Tribune Drama: Top Exit in Chicago...and L.A.?

Seven months. That's how long Ann Marie Lipinski, editor of the Chicago Tribune, lasted working for Sam Zell. On one hand, that's three months longer than Marcus Brauchli endured under Rupert Murdoch, who took over The Wall Street Journal around the same time. Still: Seven months.

Naturally, Lipinski, who announced her resignation today, insists that her new corporate overlord and his evisceration of the newspapers he owns weren't responsible for her decision -- not entirely. "[I]t would be inaccurate to attribute it to any one event," she wrote in a memo to staffers. "There is much to do and your new owners should have their own editor, compatible with their style and goals."

(This is remarkably similar to the boilerplate offered by Brauchli, who wrote, "[N]ow that the ownership transition has taken place, I have come to believe the new owners should have a managing editor of their choosing." He came to believe this, of course, after being told by Murdoch he was no longer wanted.)

But context is everything -- the context, in this case, being last week's elimination of 80 newsroom jobs at the Tribune, and the pledge to publish 13 percent fewer pages. That sort of thing is going on all across Tribune, but the Tribune is a corporate flagship of sorts, and Lipinski has been in the job since 2001, long enough to remember better times (unlike Russ Stanton, editor of the company's other flagship, the Los Angeles Times, who only took the helm earlier this year).

So, when Lipinski says, "[P]rofessionally, this position is not the fit it once was," you can guess what she's referring to. Gerould Kern, the Tribune's vice president for editorial, will succeed her.

Meanwhile, from Variety comes the rumor that "Tribune Co. brass could be moving to oust David Hiller as publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times as early as this week."

It's safe to say he won't be missed.