The LA Times said today that it will lay off at least 115 people — more than 20% of the newsroom. The paper’s billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, said the cuts are necessary because the paper has been losing $30 to 40 million per year.
The staff cuts follow weeks of turmoil at the 142-year-old company. This past Friday, the newsroom staged a one-day strike, and two of the four-person management team recently quit. Earlier this month, Kevin Merida resigned from his position as the Times’ executive editor.
The cut is brutal, and it spells the end of business as usual for the remaining LA Times staffers, says Gabriel Kahn, a professor at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism.
He points out that relationships within the newsroom are at a low, as Soon-Shiong hasn’t clearly articulated his plans for the paper, which he bought in 2018. It’s important to know who preceded the most recent owner too.
“They've had a succession of owners who have set out to denigrate the value of that brand. Compared to that gallery, Soon-Shiong is certainly not public enemy No. 1, but he has not truly moved the needle on this newspaper since he bought it,” Kahn explains.
Leadership has not defined the paper’s identity — whether it focuses on regional, national, or international news.
“I don't see how the answer can be anything more than you are the California paper of record, serving the West Coast and California, which has a tremendous population, a lot of vitality. And I think deciding on that as your identity can be a way out of this. You really need to own your lane in this kind of business.”
Kahn adds, “As the Los Angeles Times has declined to really stake a claim to California, others have come in to pick up the slack. That includes CalMatters, which is a nonprofit newsroom based out of Sacramento, and now Politico, which is repeating their playbook from Washington in California. That leaves less space for the Los Angeles Times to reclaim that, which is a lost opportunity.”
Cuts at the Times represent a larger trend in the local news industry: vulture capital firms buying newspapers as part of their investment plans. He points to Alden Global Capital, which owns newsrooms such as the San Diego Union-Tribune, The Mercury News, The Orange County Register, and The Boston Herald.
“What they leave behind them is a scorched-earth policy of destroying local news organizations, some of them news brands that have gone back more than a century.”
Newspapers are not an easy business to run, Kahn points outs. “In this day and age, running a regional Metro daily is a struggle at best. However, there are other examples of newspapers that have adjusted and tried to figure out different ways of reaching their audience and monetizing that audience.”