Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times to cut 500The Los Angeles Times said yesterday that it hopes to eliminate 500 workers next year through a voluntary severance program that will be offered to 70 percent of its work force. To cut costs in an advertising recession, the flagship of the Times Mirror Co. also said it is eliminating the San Diego County edition it has published for 14 years.The severance program will be offered through Jan. 8 to 5,200 of its 7,500 full-time employees who have been with the newspaper at least a year.

The International Olympic Committee, concerned about the way matches are scored and officials are selected in boxing, has frozen about $9 million in payments due the International Boxing Association, according to documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times. A letter, signed July 9 by IOC president Jacques Rogge, says the funds will remain frozen until the boxing association, known as AIBA, provides a "clear timeline and planned actions." At issue is $1.153 million remaining to be paid out from the 2001-to-2004 Olympic cycle and about $8 million for the 2005-to-2008 term.

WHAT SPORT explains the O. J. Simpson trial best?"In the evanescent argot of the O. J. Simpson phenomenon, the question of the moment is:"Does F. Lee Bailey still have his fastball? Right ballpark. Wrong metaphor."Cross-examination rarely depends on speed. Usually, it calls for junk -- curves, sliders, changeups and, if you're clever enough, the occasional spitter."They're the sort of pitches that flirt, dance and deceive before they hit the catcher's mitt with the thud of awful finality.

LOS ANGELES -- Times Mirror Co.'s first-quarter earnings from continuing operations, excluding extraordinary items, rose to $12.5 million from $7.5 million in the year-ago period, the media company said yesterday.Times Mirror's net income in the three months that ended March 31 soared to $1.65 billion, or $13.32 a share, from $22.7 million, or 18 cents, a year ago because of a $1.63 billion gain from the February merger of Times Mirror's cable TV holdings into Cox Communications Inc.Times Mirror said the exclusion of that and other one-time gains, along with an after-tax restructuring charge of $1.9 million in the latest quarter, produced the $12.5 million in earnings from continuing operations.

LOS ANGELES -- Dean P. Baquet was forced to resign as editor of the Los Angeles Times at the request of the publisher after he refused to agree to further cuts of his editorial staff. Baquet's departure was to have been announced tomorrow, but word leaked out yesterday afternoon and the 50-year-old editor confirmed to his staff that he would be leaving the paper Friday. Baquet will be replaced by James E. O'Shea, who currently is managing editor of the Chicago Tribune and a long-time employee of Tribune Co., which owns the Times and 10 other daily newspapers, including The Sun of Baltimore and Newsday of Long Island, N.Y. O'Shea is expected to assume the editor's job Monday.

LOS ANGELES -- Times Mirror Co. has settled shareholder lawsuits aimed at blocking the sale of its cable television operation by giving shareholders an opportunity to reap higher dividends for three years.The proposed settlement, which still must be approved in court, would end all litigation related to Times Mirror's complex $2.3 billion transaction with Cox Enterprises Inc., announced in June.The plaintiffs alleged that stock in a new combined TV cable operation controlled by Cox was not enough to compensate for a sharp dividend reduction planned for their Times Mirror shares after the sale.

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court yesterday said that four journalists could be held in contempt for not revealing their sources in writing about Wen Ho Lee, the former nuclear weapons scientist targeted as a possible spy. The ruling was the second in as many days in which a court has sanctioned the media for protecting confidential sources and comes at a time when the media are facing increased questions about bias and accuracy. Lee - who worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico - was the subject of an FBI and Energy Department investigation in the late 1990s into the possibility that the nation's weapons secrets were being passed to China.

Tribune Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dennis J. FitzSimons is expected to announce his resignation as early as today, a person close to the company said yesterday. The resignation would be the first departure of a top Tribune executive as the company prepares to go private under the leadership of Chicago businessman Sam Zell. FitzSimons, 57, a 25-year veteran of Tribune, is in line to collect close to $40 million in severance, depending on the date on which he chooses to depart, according to corporate disclosure statements.

LOS ANGELES -- The TV announcer's voice is deep and ominous. "The Rodney King civil rights verdict is coming down!" he warns. "And Channel 2 Action News is ready . . . with live updates every hour!"Many Angelenos already are worried about the federal trial's outcome and what may follow. But some critics say the news media are making things worse -- with breathless promises of live coverage and endless stories about people buying guns.Over the weekend, one local station reported on whether it's legal to shoot someone who is looting your store.

Times Mirror Co., whose top executives were in Baltimore yesterday for a talk with security analysts, had good news to report for all of its business segments except its largest one -- newspaper publishing.The publisher of the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and New York Newsday, the Hartford Courant and the Baltimore Sun and Evening Sun, last month reported net income of $43.8 million, or 34 cents a share, in the quarter that ended Sept. 30, a 7 percent increase over earnings of $41.0 million, or 32 cents a share, in the 1991 third quarter.