Will new ownership help get L.A. Times back on right track?

THE business executives of Tribune Co. in Chicago seem far over their heads in dealing with the revolt of news executives, journalists and readers of the Los Angeles Times.

The Tribune tyros just don't seem to get it. People in southern California are used to having a great newspaper. They don't want their Times to descend to the journalistic ambition of the Chicago Tribune or the Orlando Sentinel. They don't regard their newspaper, part of the only industry to be protected by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, to be treated as a mere cost-cutting center and revenue-producing arm to swell Tribune's profits.

What is amazing about the Tribune's business leaders is that they can't even work with and convince their own people at the Times. In recent months, the Times has lost two publishers, John Puerner and Jeffrey M. Johnson, and two editors, John S. Carroll and Dean Baquet, in fights with the Tribune brass over cost-cutting. All four were appointed by the Tribune leaders.

Puerner and Johnson were real Tribune business guys with long records of service to Tribune. Baquet had spent years as a Tribune reporter in Chicago. The Tribune hasn't even been able to persuade its own hand-picked executive at the Times that massive cost-cutting is useful. As publisher Jeffrey Johnson concisely said after being shown the door, "Newspapers can't cut their way into the future."

I had expected better of Tribune. After the ethical chaos of the Times-Mirror Co. and the Times in the era of Mark H. Willes in the late 1990s, I thought that the Tribune purchase of Times-Mirror in 2000 would help the Times. I had worked for eight years in Tribune Tower in Chicago as national correspondent and Chicago bureau chief for the Times. I thought Tribune Tower the best physical and journalistic home for the Times bureau.

The Chicago Tribune, though not in the league of the Times or the Washington Post, was a respectable city newspaper, better than most journalists outside Illinois would realize. Jack Fuller, a highly reputable and nationally known journalist, was in a top position supervising newspapers at the Tribune. But if Fuller ever was able to protect the Times, he was unable to do so after 2005 when he came to a parting of the ways with Tribune management.

Coming to an end

Tribune ownership of the Times seems to be coming to an end. The newest editor sent to the Times from Chicago, James O'Shea, the Tribune's number two editor, told the reporters at the Times that "sometime after the first of the year, we are probably going to have new owners."

Who will these new owners be? The Gannett chain has expressed an interest in buying Tribune, as have several investment firms. Neither option is likely to maintain or improve current editorial quality. One of the most interesting features of the struggle for ownership is the "Battle of the Billionaires" involving three southern California financial potentates. Eli Broad and Ron Burkle have made a bid for the entire Tribune Co. David Geffen has expressed an interest in buying the Times.

Why would such financially savvy people want to buy into newspapers, an industry of declining circulation and advertising in the face of pressure from the Internet and elsewhere? There is certainly a strong possibility that all three are public-spirited men who want to maintain a strong local newspaper in Southern California. But all these buyers realize that there is still a lot of money to be made in newspapers. The Tribune newspaper makes a profit of 30 percent, and the lagging Times exceeds a 20 percent profit margin, more than twice the rate of the average U.S. corporation and more than five times the rate of a grocery company. The Times is the largest profit center for the Tribune Co., (bigger than the Chicago Cubs or the Chicago Tribune), providing a fifth of Tribune Co.'s profit. Many newspapers, including the Times have been "cash cows" for a long time and are unlikely to change soon.

Rich buyers have shown interest, not only in the Los Angeles Times, but in newspapers in Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia as well. What more interesting and powerful life for a partially employed billionaire than to publish his local newspaper? While private ownership of newspapers now seems more attractive to working journalists, there is no way to predict that a rich local owner has any higher sense of journalistic values than a corporate media executive, as the current situation at the Santa Barbara News-Press illustrates.

The ownership of the Los Angeles Times is a'changing, but there is no guarantee thin new ownership will be any more committed to maintaining and improving newspapers than the Tribune Co. Tough times for the Times.

Bryce Nelson, who was a national correspondent in Chicago and Washington, D.C. for the Los Angeles Times for 13 years, is now a professor of journalism at USC's Annenberg School