“It’s a dark day,” as the LA Times staff describes their “abject crushing” reaction to the enormous layoffs

The Los Angeles Times said on Tuesday that it will be laying off at least 115 employees, or more than 20% of the newsroom, in one of the biggest workforce cutbacks in its 143-year history.

The decision was made a few days after the Los Angeles Times Guild staged a walkout in protest of upcoming layoffs caused by the financial crisis.

Tuesday was referred to as a “dark day” in a statement by Matt Pearce, president of the Media Guild of the West, which is the organization that represents the Times. He said there would be around ninety-four union members let go.

The proprietor of the Los Angeles Times said that the newspaper will likely lose a lot of money for another year. The most recent layoffs come after more than 70 positions—roughly 13% of the workforce—were eliminated in June of last year.

Were the LA Times’s employment layoffs necessary?
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the daily, said that increasing readership was imperative because, without it, the journal would have to lose $30–40 million a year in advertising and subscription income in order to stay alive.

He said that in order to bring in new CEOs who would focus on improving the outlet’s work and making it important to more readers, harsh actions were needed.

“Although everyone finds today’s choice hard, we must move quickly to create a viable and sustainable paper for the next generation. We’re determined to do it,” Soon-Shiong said.

In a letter to Soon-Shiong on Monday, eight Congressmen from California also expressed concern that his planned layoffs would negatively impact “the availability of essential news and the strength of our democracy at large.”

The paper’s spokeswoman, Hillary Manning, told The New York Times that the tabloid had previously asked such lawmakers for support.

Layoffs “disproportionately affect” young journalists of color
Many Black, Asian American, and Latino staff members lost their jobs despite the Soon-Shiong family’s public pledge in 2020 to support diversity in the paper’s workforce, according to a statement from the Los Angeles Times Guild, which claimed that young journalists of color were “disproportionately affected” by the layoffs.

The guild denounced the action as “devastating” and criticized the government for not providing buyouts, which allow workers to quit the company for a predetermined sum.

The union claimed in a statement that “management may offer buyouts on any day and at any time… a considerably more humanitarian approach to make cutbacks amid a budgetary crisis of the company’s own making” under the 2019 contract that The Los Angeles Times’s attorneys negotiated. Instead, The Times opted for well-thought-out mass layoffs via webinars, during which employees were not even permitted to ask questions.

Fired Workers at the LA Times criticize the “poorly-managed process.”
Several editorial staff members, authors, columnists, and social media influencers confirmed their departure from the publication on social media shortly after the announcement. A scolding was directed at the “chaotic and poorly managed process.”

Among the writers let go on Wednesday were Pulitzer Prize-winning DC bureau chief Kimbriell Kelly and the newspaper’s deputy director of the DC bureau, Nick Baumann. Tuesday was the day of the New Hampshire primary election, and they had gotten news of their layoffs.