Dramatic Shake-Up At The LA 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 LATimes.

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.

Ross Levinsohn

Part of the rationale for the overhaul, Dearborn said, is that Tronc executives were concerned that The Times wasn’t reaching its full potential.

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.