Up Against a Saint and a Dead Man

Abstract

I scrambled to answer my cell phone as I pulled out of the rental car space at the Los Angeles airport. “Jim, this is Leo Wolinsky. You need to make your first command decision. How do you want your name on the masthead?”

I stopped the car to savor the moment. “Just use James O’Shea,” I told Wolinsky, one of the Los Angeles Times’ top editors, “no middle initial.” There, it was official.

I was alone, with no one to help celebrate the moment. My wife had wisely decided to remain in her job at the Field Museum in Chicago, and many friends thought I was crazy for coming to Los Angeles in the first place. But after 35 years in the newspaper business, my name would appear on the November 13, 2006, edition of the Los Angeles Times as editor of one of journalism’s marquee brands, the largest metropolitan daily newspaper in the country and a major force in news around the globe.