Leading US newspaper announces mass layoffs — RT World News
The Los Angeles Times will fire at least 115 journalists amid massive financial losses
The Los Angeles Times announced Tuesday that it is laying off at least 155 employees, or one-fifth of its newsroom staff. According to its owner, the newspaper loses up to $40 million annually.
The latest round of layoffs is among the most serious in the newspaper's 142-year history, and follows the firing of 74 newsroom staff in July. The Los Angeles Times Guild, a union representing the newspaper's journalists, said 94 of its members were among those laid off.
The union said it pushed the newspaper's owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, to agree to voluntary takeovers rather than layoffs, but he refused.
However, in an article announcing the layoffs, Soon-Shiong said the union botched negotiations by choosing to strike last week and rejecting a takeover deal that would have saved all but the most senior employees from being fired.
Soon-Shiong and his family bought the struggling newspaper in 2018 and were able to reverse more than a decade of losses and staff cuts. However, advertising revenues have been declining across the entire media industry, and since the Covid-19 pandemic, the Los Angeles Times has incurred losses of between $30 million and $40 million annually, he said.
Soon-Shiong partly blamed the newspaper's editors for the dire financial straits, claiming that their decision to stop printing sports scores last summer led to thousands of readers canceling their subscriptions.
The Los Angeles Times isn't the only major media company to cut its workforce in recent months. ABC News, Buzzfeed, CNN, Conde Nast, NBC News and The Washington Post have all cut staff over the past year, with more than 2,600 news industry jobs lost in 2023. Across the broader media sector, 20,342 jobs have been cut. During the same period, according to another a report.
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