The announcement of Hiller's departure came the same day as the resignation of Ann Marie Lipinski, 52, as editor of the Chicago Tribune.
Lipinski will be replaced by Gerould W. Kern, 58, a former associate and deputy managing editor at the newspaper who has been vice president of editorial at the company's Tribune Publishing unit since 2003.
Lipinski said her last day at the newspaper would be Thursday. Her departure comes scarcely a week after the Chicago paper announced deep cuts in its staffing and number of weekly pages. But in a memo to her staff excerpted in the newspaper, she said of her decision to leave after seven years as editor that "it would be inaccurate to attribute it to any one event."
Hiller, 55, was the third Times publisher named since the newspaper was acquired in 2000 by Chicago-based Tribune. He succeeded Jeffrey M. Johnson, who lost his job after publicly resisting cost-cutting measures ordered by the parent company in October 2006. One month later, Hiller asked Editor Dean Baquet, who had joined with Johnson in opposing the cutbacks, to resign.
Baquet was replaced by James E. O'Shea, a longtime editor at the Chicago Tribune. O'Shea departed in January, also while protesting cuts ordered by corporate management.
By then, ownership of Tribune Co. had changed hands. The company was taken private in December in a debt-heavy $8.2-billion transaction led by Zell, a Chicago entrepreneur. The new management has struggled to maintain cash flow at the company's newspapers and 23 television stations amid a sharp nationwide slowdown in advertising, a crucial measure given its high leverage: The company's annual debt payments are close to $1 billion.
The Cubs and their landmark ballpark, Wrigley Field, are expected to fetch more than $1 billion for Tribune when they are sold, probably later this year. A $650-million sale of Newsday, the company's suburban New York daily newspaper, is pending. Proceeds from both transactions are likely to be used to pare debt.
Hiller took up his post at The Times in October 2006, fresh from a stint as publisher of the corporate flagship Chicago Tribune. Before that he had served Tribune Co. as senior vice president for development and then as head of Tribune Interactive, where he was responsible for the company's Internet strategy.
