Former U-T head keeps rolling around the desert

Ed Moss was president and publisher of the U-T from May of 2009 to December 2011 — a period marked by mass layoffs. He lasted two years and eight months. He had been president of Los Angeles Newspaper Group, his previous employer, for two years. In February of 2012, he was named president and chief executive officer of the Denver Post; there, he lasted a year and three months.

When he left the Post so soon, he said he was going to devote his time to healing from a shoulder injury. He became a consultant for six months and then joined Stephens Media in December of 2013 as president and chief executive officer.

Stephens, which owns eight papers, including the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was acquired this March by New Media Investment Group. After only a year and four months with Stephens, Moss was out. Now he is a media consultant in Tempe, Arizona, again.

When he was hired in Denver, the Post gushed, "While at the Union-Tribune, Moss oversaw a turnaround that doubled the newspaper's profits and digital revenue in two years."

During Moss's tenure, the paper was owned by Platinum Equity, which kept its results a secret. If there were profits, they were mostly made possible by the layoffs. But it must be said that when Platinum bought the paper from Copley, the U-T was quite overstaffed, permitting a new publisher to boost profits through head-chopping.