By FOR ALL THE CLATTER about how well the American economy is doing, there sure do seem to be a lot of layoffs going on.
The latest — and some out here in SoCal would say the noisiest — was the recent layoff of more than 20% of the Los Angeles Times newsroom staff.
Los Angeles magazine quoted a Times staffer who described the webinar that announced the layoffs as “a drive-by” on social media, That’s probably because of how badly it was handled.
Maybe it’s me, but doesn’t it seem incredibly insensitive to terminate a big part of your staff via a staff webinar? As the magazine quoted, ” ‘The LA Times laid us off in an HR zoom webinar with chat disabled, no q&a, no chance to ask questions,’ Jared Servantez, a now former editor, wrote.”
Not only is that a terrible way to treat people, but stories like this are becoming all too common.
You’re starting to see a lot more about the layoffs and meltdowns going on in the media, and one I saw last month in New York magazine — The Media Apocalypse: Condé Nast and other publishers stare into the abyss — observed that “It is an especially miserable time to be employed (at Condé Nast) — and nearly everywhere else in media.”
Billionaires can lose money, too
THAT’S CERTAINLY TRUE, but the interesting wrinkle at the Los Angeles Times is that the newspaper is currently owned by biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong.
Billionaires jumping in to bail out old-school media isn’t a new phenomenon.
Warren Buffet tried it for a few years but ended up dumping his many newspapers, including his hometown Omaha World-Herald and Buffalo News, back in 2020. He said at the time that newspapers are “toast.”
That didn’t stop Amazon founder Jeff Bezos from buying The Washington Post for $250 million in 2013, but despite early momentum, The Post hit hard times, bought out 240 staffers, and lost $100 million last year.
Ken Doctor, a longtime media analyst, told The New York Times recently that “the billionaires in the news industry were showing ‘greater signs of fatigue’ stemming from challenges including “news anxiety and avoidance and fierce advertising competition.”
Doctor added this spot-on observation:
“The very rich find it very difficult to lose money year over year — even if they can afford it.”
That seems to be what has happened to Patrick Soon-Shiong. Los Angeles magazine noted that:
“Soon-Shiong and his family bought The Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune … for $500 million six years ago. Soon-Shiong’s heiress daughter Nika Soon-Shiong, a social justice activist, has been accused of meddling in editorial decisions.”
Meddling in editorial decisions?
IT WAS THE MEDDLING in editorial decisions that was one of the reasons that Times Executive Editor Kevin Merida left the paper last month, and as The Wall Street Journal reported:
“Merida, a former Washington Post managing editor and editor in chief of ESPN’s the Undefeated, decided to leave following budget constraints and various instances of Soon-Shiong weighing in on editorial affairs, a person familiar with the matter said. In a recent example, Soon-Shiong had a disagreement with Merida over a policy that would prevent reporters who signed a letter criticizing Israel’s invasion of Gaza from covering the war for a period of time, people familiar with the matter said.”
Things didn’t seem to go a whole lot better for the Soon-Shiong newspaper in San Diego; he sold the Union-Tribune last July after cutting 13% of the newsroom staff there.
The Wall Street Journal described Soon-Shiong’s ownership of the LA Times like this:
“Soon-Shiong promised to invest handsomely in the news organization, and set a lofty goal of reaching 5 million digital subscribers, up from 150,000 at the time. Many employees felt it was a far better outcome than getting bought by a hedge fund or large public owner, as such owners tended to cut jobs.
Six years later, that optimism looks misplaced. The new owner’s sunny projections and dreams of digital domination have given way to anemic subscription growth, newsroom tensions and an increasing pressure to cut costs. …
The publication lost more than $30 million last year. Its digital-subscriber base stands at around 300,000, nowhere near the owner’s original goal, according to people familiar with the matter. The LA Times’s union staged its first-ever strike last week, and the outlet abruptly lost three of its top editors in recent days, further eroding employee morale.”
When rich people buy media properties (or anything else) there always seems to be a sense that they will be more willing to spend money to help keep their new purchase going through the tough times that all businesses eventually face.
But even people like Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, and yes, Patrick Soon-Shiong — billionaires with deep pockets to fund money-losing properties for a long time — can run out of patience when they find that all their money can’t fix the financial problems that legacy media face.
People don’t read newspapers anymore
HERE’S MY TAKE: I was a newspaper editor for 25 years before going into magazines, business journals, and online publications, and I was pretty good at it. I worked at metro dailies in various roles before getting hired by the largest newspaper publisher in America to be top editor at two of its statewide papers in Montana and Hawaii.
I know newspapers pretty well, but when you get right down to it, the bottom-line problem for legacy media is pretty simple — people just don’t read newspapers, magazines, and print publications much anymore.
Rich billionaires can’t change that basic fact no matter how much they spend trying.
Social media is part of the problem, because many Americans say they get their news from places like Facebook and TikTok these days. As Pew Research reported last November:
“In just three years, the share of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has more than quadrupled, from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023. …
Among adults, those ages 18 to 29 are most likely to say they regularly get news on TikTok. About a third of Americans in this age group (32%) say they regularly get news there, a higher share than in years before. This compares with 15% of those ages 30 to 49, 7% of those 50 to 64 and just 3% of those 65 and older.”
A shell of their former self
NEWSPAPERS ARE DYING and have been for years. Those that are left are mostly a shell of their former self and have severely reduced news staffs.
Alden Global Capital owns more than 200 newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, and yes, the San Diego Union-Tribune. You don’t have to search very hard to find stories about how Alden buys local newspapers to squeeze what profit is left out of them with virtually no concern about the news coverage or journalistic content they provide.
Alden Capital seems to have forgotten (or maybe never cared) that newspapers did a lot of things that were good for our society — like covering city councils, and school boards, and planning commissions, and other such public entities. They all have an impact on our lives — a bigger impact than most people imagine — and really NEED to be held accountable and their actions made public to a lot more people.
But even back in my day, newspaper executives griped that writing about such things — they were given the dismissive label of “institutional coverage” — was getting cut back because it didn’t rank very high when subscribers were asked what they read or wanted out of a newspaper.
Today, there is little coverage of school boards and city councils because newspapers aren’t there and most independent bloggers rarely choose to step in and do it themselves.
The sole bright spot of new coverage comes from so-called independent websites that usually get funded by a mix of foundations, major donors, members and corporate sponsors.
Just this week, I got a fundraising email from a pretty good website like that here in California (CalMatters) that has stepped in to cover state politics the way the newspapers used to. It’s not cheap to do journalism right, and they used the turmoil at the Los Angeles Times to make a case for why people should donate so they can keep covering California like it should be.
Apologizing for calling it like it is
There was only one problem. In their fundraising email with the subject line “The model is creaking,” they wrote:
“The Los Angeles Times. The New York Times. The Washington Post.
Once the indomitable forces in American journalism. And as we saw last week (when 20% of the LA Times staff was let go), failing business models.” (emphasis added)
A few hours later, a second, apologetic email arrived that said:
“We sent a fundraising email earlier today that didn’t do justice to the efforts by our colleagues in other news organizations to sustain the journalism that’s so essential to our state and nation.”
The recent job cuts at the Los Angeles Times are heartbreaking to all of us, and it was wrong to describe news organizations as ‘failing business models.’ We’re sorry for the lack of sensitivity.”
It’s unclear what happened to get this good organization to send the apology email, but it’s pretty clear that the issue wasn’t that they were wrong in what they wrote about the failing business model of the newspaper business, but that they were too truthful in their original comment.
Yes, a very solid news website felt they had to apologize for calling it like it is.
So goes the state of American journalism today.
IT PAINS ME TO SAY IT given my newspaper background, but American journalism today is full of “failing business models” Even rich billionaires who had to be smart and savvy to become billionaires are too blind to see that basic fact.
The few newspapers that still cover the news as they did 35 years ago — publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal — will eventually fall prey to the same forces that have helped to pull down so many legacy media operations we used to count on.
I think of this every Sunday morning when I go out to my driveway to pick up the two newspapers that get tossed there.
Once upon a time, I could scan the street and see Sunday newspapers in a lot of my neighbors driveways. Today, I only see one other house besides mine where a newspaper was dropped.
But rich billionaires don’t walk out to their driveway to see that there are few newspapers getting tossed there anymore. If they did, they might not have been so quick to spend millions on a failing operation that doesn’t seem to get any better no matter what they do.
I’m guessing billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong finally understands that now. I hate to say this, but I bet he won’t be owning the Los Angeles Times too much longer to care.
