That sound that you hear is the legendary publisher Otis Chandler spinning in his grave:

The Los Angeles Times has named Austin Beutner, a former deputy mayor of Los Angeles and Wall Street banker, as its new chief executive and publisher.

The appointment, announced on Monday, comes a week after The Times’s parent, the Tribune Company, spun off its newspapers into a separate publicly traded company called Tribune Publishing.

Mr. Beutner, 54, a former partner at the private equity firm Blackstone Group and a co-founder of the investment bank Evercore Partners, most recently worked as Los Angeles’s deputy mayor of economic development. He also explored a run for mayor and was once reported to be a possible buyer of The Los Angeles Times alongside the billionaire Eli Broad.

Jack Griffin, Tribune Publishing’s new chief executive, noted in a statement how these experiences would help Mr. Beutner in his new role.

………

Mr. Beutner is taking over The Los Angeles Times at a major transitional point for its parent company, Tribune. After Tribune braved years of bankruptcy proceedings and threats of takeover by eager buyers, The Los Angeles Times, along with its fellow Tribune-owned papers like The Chicago Tribune, split from Tribune’s television stations into a separate company. But print institutions like The Los Angeles Times now face a brutal time for newspapers as more readers consume the news online.

And this guy won’t be helping.

He is there is to exsanguinate the LA Times, much like any vampire squid in finance.

Think what Mitt Rmoney did at Bain.