Los Angeles Times Watch: Tribune Company CEO “HIT” by the Los Angeles Times Editors

MEDIA GIANT: Tribune Chairman and CEO Dennis FitzSimons, front, fields questions from Los Angeles Times editors at the newspaper’s offices last week. With him is Scott Smith, president of Tribune Publishing.

Los Angeles Times: Tribune CEO Comes Under Fire

Dennis FitzSimons, who has been something of a mystery despite his job, faces public criticism.

People who admire Dennis J. FitzSimons say he works like an ox, is dead honest, inspires deep loyalty in the people around him and, when pushed, will fight.

His critics say that, in addition, the chairman and chief executive of Tribune Co. can be self-confident to the point of arrogance and touchy about being challenged. Some doubt his strategic vision and, as the first Tribune chief to rise through the broadcast division, his “feel” for newspapers.

Even in Tribune’s hometown of Chicago, where everybody has an opinion about what goes on inside the iconic Tribune Tower, FitzSimons is something of a mystery despite his role as head of a $6-billion media giant that owns the Los Angeles Times, KTLA-TV Channel 5, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Cubs and other properties.

“He’s gone unexamined here in Chicago for someone in that position,” said Steve Rhodes, a former writer for Chicago magazine and the Tribune who now heads the Windy City online journal the Beachwood Reporter.

That is changing, as FitzSimons, who turns 56 on Monday, has found himself the target of dissident Tribune directors who have publicly criticized the performance of management — and FitzSimons by extension — in provocative and insulting terms.

On FitzSimons’ watch, they said, Tribune has flubbed opportunities “to invest aggressively in growing new businesses” and has been unable to arrest the decline of its core newspaper and broadcast TV units. This “strategic failure has had disastrous effects,” the dissidents — representing members of California’s Chandler family — said in a letter to the Tribune board made public in a regulatory filing last week.

Read it all here.

This is a classic “hit piece” by the Editors of the Los Angeles Times. They usually reserve their ire for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger or other politicans who they hate but this time they go after their own boss.

Flap agrees with Hugh Hewitt and would clean house, irrespective of the Chandler families meddling.

Unless declining circulation and business losses are in FitzSimon’s business plan?

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