LA Times Editor John Carroll Announces Retirement

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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-na-times21jul21,0,7427415.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Times Editor Announces Retirement
John S. Carroll will be succeeded next month by Managing Editor Dean Baquet.

By James Rainey
Times Staff Writer

July 21, 2005

Los Angeles Times Editor John S. Carroll will retire next month and be succeeded by Managing Editor Dean Baquet, the newspaper announced Wednesday.

Carroll's departure comes after a five-year tenure marked by numerous journalism awards and a struggle with declining readership and flat revenue.

Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson announced the changes just before noon in a meeting with about 200 reporters and editors in The Times' newsroom. He praised Carroll for leading an "incredibly special" period in the newspaper's history — a period that included 13 Pulitzer Prizes — and said Baquet had the qualifications to continue that performance.

Carroll, 63, said a number of factors led him to retire, including the "desire to be a free man again after all these years editing three newspapers." He also acknowledged being bothered by continuing pressure to cut his newsroom's budget.

The promotion of the 48-year-old Baquet won wide praise within the Times newsroom and in the newspaper industry, where he was known first as a dogged investigative reporter, then as an innovative national editor of the New York Times.

The general good feeling over the succession was tempered by concerns inside and outside the Times newsroom about the key challenge facing the new editor: how to maintain the newspaper's standing at a time when the Tribune Co. of Chicago, which owns The Times, continued to push for lower newsroom spending and bigger profit.

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