New Los Angeles Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein brings local angle

The Los Angeles Times' new publisher, Eddy Hartenstein, said Monday that the newspaper would operate with greater autonomy from its corporate parent in Chicago as it tried to reverse steep declines in circulation and revenue while overcoming the trauma of recent staff cuts.

Hartenstein, 57, who is credited with building satellite television leader DirecTV, was named publisher and chief executive Monday. He is the newspaper's fourth publisher since it was acquired in 2000 by Chicago-based Tribune Co., but the first with Southern California roots to hold the job since Otis Chandler, whose family controlled the paper for more than a century, resigned the post in 1980.

Raised in Alhambra, Hartenstein said he expected his familiarity with the community and with the paper -- which he said he began reading at the age of 11 -- to be a major plus.

"To be publisher here in L.A., you need a local, and I am a local," he told an overflow crowd of Times employees at an afternoon meeting. "I'm a 213 kind of guy, not a 312 kind of guy," he declared, referring to the area codes for downtown Los Angeles and Chicago.

The Times has struggled with rapidly changing economic, demographic and cultural conditions that have produced declining revenue and circulation for newspapers across the country.

But it has also struggled to adjust to out-of-town ownership that some critics say has been insensitive to or unaware of the peculiarities of the local market. The resulting tensions continued after Tribune was taken private in December under the leadership of Chicago entrepreneur Sam Zell.

Hartenstein signaled that he would have greater latitude than his predecessor, longtime Tribune executive David Hiller, to run the newspaper his own way. In the conversations with Zell that preceded his appointment, he said, Zell "satisfied me that I was going to be able to do this the way I saw fit."

He said his top priority was increasing revenue rather than cutting costs -- an elusive goal that has been oft-expressed by Tribune executives. Hartenstein said he would step up efforts to improve ad sales. He offered few specifics on his plans, other than to say he would "talk to any existing, new or prospective advertiser."

He also suggested that his experience at DirecTV would help him break fresh ground in presenting new content to readers of The Times and viewers of its website, latimes.com, while building their audiences.