Yesterday was another miserable day for a storied media institution. The Los Angeles Times, unlike Sports Illustrated, will continue to employ a bevy of well-regarded journalists, but the newsroom has been radically cut down. About 115 people, a quarter of the newsroom, were laid off, including reporters, editors, and columnists. The layoffs were not surprising. The Times’s executive editor had already resigned and members of the union staged a walkout several days earlier. The Times’s billionaire owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, said the cuts were necessary because the newspaper could no longer lose $30 to $40 million a year. When he bought the Times in 2018, he was hailed as a potential savior, and initially invested large amounts of money to grow the newspaper. Like Jeff Bezos, who pumped heaps of cash into the Washington Post before, in recent weeks, ordering significant cuts, Soon-Shiong decided that he couldn’t stomach losing more money.
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