The chairman of Tribune Co. defended his stewardship of the Los Angeles Times on Monday, telling community leaders that the Chicago-based media company had made substantial improvements at the paper over the last six years.
Dennis J. FitzSimons sent a four-page letter to former Secretary of State Warren Christopher and 19 other prominent Los Angeles figures who backed the newspaper's management last week in opposing further newsroom cutbacks.
The showdown could intensify a board meeting Thursday, when Tribune directors may decide the fate of the company's 11 newspapers and 26 television stations amid pressure from its largest and most disgruntled shareholder to break up the company.
"The board meeting is to talk about the strategic positioning of the company," with a particular focus on demands made by the California-based Chandler family, which sold The Times and other assets to Tribune in 2000, said one person who works closely with Tribune directors. The board members "will also certainly be asking management to explain what is happening at the Los Angeles Times."
Last week, the publisher and the editor of The Times, Tribune's biggest single operation, went public with their refusal to make additional staff cuts requested by their Chicago bosses.
The defiant stand by Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson and Editor Dean Baquet marked a turning point in Tribune's rocky six-year ownership of the paper -- galvanizing many reporters and editors, who saw it as a stand for quality journalism, and raising the hackles of business managers inside and outside Tribune, who debated whether the duo could survive at the paper.
The 20 L.A. leaders wrote in a letter to FitzSimons that further staff cuts threatened to remove The Times "from the top ranks of American journalism."
In his response, FitzSimons said the Chicago company was spending a larger share of its revenue on editorial operations than Publisher Otis Chandler did during "what many refer to as the 'golden age' of the newspaper."
He said Tribune's commitment to Los Angeles also was demonstrated by $250 million in capital projects, including expanded presses to print more color pages and an Irwindale production facility to insert preprinted advertising.
FitzSimons 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, which was controlled by the Chandlers.
