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Los Angeles Times slashes 115 journalists in ‘Zoom webinar’ amid financial crisis
Loss Angeles Times owner denies turmoil, says layoffs necessary for sustainability.
The Los Angeles Times is slashing 115 jobs, about 20% of its newsroom staff, as it struggles to stem its mounting losses. The newspaper’s owner, billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, said the cuts were necessary to make the paper sustainable, and denied that it was in turmoil.
The layoffs, announced on Tuesday, affect both union and non-union employees.
According to Matt Pearce, a Times reporter and the president of Media Guild West, 94 union members were laid off, which he called “devastating” but less than the number feared a week ago. The union had turned down a management offer to give up seniority rights in exchange for buyouts.
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Some of the laid-off staffers took to X to share their news. They included Kimbriell Kelly and Nick Baumann, the chief and deputy chief of the paper’s D.C. bureau, who were supposed to lead the coverage of the 2024 presidential election. Jeff Bercovici and Lindsay Blakely, the editor and deputy editor of the business section, were also among those let go, along with several other business reporters. Craig Marks, the music editor, and Jen Yamato, a film reporter, were also laid off.
Layoffs are painful: Soon-Shiong
In an interview with his own paper, Soon-Shiong said the layoffs were “painful for all,” but insisted that they were part of a “real plan” to make the paper viable. He said the paper had faced “tumultuous” years, but rejected the notion that it was in chaos.
“We are not in turmoil,” he said.
The layoffs come just two weeks after the paper’s executive editor, Kevin Merida, resigned after only two and a half years in the role. Four editors were named to run the newsroom after his departure, but two of them have since left the paper.
Layoffs hit during Oscar buzz
The paper had already cut 74 newsroom jobs a few months ago. The latest layoffs coincided with the paper’s first-ever Oscar nomination for the documentary short film ‘The Last Repair Shop,’ which tells the story of L.A. Unified School District workers who fix musical instruments.
The L.A. Times Guild staged a one-day walkout on Friday to protest the planned layoffs, which are expected to take place over the next 30 days.
On Monday, 10 members of Congress wrote a letter to Soon-Shiong and the guild, hoping that “drastic” cuts could be averted.
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Soon-Shiong responded by asking the lawmakers to back legislation that would help the paper overcome its financial woes.
“We’ve put hundreds of millions of dollars — approaching $1 billion — over the past five years into the L.A. Times, and we are committed to continuing to invest while we work to get the paper on a path to sustainability,” he wrote.
Soon-Shiong bought the paper for $500 million in 2018 and hired 150 new editorial staff. The paper doubled its digital subscribers to more than 550,000 by mid-2023, but still fell short of its targets.
The paper also suffered from the loss of revenue due to the strikes by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA last year, which affected many outlets that cover Hollywood.
