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Ross Levinsohn is named the new publisher and CEO of the L.A. Times as top editors are ousted
Aug 21, 2017 | Los Angeles Times
By Meg James
In a dramatic shake-up at the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago-based parent company has installed new leadership and plans to invest more resources in the news organization to move it more quickly into the digital age. -
Los Angeles Times fires top editor, shakes up management team
Aug 21, 2017 | CNN Money
By Brian Stelter
The biggest newspaper in the West, the Los Angeles Times, suddenly has a new publisher and a new editor in chief. -
Los Angeles Times ousts Indian editor-in-chief
Aug 22, 2017 | The Express Tribune
By News Desk
One of the biggest newspapers of Western Los Angeles, ‘The Los Angeles Times’ has ousted Indian Davan Maharaj, who was the publisher and editor-in-chief of the agency, reported CNNMoney. -
Reporter Jill Leovy and admin assistant also let go by LA Times
Aug 21, 2017 | LA Observed
By Kevin Roderick
Award-winning Los Angeles Times reporter Jill Leovy was fired on Monday along with four of the paper's top editors, and the reason seems to be that Leovy is married to one of the axed editors.
Traditional Media Coverage
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Ross Levinsohn is named the new publisher and CEO of the L.A. Times as top editors are ousted
Aug 21, 2017 | Los Angeles Times
By Meg James
In a dramatic shake-up at the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago-based parent company has installed new leadership and plans to invest more resources in the news organization to move it more quickly into the digital age.
Ross Levinsohn, 54, a veteran media executive who worked at Fox and served as interim chief of Yahoo, was named publisher and chief executive of the 135-year-old news organization. The move was announced Monday by Justin C. Dearborn, chief executive of Tronc, the parent company of The Times and eight other daily newspapers.
Jim Kirk, 52, a veteran Chicago news executive, who was publisher and editor of the Chicago Sun-Times until last week, was named interim executive editor of The Times.
The two men replace Davan Maharaj, who served as both editor and publisher since March 2016. Maharaj was terminated Monday morning, along with three senior editors: Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin, Deputy Managing Editor for Digital Megan Garvey and Assistant Managing Editor of Investigations Matt Doig.
Levinsohn becomes The Times’ 17th publisher and the fifth in the last decade. He has spent more than 20 years in media — though never in newspapers. He said he’s excited to take on such an important assignment.
“This is an amazing opportunity,” Levinsohn said in an interview. “The L.A. Times is a bastion of great journalism. My aspiration is to draw upon the incredible amount of work that has been done here and broaden it.”
Levinsohn headed digital operations for Rupert Murdoch at Fox, formerly known as News Corp., as president of Fox Interactive Media, where he oversaw a diverse group of digital properties, including MySpace, Fox Sports and Rotten Tomatoes. He played an integral role in creating the online video streaming site Hulu.
He spent a little less than two years at Yahoo, including serving as interim CEO. He also served as chief executive of Guggenheim Digital Media, where he managed such assets as the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Adweek, before a change in direction there.
Most recently, he has been co-founder and a partner at Whisper Advisors, a consulting firm. Dearborn said Levinsohn, who also served on the board of television station owner Tribune Media, has been consulting with Tronc for about a year. When it became clear that Tronc leaders wanted to make a switch, Levinsohn told them he was interested in the job.
In an email to the staff, Levinsohn, a New York native who has lived in L.A. for nearly two decades, said: “I have long admired what the Los Angeles Times stood for — its voice and impact, the world-class journalism that is produced day in and day out, the challenges you tackle and the importance of what you do.”
Kirk, an Illinois native, joined Tronc just six days ago as senior vice president of strategic initiatives. He arrived in Los Angeles over the weekend and said he is planning to work with Levinsohn to identify candidates for the top editing position. “The goal here is to execute on Ross’ strategy and find the right person for that,” Kirk said.
Part of the rationale for the overhaul, Dearborn said, is that Tronc executives were concerned that The Times wasn’t reaching its full potential.
“We still obviously need to do a great job in California,” Dearborn said. “There are certain areas that we are going to double-down on. Ross isn’t coming in to oversee further downsizing. We all have to work within budgets, we are a public company … but nobody came here to manage this business downward.”
The new leaders take over a news organization with flagging morale after years of management changes on top of huge shifts in consumer behavior that have roiled the entire newspaper industry. While still producing award-winning journalism, the paper hasn’t been able to keep pace with better resourced rivals on the East Coast, including the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Tronc this month reported second-quarter results that showed revenue continuing to decline. It was the fifth consecutive quarter in which revenue had fallen compared with the same period a year earlier — and the fourth consecutive quarter of ever-faster declining digital advertising revenue, according to company earnings releases.
By comparison, other newspaper companies — including the New York Times and USA Today publisher and onetime Tronc suitor Gannett Co. — have seen online ad revenue increase.
Online subscriptions across Tronc have grown, but not as much as at other companies. The number of online-only subscribers stood at 220,000 in the second quarter. That was up about 6% from the previous quarter, but was less than one-tenth of the tally at the New York Times.
Gabe Kahn, a professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said Tronc has failed to attract paying online readers or advertisers at the same rate as other publishers.
"It seems like Tronc's strategy toward boosting digital ad revenue was simply to load up the page with more ad inventory, which makes reading the paper online like peeling back the layers of an onion," said Kahn, who is a Times subscriber.
He also said Tronc has not found ways to encourage current subscribers to sign up for premium content — as have publishers such as the Wall Street Journal and Politico.
"It's still pretty much a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach," he said. "Going forward, the upside is there's still plenty of opportunity because they haven't done anything."
Tronc plans to invest more resources into the Los Angeles organization, particularly in the reporting of news in Washington as well as its culture and sports coverage, Dearborn said. He said he would also like The Times to be a more authoritative voice reaching Asia and South America.
The shake-up came just one month after the publication of a lauded investigative report in The Times, which revealed that the former dean of the USC Keck School of Medicine had partied with a prostitute and drug dealers, including on campus.
Reporters who worked on the project approached senior corporate management to express concern about how Maharaj and Duvoisin handled the story. The reporters said they feared a possible conflict of interest with USC, which hosts the newspaper’s annual Festival of Books. Tronc then began reviewing the matter.
Maharaj and Duvoisin defended the editing of the story to colleagues, noting that sensitive and complicated articles typically take months to report, edit and legally review. And they pointed out that after the story was published, the paper continued to run developments on the front page.
The full findings of the review were not disclosed. But the company concluded there was no conflict of interest, Cindy Ballard, Tronc’s head of human resources, told top editors Monday.
The company did determine that the dual publisher and editor role — which was part of a sweeping, companywide reorganization in 2016 — was problematic in a market the size of Los Angeles. The publisher traditionally serves as head of business operations, overseeing revenue generation; whereas the editor is responsible for the newsroom, newsgathering and the editorial direction of the publication. Traditionally, those roles are kept separate to avoid conflicts of interest.
Maharaj, who became editor in late 2011, oversaw a period in which digital subscriptions and readership increased — but not as quickly as at larger, national papers.
A native of Trinidad, Maharaj started at the paper as a summer intern in 1989 and worked as a reporter in Orange County, Los Angeles and east Africa. His six-part series “Living on Pennies,” in collaboration with photographer Francine Orr, won the 2005 Ernie Pyle Award for human interest writing and prompted readers to donate tens of thousands of dollars to support aid agencies in Africa. He later served as assistant foreign editor, as business editor and as managing editor.
While he was editor, The Times won three Pulitzer Prizes, including for breaking news reporting of the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino.
“During the last 28 years, it has been an honor working with the best journalists in a great American newsroom,” Maharaj said in an email. “They are indomitable, and I wish them well in their continued fight to serve our community. I'm proud of the work we've done.”
Three top executives left Tronc on Monday, including Tim Ryan, who served as the L.A. Times publisher from 2015 to 2016. Advertising executive Ken DePaola and marketing executive Joseph Schiltz also departed, the company said.
Two other people at the Times were fired Monday in addition to the top editors: Ana Mata, an executive assistant to Maharaj, and reporter Jill Leovy, the bestselling author of “Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America” and the wife of Duvoisin, the former managing editor.
Garvey, who was instrumental in reshaping coverage and pushing for better digital tools for the newsroom, said in an email: “What a thrill to spend nearly two decades surrounded by world-class colleagues. I will always take pride in all the great, innovative journalism we accomplished together.”
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Los Angeles Times fires top editor, shakes up management team
Aug 21, 2017 | CNN Money
By Brian Stelter
The biggest newspaper in the West, the Los Angeles Times, suddenly has a new publisher and a new editor in chief.Davan Maharaj, who has held both jobs since March 2016, was dismissed on Monday. So were several of his top deputies at the paper, including the managing editor and the deputy managing editor for digital.
Former Yahoo and Fox Interactive Media executive Ross Levinsohn is taking over the paper as publisher and CEO. Jim Kirk is taking over as executive editor on an interim basis.
Kirk was previously the editor and publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Levinsohn told CNNMoney that he will try to position the Los Angeles Times for "sustainable, long-term growth."
"We're in a moment where the need for the L.A. Times -- for journalism, for facts and for reporting -- has never been greater, and I see so much potential to grow our impact," Levinsohn said.
He said he'd seek to invest more in "groundbreaking journalism" about entertainment, art, tech, climate change, and other subject matter.
But staffers at the Times can be forgiven if they are skeptical. The newsroom has suffered through many rounds of cutbacks over the years, including buyouts as recently as this summer, and the paper's own story about the changes on Monday cited "flagging morale."
The shake-up felt sudden, but it was a long time coming. Maharaj repeatedly clashed with Tronc CEO Justin Dearborn, chairman Michael Ferro and others at the parent company.
Tronc, previously known as Tribune Publishing, owns nine daily newspapers, and the Los Angeles Times is the biggest one.
Maharaj became editor in chief in 2011 and gained the publisher job in 2016. He was a polarizing presence at the newspaper, supported by some staffers but maligned by many detractors.
A lengthy feature article in Los Angeles magazine last year described how the Times newsroom, with Maharaj in charge, "has been overtaken by fear."
Related: New report faults L.A. Times editor-in-chief for paper's woes
Recently, according to the authoritative local blog LAObserved, there "has been upset in the newsroom over Maharaj's handling of the recent investigative series on former USC medical school dean Dr. Carmen Puliafito. Some staffers had sent a letter to Tronc headquarters complaining about Maharaj's leadership."
Dearborn told Maharaj he was fired at a breakfast meeting in Los Angeles on Monday.
Maharaj did not respond to requests for comment. And a Tronc spokesman declined to describe the reasons for Maharaj's dismissal.
In an interview with CNN earlier this year, Maharaj pointed to recent investigative journalist hires and new digital extensions as evidence of the Times' ambitions.
"We have to keep the print product vibrant, because it also provides most of the revenue right now," he said.
But on the web, the Times is venturing into podcasting and documentary filmmaking through deals with other companies.
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Los Angeles Times ousts Indian editor-in-chief
Aug 22, 2017 | The Express Tribune
By News Desk
One of the biggest newspapers of Western Los Angeles, ‘The Los Angeles Times’ has ousted Indian Davan Maharaj, who was the publisher and editor-in-chief of the agency, reported CNNMoney.
Maharaj, who had held both jobs since March 2016, was dismissed on Monday, along with his top deputies; including the managing editor and the deputy managing editor for the digital section of the paper. He is being replaced by former Yahoo and Fox Interactive Media executive Ross Levinsohn, who will also be taking the position of publisher and CEO.
Jim Kirk, previously the editor and publisher of Chicago Sun-Times, shall take the position of editor. Levinsohn told CNNMoney that he will try to position the Los Angeles Times for “sustainable, long-term growth. We’re in a moment where the need for the LA Times— for journalism, for facts and for reporting – has never been greater, and I see so much potential to grow our impact,” Levinsohn said.
He said he’d seek to invest more in “groundbreaking journalism” about entertainment, art, tech, climate change, and other subject matter. The shake-up felt sudden, but Maharaj had been in repeated c lased with the Tronc CEO Justin Dearborn, Chairman Michael Ferro, and others at the parent company.
Tronic, previously known as Tribune Publishing, owns nine daily newspapers; the LA Times being the biggest one. Maharaj became editor in chief in 2011 and gained the publisher job in 2016. He was a polarizing presence at the newspaper, supported by some staffers but maligned by many detractors.
A lengthy feature article in Los Angeles magazine last year described how the Times newsroom, with Maharaj in charge, “has been overtaken by fear.” According to authoritative local blog LAObserved, there “has been upset in the newsroom over Maharaj’s handling of the recent investigative series on former USC medical school dean Dr Carmen Puliafito. Some staffers had sent a letter to Tronc headquarters complaining about Maharaj’s leadership.”
Maharaj did not respond to requests for comment. And a Tronc spokesman declined to describe the reasons for Maharaj’s dismissal, according to CNNMoney.
In an interview with CNN earlier this year, Maharaj pointed to recent investigative journalist hires and new digital extensions as evidence of the Times’ ambitions. “We have to keep the print product vibrant, because it also provides most of the revenue right now,” he said.
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Reporter Jill Leovy and admin assistant also let go by LA Times
Aug 21, 2017 | LA Observed
By Kevin Roderick
Award-winning Los Angeles Times reporter Jill Leovy was fired on Monday along with four of the paper's top editors, and the reason seems to be that Leovy is married to one of the axed editors.
Leovy is the author of the bestselling book on South Los Angeles, "Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America,” and first made a big splash at the Times as the writer of the online Homcide Report blog, which under her watch endeavored to post a news item about every single murder in Los Angeles for more than a year. Her firing is disclosed without explanation in the night update of the earlier Times story announcing the firing of editor-publisher Davan Maharaj, managing editor Marc Duvoisin, deputy managing editor Megan Garvey and investigations editor Matt Doig.
Leovy is married to Duvoisin. She has been listed most recently as a cybersecurity reporter in the Business section.
Also out is Ana Mata, the administrative assistant to Davan Maharaj, according to the updated Times story on itself. Another managing editor, Lawrence Ingrassia, posted over the weekend his intention to retire from the Times and his name has curiously not been mentioned in any of the paper's coverage today.
The changes were announced by parent company Tronc along with the naming of a new publisher, online media veteran Ross Levinsohn, and a new editor, the former Chicago Sun-Times publisher and editor Jim Kirk. CNN's Brian Stelter reports that Maharaj got the word at a Monday breakfast meeting with Tronc chief executive Justin Dearborn.
The updated LAT story goes into more detail than the afternoon version and for the first time links the moves to criticism of Maharaj and his senior editors over the handling of the recent, well-received investigative series about USC's former medical school dean and his friendships with drug addicts and prostitutes.
Reporters who worked on the project approached senior corporate management to express concern about how Maharaj and Duvoisin handled the story. The reporters said they feared a possible conflict of interest with USC, which hosts the newspaper’s annual Festival of Books. Tronc then began reviewing the matter.
Maharaj and Duvoisin defended the editing of the story to colleagues, noting that sensitive and complicated articles typically take months to report, edit and legally review. And they pointed out that after the story was published, the paper continued to run developments on the front page.
The full findings of the review were not disclosed. But the company concluded there was no conflict of interest, Cindy Ballard, Tronc’s head of human resources, told top editors Monday.
The company did determine that the dual publisher and editor role — which was part of a sweeping, companywide reorganization in 2016 — was problematic in a market the size of Los Angeles. The publisher traditionally serves as head of business operations, overseeing revenue generation; whereas the editor is responsible for the newsroom, newsgathering and the editorial direction of the publication. Traditionally, those roles are kept separate to avoid conflicts of interest.
Levinsohn, the new publisher, had been consulting for Tronc for the past year, and the Times story says that when it became clear that company executives wanted to make big changes at the Times, he put his own name forward.
“This is an amazing opportunity,” Levinsohn told the Times in an interview. “The L.A. Times is a bastion of great journalism. My aspiration is to draw upon the incredible amount of work that has been done here and broaden it.”
News industry analyst Ken Doctor says the LA Times firings, along with a purge of other top Tronc executives, amount to a reset by the troubled media company.
Coming off poor second-quarter financials - down 8.6% in overall revenue and 15% in advertising - Tronc managed to turn in numbers that compared unfavorably even with some of its ever-struggling peers. Its digital revenue results hurt the most for a company renamed last spring on a promised digital transformation: "Total revenues for troncX [the company's digital division] for the second quarter of 2017 were $58.2 million, down 5% from prior-year quarter. Advertising revenues for troncX declined by 9%." The one encouraging ray: digital-only subscriptions increased nicely, as Tronc's game of catch-up showed it most results there.
The poor performance even forced Dearborn to acknowledge that the company was still playing catch-up. With these moves, then, the company aims to do two things: 1) jumpstart the lagging digital business; 2) further streamline management and cut costs.One big question ahead for Tronc: How much will it emphasize the L.A. Times in its new strategy? The Times' newsroom still ranks as the fourth largest in the country. More important to Tronc's success is the Times' place in the company. The Times generates both about half the company's digital traffic and, together with the San Diego Union-Tribune (now its more tightly integrated sister newspaper) about half Tronc's revenues.
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