Los Angeles Times to Cut 70 Newsroom Staff

To the certainly strung-out staff at the Los Angeles Times, the most recent mandate from above likely caused further stress, but perhaps a sense of resignation more than surprise.

Following weak quarterly earnings from parent Tribune Company, the newspaper needs to cut 150 more positions, or more than 5 percent of the paper’s workforce, including 70 newsroom staff, writes MediaPost. Unnamed executives were cited in the Los Angeles Times as saying they hope to accomplish the cuts with voluntary buyout packages so that layoffs will be unnecessary, though the option will remain open.

The Los Angeles Times has undergone almost unrelenting drama since last fall, coming to symbolize the issues facing the newspaper industry as a whole when former editor Dean Baquet publicly refused to carry out Tribune executives’ orders to cut newsroom staff. He was forced to resign in Nov. 2006, and publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson, who supported Baquet, was also pushed out.

The paper then found itself at the center of the lengthy auction of Tribune Co., with Los Angeles area billionaires Eli Broad and Ronald Burkle - said mainly to be interested in the Times - bidding against a variety of interested parties. The auction ended when Chicago real-estate mogul Sam Zell beat competitors with an $8.2 billion offer.

In the meantime, further cost cutting measures became necessary, such as cutting the paper’s stand-alone book review and folding it into the weekend opinion section. Then the editorial page editor called it quits after butting heads with the paper’s new editor.