LA Times Lays Off 14 Staffers in Latest Round of Job Cuts

The Los Angeles Times has been hit by another round of job cuts, with 14 newsroom staffers losing their jobs on Friday.

In a statement, The Los Angeles Times Guild Unit Council and Bargaining Team said it was “devastated” by the news.

“This is the third round of newsroom layoffs in as many years, and it will leave the Los Angeles Times ever more decimated,” the guild said. “Today’s announcement of cuts, which could change in coming weeks as we bargain over the effects of the layoff, represent 6% of our newsroom staff.”

Based on the 6% referenced above, that would mean the LAT newsroom had about 230 staffers, prior to Friday’s cuts.

Reps for the LA Times did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

The layoffs come after 40 newsroom employees accepted buyouts earlier this year, and in March, dozens of employees across the company’s operations and communications sections were let go. The paper, which is owned by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, was also hit by a major round of job cuts in Jan. 2024, when the Times laid off 115 journalists.

Friday’s cuts also come a few days after AdWeek reported the Times lost “around $50 million” in 2024. The paper has 335,000 subscribers, after losing 25,000 in the past few months, according to the report.

Soon-Shiong has taken a more hands-on approach at his paper in recent years. Last fall, he nixed the editorial board’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris in the 2024 election — a move that led to a handful of employees leaving; One editorial writer who quit even called him a “chickens—t” who threw the editorial team “under the bus.”

Earlier this year, Soon-Shiong said it has been a “struggle” to get his newsroom to buy into a more balanced ideological approach. On that front, the Times introduced an artificial intelligence-powered “bias meter” that would give a political rating to opinion stories in March; the feature made headlines one day after launching when it downplayed the KKK’s racist history.

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