The Los Angeles Times informed its newsroom Wednesday that it would lay off about 13% of the paper's journalists, the latest in a string of blows to major American news outlets.
It's the first major round of job cuts since the paper was acquired in 2018 by Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire entrepreneur and investor based in Southern California. At the time, he told NPR that he wanted to protect the L.A. Times from a series of cutbacks that had afflicted the paper under previous owners based in Chicago.
During the pandemic, there was a far smaller round of layoffs. The paper and labor union negotiated a work-sharing agreement and furloughs in lieu of layoffs.
