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Tribune May Decide Fate of ‘LA Times’ Thursday

The chairman of Tribune Co., Dennis J. FitzSimons, sent a four-page letter to 20 prominent Los Angeles business people who had backed the Los Angeles Times’s stance last week against further newsroom cutbacks.

FitzSimons’s own stance was that the Chicago-based media company has made substantial improvements at the paper in the six years since it took ownership and would continue to invest in the paper’s future, writes the Los Angeles Times. He pointed out Tribune’s investment of $250 million in capital projects, and also noted that the 13 Pulitzer Prizes won by The Times since the Tribune takeover were more than the company won in the previous 10 years under Times Mirror Co., the paper’s former parent company.

Some executives at The Times noted that the editor who was responsible for many of the awards left the paper in protest over staff cuts.

On Thursday, Tribune directors will attend a board meeting and may be deciding the fate of the company’s 11 newspapers and 26 television stations. The company is facing pressure from its largest shareholder, California-based Chandler family - which sold The Times and other assets to Tribune in 2000 - to break up the company, according to the article.

A top executive at a large newspaper chain, who wished to remain anonymous, has predicted that Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet and publisher Jeffrey Johnson will be fired for refusing to comply with parent Tribune Company’s order to cut staff.