Jeffrey M. Johnson is out of work.

Yesterday he was sacked by Tribune Co., pushed out of his job as publisher of the Los Angeles Times just three weeks after he sided with editor Dean Baquet in refusing to impose further staff cuts on the paper's expansive news operations.

Johnson was a brief hero in the protracted squabble between Chicago, Tribune headquarters, and Los Angeles, which has been resisting the sorts of cost-cutting measures that have been ripping through newsrooms across America over the recent several years.

Johnson, who is being replaced by David Hiller, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, will not be the last Times executive to go.

Hiller, a company man in the way Johnson was not, met with Baquet yesterday to discuss, among other things, newsroom cuts. The Times employs almost 1,000 editorial personnel. Johnson and Baquet had stood ground together against a directive from Chicago to cut 100.

Johnson got the boot from Scott Smith, president of Tribune publishing.

Johnson's days were clearly numbered from the moment he publicly sided with Baquet in refusing further staff cuts. Though a 20-year Tribune man, he took the position that the cuts demanded by Chicago were diseconomic in the longer term and would cut so deeply as to cause irreparable damage to the paper.

How much longer Baquet lasts is unclear. An enormously popular editor, Baquet enjoys an independence from Chicago that Johnson did not as a business-side executive. Tribune's board is clearly worried that firing Baquet would set off a newsroom revolt.

At the least, other top editors would quit in protest, and it could get far uglier. Already under pressure from Wall Street for its underperforming stock, the Tribune board would rather not engage in any more pubic faceoffs. Baquet rose to the job last year when John Carroll resigned as editor rather than carry out cuts Chicago was calling for.

But it will certainly not mean a cessation of budget cuts, just a slowing of the pace.

While not the super-rich paper it was under the late Otis Chandler, who was famous for spending lavishly on editorial, there remains much of his legacy, and Tribune executives have grown expert in trimming away at the other papers it acquired with the Times, including Newsday and the Baltimore Sun, which have already gone through rounds of cuts and buyouts. In all it owns 11 papers.

The problem the Times faces, or rather its parent, is that while the paper is still very profitable, those profits are very much at risk as the local media economy changes, with circulation falling and advertisers shifting budgets to the internet and the rash of other competing media. It means not making the sorts of investment in its web properties as the New York Times and The Washington Post have.

Indeed, the entire future of the Times is a question. Tribune could sell it. For now it looks like it's shying away from the idea, but that could change if the turmoil persists.

Yesterday, the new publisher, Hiller, sent a note to Times staffers, looking to ease tensions.

"I read and love newspapers and have the highest regard for the Los Angeles Times, its great journalism, and the special role it plays in Southern California. I have worked with many of you and know what a talented and creative team we have here."