Mr. Villaraigosa is one of 50 local leaders who signed a letter to Tribune Publishing protesting Mr. Beutner’s firing. The City Council sent its own letter, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution along similar lines. Hispanic groups have expressed concern that Tribune’s Chicago-based management team has little understanding of one of the most important constituencies in Los Angeles.

Image Austin Beutner was dismissed as publisher of The Los Angeles Times after a year in the job. Credit Kirk Mckoy/Los Angeles Times, via Associated Press

The Times is not the first newspaper in a major American city to be threatened by industrywide challenges. It used to be family owned, with so much money it had a Picasso collection, and is now part of a publicly owned company, staring at precipitous advertising revenue declines.

Its battle with its ownership, however, has been singularly relentless. Two former top editors (including Dean Baquet, the current executive editor at The New York Times) were forced to leave after refusing to cut jobs. Many Times journalists have never accepted an ownership structure that they felt subjected the paper to the pressure of quarterly earnings at the expense of its journalism.

The former Tribune Company, which spent years in bankruptcy, had long been troubled and had a reputation for making job cuts long before Mr. Griffin arrived in 2014. Tribune Publishing was spun off later that year; the parent company, now known as Tribune Media, took profit-making digital and television assets, and the newspapers’ real estate holdings. The publishing unit took on $350 million in debt.

Those protesting the treatment of The Times see a potential savior in Eli Broad, the billionaire Los Angeles philanthropist who has long wanted to buy the paper but has been repeatedly rebuffed. In the wake of Mr. Beutner’s ouster, Mr. Broad is preparing to try again, his friends say.

In an interview at Tribune Publishing’s New York offices, Mr. Griffin said that though the board would consider any offer, he did not want to see The Times sold. It is vital to his strategy of reducing duplication and sharing content and services across eight major newspapers and several smaller ones. The changes will take time, and require “a team of people rowing in the same direction,” an apparent allusion to Mr. Beutner’s defiance.

Six people familiar with the newspaper’s finances, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs or of complicating an already difficult relationship between the newspaper and its parent, said further layoffs were imminent. They will be on the order of $10 million in savings, or about 80 jobs, these people said, and will fall mostly on the newsroom.