Times Mirror Restructures Senior Management Corps
Mark H. Willes, president and chief executive of Times Mirror Co., on Thursday announced a restructuring of his senior management corps, including the promotion of two executives and the appointment of a new head of Times Mirror’s Matthew Bender & Co. legal publishing unit.
Thomas Unterman, corporate senior vice president and chief legal counsel, has added the title of chief financial officer. James R. Simpson was promoted to corporate senior vice president for human resources from vice president. Kathryn M. Downing was named president and chief executive of Matthew Bender.
Under the new managerial alignment, nine senior executives--including Unterman, Simpson and Downing--will report directly to Willes, who joined TimesMirror on June 1 from General Mills Inc., where he was vice chairman. Willes will assume the Times Mirror chairmanship on Jan. 1, when current Chairman Robert F. Erburu retires.
“By eliminating layers of management, we emphasize the strengths of our operating companies, speed up response time and communications and better focus on our priorities,” Willes said in a statement.
As Times Mirror’s general counsel, Unterman, 50, supervised the 1995 merger of Times Mirror’s cable television operations with Cox Communications Inc. He joined Times Mirror in 1992 from the law firm of Morrison & Foerster, where he was a senior partner specializing in corporate and securities law.
Downing, 42, a lawyer, has been president and chief executive of Lawyers Cooperative Publishing, a division of Thomson Legal Publishing, since 1993. From 1990 to 1993, she was president and chief operating officer of Electronic Publishing, a division of Thomson Professional Publishing. For nine years before that, she held a variety of positions at Mead Data Central, provider of the Lexis/Nexis information services.
Simpson, 55, has been a vice president of Times Mirror since 1983, responsible for human resources, safety, workers compensation and real estate. Earlier he served as director of administration and director of human resources planning and development. Simpson joined Times Mirror in 1972 as manager of personnel services.
Los Angeles-based Times Mirror, parent of the Los Angeles Times, also announced Thursday that three senior executives will soon leave the company to pursue their careers elsewhere: Curtis A. Hessler, executive vice president and acting chief executive of Matthew Bender; Ann E. Dilworth, senior vice president and head of consumer media, and James F. Guthrie, vice president and chief financial officer.
Four other senior managers will assume new responsibilities under the realignment and will report to Willes:
* Patrick A. Clifford, 53, senior vice president, has been named chief executive of health science publisher Mosby-Year Book, while continuing to supervise Times Mirror’s college and technical publishing operations.
* Edward E. Johnson, 51, senior vice president, has been named chief executive of the Times Mirror training companies and continues oversight of flight information provider Jeppesen Sanderson.
* David Laventhol, 62, editor-at-large, has assumed responsibility for Harry N. Abrams Inc., Times Mirror’s art-book publishing unit.
* Stephen C. Meier, 45, vice president for administration, community and public affairs, has taken on responsibility for government affairs and industry relations.
Also reporting directly to Willes are Richard T. Schlosberg III, 51, executive vice president and publisher and chief executive of the Los Angeles Times, with overall responsibility for the company’s newspapers, and Efrem Zimbalist III, 48, Times Mirror vice president and recently named president and chief executive of Times Mirror Magazines.
Besides The Times, Times Mirror owns such newspapers as Newsday, the Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant, and publishes books, magazines and technical information.
