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

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 high-stakes 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 day-long walkout, urging Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, 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 Soon-Shiong 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 Tuesday 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, citing an email from the company’s president and COO.