• by Sara Guaglione , March 28, 2016

Tribune Publishing Company announced today that it will replace its chief financial officer and dismissed its auditor, two weeks after revealing significant problems with its financial reporting.

The publisher of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune named Terry Jimenez CFO and EVP. Jimenez will take over for Sandra Martin on April 4.

Martin will officially leave the company on April 15.

Tribune also appointed Ernst & Young as its auditor, to replace PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

Prior to joining Tribune, Jimenez was a partner for IBM’s Global Business Services since 2012. Before that, Jimenez worked as a consultant for Wrapports, served as president of Newsday Media Group, COO and CFO of Newsday and publisher of amNew York.

Jimenez will be the third executive to take on the role at Tribune since founding CFO John Bode left the company in April 2015. He signed a two-year contract with Tribune.

Last week, the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors of Tribune Publishing Company dismissed PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company’s independent registered public accounting firm. Tribune appointed Ernst & Young as its auditor.

According to a report by Politico, for the second year in a row, Tribune’s annual 10-K filing had to note “material weaknesses in the Company’s internal control over financial reporting.” There were more instances of these “material weaknesses” in 2015 than in 2014.

This year, the flaws cover key parts of Tribune’s business, Politico reports, including highly profitable pre-print business, circulation rates and compensation expenses.

Tribune’s management, which includes Martin and CEO Justin Dearborne,  concluded that the company’s “internal control over financial reporting was not effective as of the fiscal year ended December 27, 2015 due to material weaknesses in the Company’s internal control over financial reporting.”

The filing notes that “the material weaknesses described above could result in misstatements of the accounts and disclosures that would result in a material misstatement of the annual or interim consolidated and combined financial statements that would not be prevented or detected.”