The Wire: life imitates art

Like David Carr, I'm among those who find the most egregious newsroom characters in the current season of The Wire thinly drawn. Yes, I still love the show.

Yet it's more than sad when the Los Angeles Times, once a beacon of a great newspaper empire, has fired yet another editor since he won't make cuts in the newsroom.

The Los Angeles Times Editor James O'Shea was fired by publisher David D. Hiller for refusing to impose four million U.S. dollars in budget cuts ordered by the publisher, the newspaper confirmed Sunday.

It's the second time in 15 months that a Times editor has been fired for refusing to make budget cuts ordered by the publisher, and comes a month after the closing of an 8.2-billion-dollar buyout of Tribune Co., The Times' parent company, by an employee stock plan and Chicago real estate tycoon Sam Zell.

O'Shea came from the Chicago Tribune in November 2006, a week after Hiller fired Editor Dean Baquet in another dispute over budget cuts, The Times reported.

Hiller, who had been the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, took over as Times publisher in October 2006, succeeding Jeffrey M. Johnson, who had also been fired by executives at Tribune's Chicago headquarters over the same issue of budget cuts, The Times reported.