LA Times lays off 115 journalists over Zoom call amid financial turmoil
The office building of Los Angeles Times.
The Los Angeles Times laid off nearly 115 journalists in one go over a Zoom callamid the company's financial turbulence.
With the layoffs, the newspaper cut down 20 per cent of its newsroom staff. Its owner and billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong said that the layoffs were important to make the newspaper sustainable and refused to accept that the company was in any kind of turmoil.
The layoffs, which were announced by the newspaper on Tuesday (Jan 23), affected both union and non-union employees.
President of Media Guild of the West Matt Pearce, who represents unionised journalists of the Times, wrote on X that 94 union members were notified about being laid off on Wednesday (Jan 24), which is one-quarter of the union members but very few of them had originally anticipated.
“We believe our decision to go on strike saved scores of newsroom jobs today,” said the Los Angeles Times Guild, in a statement on Wednesday, as it cited an email from the media company's COO and president.
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Some of the staff who were laid off took to X to share their news. The staff who posted about layoffs included the chief and deputy chief of the paper’s D.C. bureau Kimbriell Kelly and Nick Baumann, and also Jeff Bercovici and Lindsay Blakely, the editor and deputy editor of the business section, along with others.
Soon-Shiong says layoffs are 'painful'
In an interview which was published in his own paper, Soon-Shiong said that the layoffs were “painful for all,” but added that they were part of a “real plan” of making the paper viable. He added that the newspaper had faced “tumultuous” years, but rejected the fact that the company was in chaos.
“We are not in turmoil,” Soon-Shiong said. The layoffs happened just two weeks after the newspaper’s executive editor Kevin Merida resigned after working for two and a half years.
Watch:Tech layoffs to continue in 2024?
The newspaper had already laid off 74 newsroom employees a few months ago. The fresh layoffs happened at the time when the newspaper got its first-ever Oscar nomination for the documentary short film ‘The Last Repair Shop’.
(With inputs from agencies)