VOICES FROM TIMES STAFFERS PAST AND PRESENT

I am a native Angeleno and was a longtime journalist at this newspaper, so people often assume I must have grown up reading the L.A. Times. Nope. Not a chance.

That’s because my father, an elevator operator and union man who worked for the county, would not bring The Times into our home. A softspoken refugee from east Texas, he had few hard and fast rules for his two daughters. He was the soft touch; the discipline was left to my mom. But one of the things he would not abide was to see a copy of The Times in our hands.

As a child I didn’t know and didn’t care why my dad had such a bad reaction to the paper. I had the Herald Examiner for reading the funny pages, and my desire to be in the know was fulfilled by the neighborhood Southwest Wave and the Sentinel. Who needed that bigger, boring-looking paper, in which Black people — when mentioned — were often described as “burly Negroes,” or in the case of future Mayor Tom Bradley, “militant”?

I ended up being a reporter for The Times, and eventually editor of the editorial pages and Metro editor. My dad died before he saw any of that happen for me. I wish he could have witnessed the change — my mom did, with her eyes full of tears. The paper and the city it reflected did get better for Black people, at least for a while.

Craig Matsuda

Shortly after arriving to work as an editor on The Times’ View section from the Denver Post’s Metro desk, I was invited by the late Frank del Olmo, then on the editorial pages, to an unusual gathering in an out-of-theway meeting room.

At a newspaper with a staff of many hundreds of journalists, we were the rare few in 1989: assignment editors of color. Assigning editors are the ones on the front line helping decide which stories get covered and how. They edit and manage reporters and photographers. They advise about the news’ importance and the prominence of stories’ display. And most of them back then were white.

We weren’t. And we had another common characteristic, observed Simon Li, then a “backfielder” in international news: “As I look around the room, I see we’re Black, brown and yellow, young and old, new to the paper and seasoned hands. We work across The Times. The one attribute we share is in our titles: We’re all bloody assistants.”

Over the next decade, many of the assembled assistants rose to lead key parts of the newsroom. Their presence in the top ranks mattered. Having a diverse staff at the top still matters today.

Carlos Valdez Lozano Assistant Metro editor

In 1987, I was an intern at the paper as part of the new MetPro program to train young minority journalists. I was grateful to be at a paper I’d always admired, but it felt like some editors weren’t quite sure what to do with us.

Following the grisly murder of a young male prostitute, I wrote a story about teenage runaways in Hollywood. The features editor promised to run it. But when it finally appeared, I was shocked to discover that a white female reporter had been told to rewrite the story entirely using my sources, quotes and material. I didn’t even get a byline.

I complained bitterly. I never got an apology, but I did eventually find editors who embraced the mission of guiding inexperienced reporters of color. I also learned the importance of speaking up when you feel you’ve been treated unfairly.

I got hired and have been here for 33 years. Lesson: It’s not enough simply to bring promising young journalists of color into the newsroom. They need mentoring.