Trouble at the L.A. Times and its owner Tribune

New publisher at the L.A. Times almost certain to bring job cuts with him, despite journalists' efforts to fight the cuts:

The Tribune Co. forced out Los Angeles Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson this morning, a little more than a month after he defied the media conglomerate's demands for staff cuts that he suggested could damage the newspaper.

Tribune Publishing President Scott C. Smith huddled with top managers at the newspaper this morning and announced that David Hiller, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, would immediately replace Johnson as chief executive at the 125-year-old newspaper. Hiller is the 12th publisher of The Times.

Editor and Publisher reports that journalists are passing around a second petition to support the current editor Dean Baquet and convince Hiller not to cut staff:

NEW YORK LAObserved.com published Friday a memo sent out to Los Angeles Times staffers from the paper's California Investigations Editor Vernon Loeb, urging them to sign yet another petition -- this time in support of Editor Dean Baquet and in opposition to proposed cuts.

The memo notes that staffers Frank Clifford, Jim Newton, Henry Weinstein, and Loeb drafted the new petition. In the memo, Loeb states the petition is designed to express "our regret and disappointment over the dismissal of Jeff Johnson and our total support for Dean in his efforts to convince our new publisher, David Hiller, that we cannot cut our way into the future and must invest in our newspaper and our Web site."

Tribune Co. is considering chopping up its assets, selling off smaller papers and television stations. It doesn't sound to me like management cares too much about the effect that staff cuts will have on journalism at a paper like the L.A. Times. Even though it's pretty clear what that will be:

A Los Angeles Times special report on the 2003 deaths of two Afghanistan detainees in U.S. Army custody, which uncovered for the first time the Special Forces unit involved and the existence of the second death, is the kind of expensive, long-term project that potential Times budget cuts might eliminate, say its authors.

Kevin Sack, a veteran Times correspondent, and Craig Pyes, a longtime contracted writer for the paper, agreed the two-part series that began Sunday -- revealing details of the 2003 killings that were never reported by those involved -- could become extinct if threatened Tribune Company cutbacks occur.

"This kind of work can be at risk if budgets are cut in significant ways," said Sack, a Times reporter since 2002 who spent 13 years at The New York Times. "There is a fear that if it continues, we will see less of this type of reporting."

Pyes, who worked on the project through the independent Crimes of War Project, said the Los Angeles Times handled most of the resources for the year-long reporting, which had to run in to the "hundreds of thousands" of dollars. "You can't do it on the cheap," he said. "It is going to dry up and be gone if there are continued budget cuts."