LA Times Editor Clashes With Bosses Over Job Cuts

The editor of the Los Angeles Times has clashed publicly with the newspaper's owners over planned budget cuts.

Dean Baquet, who took over as editor last year, told Chicago-based owners the Tribune Company that the paper had axed enough journalists in recent years and that further cuts would be harmful.

But in a highly unusual move, the Los Angeles Times reported on the dispute, and even more unusually, Mr Baquet commented on his position in an interview in his paper.

"I am not averse to making cuts," Baquet said. "But you can go too far, and I don't plan to do that. I just have a difference of opinion with the owners of Tribune about what the size of the staff should be.

"To make substantial reductions would significantly damage the quality of the paper."

The publisher of the paper, Jeffrey M Johnson, said he agreed with his editor that "newspapers can't cut their way into the future", adding: "We have to carefully balance economic realities with serving our readers".

The LA Times, the fourth largest newspaper in the US, has got rid of more than 200 posts over the past five years, leaving a staff of about 940.

Mr Basquet's statement came after a group of 20 of Los Angeles' civic leaders protested against the planned cuts ordered by the Tribune, which bought the Times from the Chandler family in 2000.

The civic leaders, who included former US secretary of state Warren Christopher, urged the Tribune to either invest in the paper or sell it to remove the risk of it leaving the "top ranks of American journalism".

The story published in the Times said the dispute flared when its executives failed to come up with a plan for cuts requested by Scott Smith, the president of the Tribune Publishing division, when he visited Los Angeles last month.

Tribune has been in conflict with the Chandler family, its largest shareholder, who claimed the company has mismanaged the newspaper since it took over.