Baquet Says He Urged O'Shea to Succeed Him

By: Joe Strupp Dean Baquet, the departing Los Angeles Times editor who lost his job after a public opposition to budget cuts by parent Tribune Company, said Friday that he has had some inquiries about future jobs but has made no decisions.

"I'm going to take next week off and read books and be with my family," he said. Baquet admitted he had gotten employment queries since his firing was announced, but did not disclose any specifics. "I haven't made any decisions," he said. "It is not going to be on my mind for a while."

Baquet also revealed that he'd learned of his ousting about a week before it was announced. He said his replacement, James O'Shea, would likely have a better time dealing with the corporate oversight and demands than he did.

"I think he will have some advantages I didn't have," Baquet told E&P Friday as he packed up his office and planned to leave the paper. "He will have a closer relationship with the headquarters in Chicago and [having worked] with [new publisher David] Hiller for a few years. Jim has done a lot of business stuff."

O'Shea, the managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, was named the Times' new editor on Tuesday, shortly after the announcement that Baquet had been dismissed. Baquet, 50, said he had learned of his pending dismissal more than a week ago, on Oct. 31, after an Oct. 30 meeting with Hiller, the former Tribune publisher. He said, at that meeting, Hiller and he had discussed what kinds of budget cuts the company wanted, which Baquet opposed.

"We realized we were going in different paths," he said of the meeting with Hiller. "That Tuesday [Oct. 31] it was a done deal." O'Shea, whom Baquet described as a friend, was offered the editor's job soon after and called him to ask if he objected to his taking it.

"He wanted to make sure I was comfortable with it," Baquet said about O'Shea, a former colleague at the Tribune, where Baquet worked in the late 1980s. "I said it did not affect our friendship at all." Baquet also stressed that people should not think O'Shea will be a company man only, citing his journalistic experience and background.

"It is going to be easy for people to think Jim is some Tribune guy, but what he is is a good journalist and newspaper man," Baquet said. "I encouraged him to take the job."

Baquet also revealed that he had decided several weeks ago to recuse himself from any Times stories involving his actions related to the Tribune Company, and had not edited any such stories for nearly two months. "From the moment that I became part of the story," he told E&P. "I recused myself from all of the stories that involved me."

He said the recusal first occurred with the Sept. 14 story in the Times about his and former publisher Jeff Johnson's opposition to proposed Tribune budget cuts. That story eventually led, in part, to the firing of Johnson after the publisher continued to oppose future cutbacks.

"I didn't read that one until it appeared in the paper," he said of the September story. He also said he did not read a lengthy account in today's Times about the paper's ongoing battles with Tribune Company until it was published. "I didn't even know they were going to publish it until [managing editor] Doug Frantz sent me an e-mail last night that they were going to do it," he said of today's story by James Rainey. "I knew they were working on it, but that was all."

Baquet said keeping his hands out of such stories was just a fair approach to journalism. "I don't think it is appropriate to edit a story you are quoted in," he said. "I think it would be unfair for Jim [Rainey] and it would be bad for the paper."

As he packed up his belongings and prepared to leave the paper he had worked at for more than five years, Baquet said he had no immediate plans other then to spend time with his family in Los Angeles next week. He planned to go to a dinner for Johnson Saturday night.