned newsroom.

The firing of Jim O'Shea last weekend is the third time in three years that a highly regarded Times editor has left in a clash with the paper's parent company in Chicago. When his predecessor, Dean Baquet, was dismissed in late 2006, many staffers were shocked and outraged. The latest shakeup was greeted more by quiet resignation.

Publisher David Hiller tried to handle the matter quietly, saying in an initial statement that he and O'Shea had merely come to a mutual parting of the ways. But O'Shea, who lasted all of 14 months, refused to play along with the cover story.

Instead, O'Shea ripped not just Hiller but also what he called the "asinine" priorities of the parent Tribune Co., of which he had been a loyal soldier for 28 years.

"The current system relies too heavily on voodoo economics and not enough on the creativity and resourcefulness of journalists," O'Shea said in a farewell note to his staff that said flatly he had been fired. Too often, he said, "we've been dismissed as budgetary adolescents who can't be trusted to conserve our resources."

It is "simply stupid," O'Shea wrote, to consider closing foreign bureaus so the Times can afford to cover the presidential campaign and the Beijing Olympics. As for Tribune Co.'s new owner, real estate financier Sam Zell, O'Shea said, "When Sam Zell understands how asinine the current budgetary system is, he will change it for the better, because he is a smart businessman."

In an interview yesterday, Hiller said the rupture came over O'Shea's demand for a modest increase in newsroom spending, but that this was just one among many disagreements.

"It was a regrettable and unnecessary line drawn in the sand," Hiller said. "In the environment all newspapers are facing, it is wildly unrealistic to consider a budget increase at a time when revenue is falling."

O'Shea had asked for the $120 million newsroom budget to be increased by $3 million to $4 million to finance coverage of the presidential race and the Olympics. Hiller had insisted on a 1 percent cut instead -- and said yesterday that more reductions may be needed.

As for the accusatory language in O'Shea's memo, Hiller said: "His views are heartfelt and idealistic, but Jim seemed to be writing more for the history books than the future."

The irony of O'Shea's termination is that he, a former Chicago Tribune managing editor, was the man dispatched by the company to Los Angeles to patch things up after the previous Times editor, Baquet, was fired in a similar budgetary showdown in November 2006. The Times has suffered a steady erosion of staffing and circulation since Tribune Co. bought the paper eight years ago.

Several staffers say O'Shea was always viewed as a caretaker and never aroused the loyalty given the more charismatic Baquet. Some also said the budgetary request that triggered his dismissal seemed like small potatoes and questioned whether O'Shea had forced the confrontation to seize the high ground because he was tired of battling Hiller.

Zell, who took control of Tribune Co. last month, said in his own memo to the staff that he is "returning control of our businesses to the people who run them. That means David Hiller has my full support."

Hiller did not dispute that morale at the Times had taken another serious hit. He said O'Shea's firing "is distracting in the short term, but the L.A. Times has great, resilient people."

Hiller said he hoped to name a successor to O'Shea in the next few days.