Los Angeles Times

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 1st of October 1910, a bomb tore through the headquarters of the Los Angeles Times, killing 21 people. The attack was carried out by union leaders targeting one of the most aggressively anti-labor newspapers in the American West. It was a violent moment in the life of an institution that had spent its first three decades shaping a city from the ground up. The Los Angeles Times had begun publishing just three decades earlier, in 1881, and by then it had already made itself inseparable from the ambitions, controversies, and contradictions of Los Angeles itself. What drove a newspaper to such extremes of civic power that it became a target? And how did the same institution that championed a city's growth eventually find itself fighting for its own survival more than a century later? Those are the questions at the heart of this story.

• 2. The Otis Foundation

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  Harrison Gray Otis arrived in Los Angeles from Santa Barbara in July 1882 to become editor of the fledgling paper, simultaneously purchasing a quarter stake in it for six thousand dollars, most of it borrowed from a bank. Historian Kevin Starr described Otis as a businessman capable of manipulating the entire apparatus of politics and public opinion for his own enrichment. That assessment fits the record. Otis shaped the paper around civic boosterism, relentlessly extolling the virtues of Los Angeles and steering it toward growth at almost any cost. The paper backed efforts to bring water from the distant Owens Valley to sustain the city's expansion, a campaign with lasting consequences for California.

  The anti-union campaign proved even more consequential. James and Joseph McNamara, two union leaders, were charged with the 1910 bombing of the Times headquarters that left 21 people dead. The American Federation of Labor hired prominent trial attorney Clarence Darrow to represent them; the brothers ultimately pleaded guilty. Otis's response to the attack carried a certain theatrical defiance. He had a bronze eagle fastened atop the frieze of the new Times headquarters building, which was designed by architect Gordon Kaufmann. The inscription came from his wife, Eliza: Stand Fast, Stand Firm, Stand Sure, Stand True.

• 3. A Dynasty Takes Hold

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  After Otis died in 1917, his son-in-law Harry Chandler, who had served as the paper's business manager, took over as publisher. Chandler was succeeded in 1944 by his son Norman, who guided the paper through the postwar boom years when Los Angeles was growing rapidly. Norman's wife, Dorothy Buffum Chandler, channeled her energy into civic life and led the effort to build the Los Angeles Music Center; its main concert hall was named the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in her honor.

  In 1935, the paper moved into a new Art Deco landmark, the Los Angeles Times Building, and kept expanding into surrounding properties until it occupied an entire city block bounded by Spring, Broadway, First, and Second streets. That block became known as Times Mirror Square. Harry Chandler, then president and general manager of Times-Mirror Co., called the building a monument to the progress of our city and Southern California. It would remain the paper's home for more than eight decades.

• 4. The Otis Chandler Transformation

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  Otis Chandler held the publisher's position from 1960 to 1980, and he arrived with a different ambition than his predecessors. He believed the paper was overlooked by power centers in the Northeastern United States because of its geographic and cultural distance, and he set out to change that. He modeled his vision on the nation's most respected newspapers, explicitly referencing The New York Times and The Washington Post.

  Chandler believed the newsroom was the heartbeat of the business. He increased the size of the reporting staff, raised salaries, and expanded coverage both nationally and internationally. In 1962, the paper joined with The Washington Post to form the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service, syndicating articles to other news organizations. He also pulled the paper away from its historically unyielding conservatism, adopting a more centrist editorial stance. The results in terms of prizes were remarkable: during the 1960s alone, the paper won four Pulitzer Prizes, more than it had earned in its previous nine decades combined. During the later tenures of editors John Carroll and Dean Baquet, it would add 13 more, more than any other paper except The New York Times during that same period.

• 5. Ownership Turbulence

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  In 2000, Times Mirror Company, the corporate parent of the Los Angeles Times, was purchased by the Tribune Company of Chicago, placing the paper in co-ownership with the television station KTLA. The Tribune era brought repeated friction between the paper's editorial leadership and corporate demands for deeper cost cuts. Editor John Carroll eliminated more than 200 jobs while maintaining an operating profit margin of 20 percent, yet Tribune executives remained unsatisfied. Carroll's successor, Dean Baquet, the first African-American to hold that type of top editorial position at a leading daily, was removed when he refused to impose further mandated cutbacks. Publisher Jeffrey Johnson was also removed. Their replacements cycled through quickly.

  In December 2008, the Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection, citing declining advertising revenue and a debt load of $12.9 billion, much of it accumulated when the company was taken private by real estate entrepreneur Sam Zell. On the 7th of February 2018, Tribune Publishing agreed to sell the Los Angeles Times and two other Southern California newspapers to biotech investor Patrick Soon-Shiong. The sale, through his Nant Capital fund, was for $500 million plus the assumption of $90 million in pension liabilities. It closed on the 16th of June 2018.

• 6. Staff, Unions, and Declining Circulation

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  On the 19th of January 2018, employees of the news department voted 248-44 in a National Labor Relations Board election to be represented by the NewsGuild-CWA. The vote came despite management opposition and reversed more than a century of anti-union tradition at the paper, a striking reversal given the bombing of 1910. Staff ratified their first union contract on the 16th of October 2019.

  Print circulation had peaked at 1,225,189 daily and 1,514,096 on Sundays in April 1990. By October 2010, daily circulation had fallen to 600,449. A 2006 report placed circulation at 851,532, a 5.4 percent drop from the prior year, the largest decline among the top ten U.S. newspapers at that time. A December 2006 internal critique known as the Spring Street Project described the paper as a web-stupid organization and was followed by management changes. In January 2024, the paper announced a layoff affecting at least 115 employees, a reduction exceeding 20 percent of staff, including senior editorial positions. As of that year, print circulation stood at 79,000. On the 21st of July 2025, Soon-Shiong announced on The Daily Show that he intended to take the paper public within a year.

• 7. Pulitzers and Editorial Firsts

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  As of 2024, the Los Angeles Times has won 41 Pulitzer Prizes. The prizes span a wide range of categories and eras. John L. Gaunt Jr.'s photograph Tragedy by the Sea, published on the 3rd of April 1954, won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize for Photography. The paper received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a newspaper series titled Latinos. Sports columnist Jim Murray won in 1990. Investigative reporters Chuck Philips and Michael Hiltzik won in 1999 for exposing corruption in the music business. David Willman won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for his work on unsafe prescription drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

  In 2004, the paper won five Pulitzer Prizes in a single year, the third-highest total ever recorded by any paper in one year, behind The New York Times in 2002 with seven, and The Washington Post in 2008 with six. In 2016, the Times took the breaking news prize for coverage of the mass shooting in San Bernardino. Three reporters, Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, and Paul Pringle, won in 2019 for investigating a gynecologist accused of abusing hundreds of students at the University of Southern California. Art critic Christopher Knight won in 2020 for his critique of a proposed overhaul of the L.A. County Museum of Art.

• 8. Controversies and Editorial Independence

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  In 1999, the paper's credibility took a sharp hit when it was revealed that the Times and Staples Center had a revenue-sharing arrangement tied to a 168-page magazine about the arena's opening. Writers and editors on the magazine had not been told about the agreement, which broke the traditional separation between advertising and journalism. Publisher Mark Willes had also allowed advertisers to pressure reporters in other sections to write favorable stories.

  In November 2017, Walt Disney Studios blacklisted the Times from press screenings in retaliation for coverage of Disney's political influence in Anaheim. Major publications including The New York Times and The Washington Post joined a boycott of Disney press screenings in solidarity. Four film critics' organizations jointly announced Disney's films would be ineligible for their year-end awards unless the decision was reversed. On the 7th of November 2017, Disney reversed its decision.

  In October 2024, owner Soon-Shiong directed the editorial board not to endorse a presidential candidate, overruling a prepared endorsement of Kamala Harris. Opinion section editor Mariel Garza resigned in protest, as did two other board members, Robert Greene and Karin Klein. Two hundred Times staff signed a letter condemning the handling of the non-endorsement, and thousands of subscribers cancelled. Soon-Shiong had also blocked the board's intended endorsement of Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 Democratic primary. The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which the paper has run annually since 1996 in association with UCLA, moved to the University of Southern California in 2011 and continues each year.