This was supposed to be a sad homage to the glory days of the Los Angeles Times, a once great newspaper that showed sleepy SoCal residents sharp elbowed enterprise and investigative journalism seen only in the big cities back East. The Times appears to be on a ventilator at the moment as its billionaire owner sloughs off 115 newsroom positions, gets rid of 20% of its staff, and openly fights yet again with its unions. The move is another body blow to the news business. Most conservatives probably aren’t too sad about this change of fortune, however, and with good reason.
Hearing about the Times’ travails put me in a melancholy memory lane mood. The Times once featured snarky sports columnists and an entertainment section that followed the hometown businesses, Hollywood, music, and military defense. The paper produced deep think pieces that were the envy of other newspapers. These were the days when the Times ombudsman was unleashed to write multi-thousand-word investigative pieces on the newspaper’s coverage to pronounce if it was guilty of breaking any journalistic rules.
The L.A. Times, like its former owner The Washington Post, was a decidedly Democrat Party organ. Indeed, the Post was invented to be the voice of the Democrat Party, which is no surprise to its readers. As a result of the Gotcha Watergate coverage, journalism took a decidedly reckless turn.
The Times apple didn’t fall far from the mothership tree. An important aside, if you ever want a seminal forensic analysis of the Post’s Watergate coverage hit job, I urge you to listen or watch my Adult in the Room Podcast interviews, one with a former federal prosecutor turned author, who later was Deepthroat’s attorney and another with one of Richard Nixon’s young attorneys who transcribed the Nixon tapes.
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The Times was not immune from the journalistic fads and the economy’s vicissitudes. Those deep think pieces gave way to front page “news analysis” pieces, which simply moved the editorial opinion essays to the front page, which had once been verboten. Expensive investigative pieces became outcome-based snipe hunts to find the next Dr. Evil of the Republican Party. And enterprise or investigative journalism? In a town run by Democrats and covered by Democrats, they couldn’t see what they couldn’t or didn’t want to see.
The Times was always a journalistic bully. One time as a San Diego radio reporter (yes, there used to be robust radio news departments), a Times reporter lied to a federal prosecutor about me and my coverage of a story we were both going after. He did it to get the office to stop talking to me. (Hey Rick, how’s it going?) I know this because my contact told me.
Another L.A. Times reporter gave this young reporter a great piece of advice when we sat on a media panel and she told this room full of Navy media guys that even if it has to be off the record, “I’d rather know than not know.” It’s no tablet from the mountaintop, but it was a helpful insight into journalistic hardball. One of my favorite journalism buddies in our professional organization was another L.A. Times reporter. These people are long gone in previous riffs by management.
While the capital J journalist in me wants to grieve, the conservative media watchdog in me wants to scream, “You smug, insufferable, elitist, leftist transcriptionists deserve this pain. Do you know what it’s like to be censored by people like you every day? You cheerlead our censorship.”
In 2018, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the newspaper. The South African-born emigre discovered a drug to slow metastatic cancer and became a billionaire. He believed it was his civic duty to take over the troubled newspaper as online news and social media platforms eviscerate print journalism.
The newspaper went even more woke. Soon-Shiong was derided as an absentee landlord and excoriated by the newspaper’s union shop. The clashes continued and so did the layoffs. This week’s layoff, which goes into effect in March, was the worst in the paper’s history.
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In the announcement of the bloodletting, the Times wrote that Dr. Soon-Shiong despaired about the rift. But the walkout by 350 staff members on Friday “did not help the situation.”
The guild lamented that minority reporters recently hired would be among those laid off. The Times reported that this headcount reduction occurred, “seven months after more than 70 staff members were laid off. Those cuts disproportionately affected journalists of color…”
Soon-Shiong was sorry, but “the irony is that a free press isn’t free,” he said.
And now for the breakdown, as they say in the hip hop biz.
What good is a regional newspaper if it tells only one point of view and chooses stories based on young, dumb, activist reporters’ confirmation biases? As a result, the Fourth Estate has become the Fifth Column. These flaws are the reason PJ Media and other conservative media exist.
The Times giddily divides people with its outrageous race-baiting stories. Did you know that white people kill black and brown people simply by living their lives? Yes, you bigot!
Stare hard at this headline as you hear that LATimes had to lay off 115 ppl from its newsroom today https://t.co/Mnyt5VGY2l
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) January 24, 2024
This isn’t journalism, it’s activism worthy of a Berkeley undergrad, which is probably where most of these stenographers went to school. You’re probably paying their student loans right now.
Thursday’s L.A. Times front page consisted of two global warming stories, one of which was above the fold. Southern California is experiencing rainstorms as it does every El Niño year. Now it’s an international incident. There was an above-the-fold story about the plight of the Gazans at the hands of those evil Israelis. There was a lamentation of how “EV charging system woes hurt climate goals,” which is really a story about how Gov. Gavin Newsom’s government intrusion into the EV charging station network has ruined it due to his recklessly misspent taxpayer subsidies. But his intentions are so good, so he must be a great governor.
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When California could have had a great governor or at least something closer to it, the L.A. Times derided the Republican in the election, as the “black face of white supremacy” and a “white supremacist.” Black conservative Larry Elder took the occasion of the L.A. Times layoffs to send a note of “sympathy.”
Yo, @jeanguerre, who called me a “white supremacist,” you’ve been canned by the broke @latimes. Bet your equally bigoted, but black colleague, @Erika_D_Smith, who called me “the black face of white supremacy,” still has a job. She’d pull out the race card in a L.A. minute.#DEI pic.twitter.com/N3fAvUXxdt
— Larry Elder (@larryelder) January 24, 2024
Racism in the face of imaginary racism is apparently no vice to the Times.
If the media can’t at least seek out different opinions, seek fairness, and give platform to another viewpoint, it will continue to do what it did during COVID: act as a slave to the left and the leftist government that got it all wrong.
During COVID, as the L.A. School District shattered in a million pieces like a window at a downtown CVS during a “peaceful protest,” the Times backed the Democrat government’s lockdowns and jackboot police tactics. Stanford infectious disease expert Jay Bhattacharya was silenced, mocked, censored, and bullied. Now here’s his advice to the readers of the L.A. Times.
Worried about journalism job cuts? Take the money you use to pay for outlets like @latimes, @nytimes, & @washingtonpost that, during the covid era, ignored truth, panicked people, & shuttered schools, and use it to fund independent journalists not beholden to elites instead. pic.twitter.com/LkojNMiCCQ
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) January 24, 2024
On Twitter/X, people sick of the Times’ unquestioned devotion to the left’s global warming catastrophizing, reminded those with a case of the sads that the L.A. Times is not a friend of the truth.
Oh gosh I wonder why people don’t have more sympathy for @latimes. It’s such a mystery. pic.twitter.com/YbRZF7k9rR
— Kristen Mag (@kristenmag) January 24, 2024
The L.A. Times passed along the Russian Collusion, spy gate, Trump-is-a-Russian-Secret-Agent nonsense and thinks Hunter Biden is an ordinary guy and Joe’s his devoted, faultless father. Nothing to see here.
The L.A. Times is devoted to its ideology and not on the quality of its product, noted researcher Christopher Rufo.
This is the statement from the LA Times’ DEI caucuses complaining about the recent layoffs. Notice that they only defend their work on the basis of race, not on quality, merit, or the bottom line. DEI is purely ideological, subordinating journalism to racial box-checking. pic.twitter.com/6HVxaebecx
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) January 24, 2024
Independent journalist Jonathan Choe said the left can’t blame this one on “whitey.”
THEY CAN’T BLAME WHITEY: Owner of the LA Times is Asian American billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong. The race hustlers don’t know what to do. They’re not sure how to attack another minority with the race card.😂 BTW, Asian American male owners of legacy media brands are virtually… https://t.co/xniOxaPrR4 pic.twitter.com/WqOkqK0i7z
— Jonathan Choe Journalist (Seattle) (@choeshow) January 24, 2024
The Wuhan lab leak-denying reporter Michael Hiltzik was spared in this round of layoffs.
Shame on the @latimes for firing 100+ stenographers but not Michael Hiltzik. The man is a disinformation machine without equal. https://t.co/hN7q2AvsAe pic.twitter.com/0SA5TIIAMd
— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) January 24, 2024
The Times appears to be in hospice care. Some leftist Silicon Valley tycoon will probably set up a trust to take it over if the good doctor ever wants to sell, and they’ll turn this house organ into their house organ. Mark Zuckerberg’s already trying to take over the news business one small newsroom at a time as I explained in 2022.
The left can’t afford to lose the L.A. Times. It’ll do what it can to save it, as the good doctor still tries to do. Soon, the newspaper will be permanently relieved of its currently ignored obligation to objectively report the news. In its effort to save it, the left will destroy what was once a decent paper a very long time ago.
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