The Los Angeles Times today announced that Austin Beutner will be publisher and CEO for the newspaper, succeeding Eddy Hartenstein.
Beutner and Los Angeles investor Eli Broad were rumored to have expressed interest in purchasing the Los Angeles Times, along with a block of Tribune Company newspapers last year, according to The Hollywood Reporter. At the time, “sources” told THR that Beutner and Broad were considering “reconfiguring the Times into a nonprofit”.
The deal didn’t materialize. The Tribune Company held onto the newspaper until this month, when it spun of its newspaper assets into a separate company, Tribune Publishing. Hartenstein was recently appointed non-executive chairman of Tribune Publishing’s board of directors.
The new publisher described himself as a avid news reader in an interview with the Los Angeles Times:
“I start my morning with a bowl of cereal and the newspaper laid out on the table in front of me,” he said.
Beutner was a co-founder of Evercore Partners, an investment firm that the Tribune Company reportedly brought in to lead an auction for the company’s newspaper properties last year.
Correction: A previous version of this story described Eddy Hartenstein as the executive chairman of Tribune Publishing. He is the non-executive chairman.
