The Guardian (USA)

LA Times fires 115 journalist­s in ‘HR zoom webinar’ following union protests

- Lois Beckett

The Los Angeles Times said it was laying off 115 journalist­s – or more than 20% of its newsroom – the day after members of Congress warned in a letter that sweeping media layoffs could undermine democracy in a highstakes election year.

The 142-year-old newspaper, which has one of the largest print circulatio­ns in the US, has also lost its executive editor and managing editor in recent weeks. On Friday, the union representi­ng the newsroom’s journalist­s held an unpreceden­ted daylong walkout, urging Dr Patrick SoonShiong, the paper’s billionair­e owner, to reconsider a planned staff reduction in response to the paper’s struggling finances. Young journalist­s of color were “disproport­ionately affected” by the layoffs, the Los Angeles Times Guild said in a statement, with many Black, Asian American, and Latino staffers losing their jobs, despite the SoonShiong family’s public commitment in 2020 to diversity in the paper’s staff, which it said “has never truly reflected the region”.

Matt Pearce, the president of Media Guild of the West, which represents the Times’ unionized journalist­s, wrote on X that 94 union members had been notified on Wednesday that they were being laid off, about a quarter of the union’s membership, but a smaller number than the union had originally anticipate­d. “We believe our decision to go on strike saved scores of newsroom jobs today,” the Los Angeles Times Guild said in a statement on Wednesday, citing an email from the company’s president and COO.

The LA Times layoffs appear to have affected a wide swathe of the paper’s reporters, editors, and managers. These included journalist­s and editors working on more digitally-focused initiative­s for younger audiences, such as the paper’s new “meme team” that had worked on TikTok content, prominent culture writers andthose leading its national political coverage. Among the journalist­s laid off on Wednesday were the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning DC Bureau Chief, Kimbriell Kelly, and its deputy DC bureau chief, Nick Baumann, who received their layoff notices on Tuesday, the day of the New Hampshire presidenti­al primary election.

Among the journalist­s laid off was one of the paper’s only Indigenous editors, and many of those working on the paper’s newly launched De Los section, designed by and for Latinos, who make up roughly half of Los Angeles county’s population, and who have been historical­ly underrepre­sented among the paper’s staff.

The scale and the impact of the layoffs sent ripples throughout Los Angeles media circles: “My whole timeline is literally journalist­s of color getting let go,” one Rolling Stone journalist wrote on X.

LA Times journalist­s who lost their jobs, and those who retained them, continued to publicly criticize what they described as a chaotic and poorly-managed process.

“The LA Times laid us off in an

HR zoom webinar with chat disabled, no q&a, no chance to ask questions,” one former news editor wrote on X, a characteri­zation the union confirmed in its statement.

Voluntary buyouts, like the ones the Washington Post did last year, “could have helped prevent this, but that’s not the path the company chose”, the union said.

“Voluntary buyouts … could’ve incentiviz­ed more senior staff members (who are disproport­ionately white) to step up and take the place of younger staff members (who are disproport­ionately POCs and more likely to get laid off). During our summer layoffs, buyouts went a long way toward reducing the racial impact of the cuts,” said

Brian Contreras, the chair of the LA Times Guild unit council.

Both a spokespers­on for the paper’s management and the union said that a subsequent buyout process required by the paper’s union contract could help offset the cuts over the coming weeks.

A spokespers­on for the Times did not have additional comment.

“The economic reality of our organizati­on is extremely challengin­g. Despite our owner’s willingnes­s to continue to invest, we need to take immediate steps to improve our cash position,” Chris Argentieri, the paper’s president and COO, wrote in an email to employees on Wednesday, announcing “a significan­t reduction” in staff.

The union’s buyout plan was “not financiall­y feasible”, Argentieri wrote. “It is important to emphasize that these changes are not a reflection of the hard work and dedication shown by any of our colleagues.”

The journalist­s’ union blamed “years of middling strategy, the absence of a publisher, and no clear direction” for the layoffs, and wrote: “It is still unclear who is in charge of our newsroom more than a week after our executive editor resigned.”

While saying that they “remain grateful for the Soon-Shiong family’s investment in the newspaper”, the journalist­s also wrote: “It’s clear that those entrusted to steward his family’s largesse have failed him – not the rankand-file staff members with no say in editorial priorities.”

The latest round of layoffs comes after more than 70 positions – about 13% of the newsroom – were slashed last June, the Associated Press reported.

Soon-Shiong, a biotech billionair­e, acquired the LA Times and other local papers in 2018, and had pledged to make his newspaper one of the “bastions of democracy” and to fight fake news, which he called the “cancer of our time”.

Soon-Shiong told the LA Times that the paper was losing $30 to $40m a year and that it was not making enough progress in growing its readership and advertisin­g revenue in order to become financiall­y stable. Forbes estimates Soon-Shiong’s net worth at $5.4bn.

Ten Democratic members of Congress who represent California had written Soon-Shiong a letter on Tuesday, saying that they were “concerned about reports of potential layoffs facing the LA Times newsroom and the effect this will have on all Angelenos, the availabili­ty of essential news and the strength of our democracy at large”.

Responding to these comments on Tuesday, Soon-Shiong said that US lawmakers should be doing more to support the struggling media industry, pointing to legislatio­n in Australia and Canada that forces companies like Google and Facebook to pay for news content shared on their platforms, as tech giants have captured wide swathes of the advertisin­g market that used to sustain news publicatio­ns.

“I’d like to put the question to [lawmakers]: what can they do to help preserve a free and robust press, one that is instrument­al in upholding our democracy?” he said.

The LA Times layoffs follow months of firings at media outlets across the US. A report released in early December 2023 found that the US news industry had lost 2,681 jobs through November, a higher number than in previous years.

In comments Tuesday and Wednesday, Soon-Shiong said that over the past five years since he had acquired the LA Times, he had invested “hundreds of millions of dollars – approachin­g $1 billion” in sustaining it.

During the tumultuous years of the Covid-19 pandemic, the paper had previously avoided major layoffs despite “losses that surpassed $100m in operationa­l and capital expenses”, SoonShiong told the LA Times’ media reporter.

On Wednesday, Soon-Shiong pushed back on descriptio­ns of what his own newspaper had characteri­zed as “LA Times Turmoil” in a headline.

“We are not in turmoil. We have a real plan,” he said.

“Our owner has publicly said he has a plan for moving forward but has not shared it with any of us,” the journalist­s’ union said in its statement Wednesday.

In advance of major presidenti­al election year, several billionair­e-owned US news publicatio­ns have made significan­t staff layoffs. The union for journalist­s at Time Magazine, which is owned by tech billionair­e Marc Benioff, said on Wednesday that 15% of their journalist­s had been laid off. The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced last year that it needed to lay off 240 employees, leading to a round of buyouts that saw highprofil­e journalist­s and editors depart the paper. Other major news outlets, from National Public Radio to Vice News to Sports Illustrate­d, have seen substantia­l layoffs and staff reductions.

 ?? AFP/Getty Images ?? Los Angeles Times Guild journalist­s rally in front of City Hall to protest against layoffs on 19 January 2024. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/
AFP/Getty Images Los Angeles Times Guild journalist­s rally in front of City Hall to protest against layoffs on 19 January 2024. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/

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