The Los Angeles Times is an American daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, it is the sixth-largest newspaper in the U.S. As of 2025, it had approximately 63,000 print subscribers and 243,000 digital subscribers. The paper has won over 52 Pulitzer Prizes since 1942.
In the 19th century, the paper developed a reputation for civic boosterism and opposition to labor unions, the latter of which led to the bombing of its headquarters in 1910. The paper's profile grew substantially in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. As with other regional newspapers in California and the United States, the paper's readership has declined since 2010. It has also been beset by a series of ownership changes, staff reductions, and other controversies.
In January 2018, the paper's staff voted to unionize and finalized their first union contract on October 16, 2019. In July 2018, the paper was bought by biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, and moved out of its historic headquarters in downtown Los Angeles to a facility in El Segundo, near Los Angeles International Airport. Since 2020, the newspaper's coverage has evolved away from national and international news and toward coverage of California and especially Southern California crime and disaster news and human interest stories.
In January 2024, the paper underwent its largest percentage reduction in headcount—a layoff exceeding 20 percent, including senior staff editorial positions—in an effort to stem the tide of financial losses and maintain enough cash to be viably operational through the end of the year in a struggle for survival and relevance as a regional newspaper of diminished status. Patrick Soon-Shiong announced in July 2025 that he would be taking the paper public within a year.
Since 2012, the LA Times has had a paywall and primarily generates revenue from monthly and annual subscriptions. The publication also generates significant revenue from display advertising, in addition to sponsored articles and press releases via Imperium Comms.
History
Otis era
The Times was first published on December 4, 1881, as the Los Angeles Daily Times, under the direction of Nathan Cole Jr. and Thomas Gardiner. It was first printed at the Mirror printing plant, which was then owned by Jesse Yarnell and T. J. Caystile. Unable to pay the printing bill, Cole and Gardiner turned the paper over to the Mirror Company. In the meantime, S. J. Mathes had joined the firm, and it was at his insistence that the Times continued publication. In July 1882, Harrison Gray Otis moved from Santa Barbara, California to become the paper's editor."Mirror Acorn, 'Times' Oak", Los Angeles Times, October 23, 1923, page II-1 Access to this link requires the use of a library card. At the same time he also purchased a 1/4 stake in the paper for $6,000 mostly secured on a bank loan.
Historian Kevin Starr wrote that Otis was a businessman "capable of manipulating the entire apparatus of politics and public opinion for his own enrichment". Otis's editorial policy was based on civic boosterism, extolling the virtues of Los Angeles and promoting its growth. Toward those ends, the paper supported efforts to expand the city's water supply by acquiring the rights to the water supply of the distant Owens Valley.
The efforts of the Times to fight local unions led to the bombing of its headquarters on October 1, 1910, killing 21 people. Two of the union leaders, James and Joseph McNamara, were charged. The American Federation of Labor hired noted trial attorney Clarence Darrow to represent the brothers, who eventually pleaded guilty.
Otis fastened a bronze eagle on top of a high frieze of the new Times headquarters building designed by Gordon Kaufmann, proclaiming anew the credo written by his wife, Eliza: "Stand Fast, Stand Firm, Stand Sure, Stand True".Clarence Darrow: Biography and Much More from Answers.com at www.answers.com
Chandler era
After Otis's death in 1917, his son-in-law and the paper's business manager, Harry Chandler, took control as publisher of the Times. Chandler was succeeded in 1944 by his son, Norman Chandler, who ran the paper during the period of rapid growth in Los Angeles following the end of World War II. Norman's wife, Dorothy Buffum Chandler, became active in civic affairs and led the effort to build the Los Angeles Music Center, whose main concert hall was named the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in her honor. Family members are buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery near Paramount Studios. The site also includes a memorial to the Times Building bombing victims.
In 1935, the newspaper moved to a new, landmark Art Deco building, the Los Angeles Times Building, to which the newspaper would add other facilities until taking up the entire city block between Spring, Broadway, First, and Second streets, which came to be known as Times Mirror Square and would house the paper until 2018. Harry Chandler, then the president and general manager of Times-Mirror Co., declared the Los Angeles Times Building a "monument to the progress of our city and Southern California".
The fourth generation of family publishers, Otis Chandler, held that position from 1960 till 1980. Otis Chandler sought legitimacy and recognition for his family's paper, often forgotten in the power centers of the Northeastern United States due to its geographic and cultural distance. He sought to remake the paper in the model of the nation's most respected newspapers, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. Believing that the newsroom was "the heartbeat of the business", Otis Chandler increased the size and pay of the reporting staff and expanded its national and international reporting. In 1962, the paper joined with The Washington Post to form the Los Angeles Times–Washington Post News Service to syndicate articles from both papers for other news organizations. He also toned down the unyielding conservatism that had characterized the paper over the years, adopting a much more centrist editorial stance.
During the 1960s, the paper won four Pulitzer Prizes, more than its previous nine decades combined.
In 2013, Times reporter Michael Hiltzik wrote that:
The first generations bought or founded their local paper for profits and also social and political influence (which often brought more profits). Their children enjoyed both profits and influence, but as the families grew larger, the later generations found that only one or two branches got the power, and everyone else got a share of the money. Eventually the coupon-clipping branches realized that they could make more money investing in something other than newspapers. Under their pressure the companies went public, or split apart, or disappeared. That's the pattern followed over more than a century by the Los Angeles Times under the Chandler family.
The paper's early history and subsequent transformation were chronicled in an unauthorized history, Thinking Big (1977, ), and were one of four organizations profiled by David Halberstam in The Powers That Be (1979, ; 2000 reprint ). Between the 1960s and the mid-2000s it was also the whole or partial subject of nearly thirty dissertations in communications and social science.ProQuest Dissertation Abstracts. Retrieved June 8, 2007.
Former Times buildings
The Los Angeles Times has occupied five physical sites beginning in 1881.
Modern era
The Los Angeles Times was beset in the first decade of the 21st century by changes in ownership, a bankruptcy, a rapid succession of editors, reductions in staff, decreases in paid circulation, the need to increase its Web presence, and a series of controversies. In January 2024, the newsroom announced a roughly 20 percent reduction in staff, due to anemic subscription growth and other financial struggles.
The newspaper moved to a new headquarters building in El Segundo, near Los Angeles International Airport, in July 2018.
Ownership In 2000, Times Mirror Company, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, was purchased by the Tribune Company of Chicago, Illinois, placing the paper in co-ownership with the then WB-affiliated (now CW-affiliated) KTLA, which Tribune acquired in 1985.
On April 2, 2007, the Tribune Company announced its acceptance of real estate entrepreneur Sam Zell's offer to buy the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and all other company assets. Zell announced that he would sell the Chicago Cubs baseball club. He put up for sale the company's 25 percent interest in Comcast SportsNet Chicago. Until shareholder approval was received, Los Angeles billionaires Ron Burkle and Eli Broad had the right to submit a higher bid, in which case Zell would have received a $25 million buyout fee.
In December 2008, the Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection. The bankruptcy was a result of declining advertising revenue and a debt load of $12.9 billion, much of it incurred when the paper was taken private by Zell.
On February 7, 2018, Tribune Publishing, formerly Tronc Inc., agreed to sell the Los Angeles Times and its two other Southern California newspapers, The San Diego Union-Tribune and Hoy, to billionaire biotech investor Patrick Soon-Shiong. The sale to Soon-Shiong through his Nant Capital investment fund, for $500 million plus the assumption of $90 million in pension liabilities, closed on June 16, 2018.
On July 21, 2025, Soon-Shiong announced while giving an interview on The Daily Show that he would be taking the paper public within a year.
Editorial changes and staff reductions In 2000, John Carroll, former editor of the Baltimore Sun, was brought in to restore the luster of the newspaper. During his reign at the Times, he eliminated more than 200 jobs, but despite an operating profit margin of 20 percent, the Tribune executives were unsatisfied with returns, and by 2005 Carroll had left the newspaper. His successor, Dean Baquet, refused to impose the additional cutbacks mandated by the Tribune Company.
Baquet was the first African-American to hold this type of editorial position at a top-tier daily. During Baquet and Carroll's time at the paper, it won 13 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other paper except The New York Times. However, Baquet was removed from the editorship for not meeting the demands of the Tribune Group—as was publisher Jeffrey Johnson—and was replaced by James O'Shea of the Chicago Tribune. O'Shea himself left in January 2008 after a budget dispute with publisher David Hiller.
The paper reported on July 3, 2008, that it planned to cut 250 jobs by Labor Day and reduce the number of published pages by 15 percent. That included about 17 percent of the news staff, as part of the newly private media company's mandate to reduce costs. Hiller himself resigned on July 14. In January 2009, the Times eliminated the separate California/Metro section, folding it into the front section of the newspaper, and also announced seventy job cuts in news and editorial or a 10 percent cut in payroll.
In September 2015, Austin Beutner, the publisher and chief executive, was replaced by Timothy E. Ryan. On October 5, 2015, the Poynter Institute reported that "At least 50' editorial positions will be culled from the Los Angeles Times" through a buyout. Nancy Cleeland, who took O'Shea's buyout offer, did so because of "frustration with the paper's coverage of working people and organized labor" (the beat that earned her Pulitzer). She speculated that the paper's revenue shortfall could be reversed by expanding coverage of economic justice topics, which she believed were increasingly relevant to Southern California; she cited the paper's attempted hiring of a "celebrity justice reporter" as an example of the wrong approach.