James O’Shea, editor of the Los Angeles Times, was fired earlier this week. Important because this is the third editor the Times has been through in the past three years, and because O’Shea left with some biting remarks about how the LA Times is run, and about the newspaper industry in general. Everyone seems to be reporting the firing as over budget cuts, but I think it’s obvious that a deeper disagreement over the philosophy of the organization was really behind it.

Here’re the entirety of his remarks, but one passage jumped out to me in particular:

We must tell people what they want to know and — even more important — what they might not want to know, about war, politics, economics, schools, corruption and the thoughts and deeds of those who lead us. We need to tell readers more about Barack Obama and less about Britney Spears. We must give a voice to those who can’t afford a megaphone. And we must become more than a marketing slogan. I know I can rely on this newsroom to do this.

Now, I may have just written on this, but I think O’Shea may be a little off base here.

Firstly, I think people do want to know ” about war, politics, economics, schools, corruption and the thoughts and deeds of those who lead us.” But to say that we need to “tell readers more about Barack Obama and less about Britney Spears” may be disingenuous, I think.

The truth is, I don’t think we can’t have both.

When I say that reporters should think about what the public wants when choosing stories, it doesn’t mean they should choose the easy stories about Britney Spears over probing profiles of psychological heavyweights like Barack Obama. What I’m saying is that we need stories where the psychological aspect is up front. Stories based on press releases and incremental coverage that doesn’t go anywhere won’t cut it.

There are interesting stories buried in many of the easy-skippable articles covering our newsprint now-a-days, but the truth is that with daily deadlines is a lot harder to take the time and find what’s going on beneath a Barack Obama story (generally) than one about our train-wreck friend Ms. Spears.

People flock to the Spears stories because they know that there’ll be something interesting there, we need to find what resonates with the public in every story. Alternatively, cover something else.

To get all up on the O’Shea firing, I suggest starting with the Los Angeles Times‘ story. The New York Times and Reuters have further coverage (and the Wall Street Journal, if you’re a subscriber).

For different takes on the story, Mark Fitzgerald has a good column on the whole thing over at Editor and Publisher, and I enjoyed Howard Owens‘ critique of O’Shea’s comments also.