Doug Conant has had what some might call a dubious honor - not once but three times. First at Nabisco (1992), then at the Campbell Soup Company (2001) and most recently at Avon (2013), Conant inherited a mess. Each of those three situations had its own flavor but shared the same basic ingredients: sinking sales, discontented employees and few obvious answers about what to do. Nevertheless, Conant succeeded not just at turning things around but at setting a clear direction and reinvigorating growth.

The opposite is far more common, and the recent gyrations in leadership at the Los Angeles Times, currently operated under the media conglomerate Tronc, make for a lurid case study. On Jan. 28, Jim Kirk succeeded Lewis D’Vorkin as editor-in-chief at the storied paper, less than four months after D’Vorkin had assumed the role. Just weeks earlier, CEO and Publisher Ross Levinson–who himself had spent less than six months in his role–was suspended amid a sexual harassment investigation.

Two fitful attempts at restructuring the paper have faltered, and Nieman Lab’s Ken Doctor recently reported that a “shadow newsroom” of non-union editorial staff is quietly being brought in, much to the newsroom’s befuddlement. The day before taking over last week, Kirk’s message to the organization was hardly reassuring: “My message to the newsroom will be that we will be working together as one team starting tomorrow to do the best work we can.”

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