Otis era following the
1910 bombing and
Harrison Gray Otis in August 1917 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. 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".
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 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.
Former Times buildings The
Los Angeles Times has occupied five physical sites beginning in 1881.
Modern era featuring news of the
1984 Summer Olympics 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.
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. 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). On June 16, 2018, the same day the sale to Patrick Soon-Shiong closed,
Norman Pearlstine was named executive editor. The
Los Angeles Times Olympic Boulevard printing press was not purchased by Soon-Shiong and was kept by Tribune; in 2016 it was sold to developers who planned to build sound stages on the site. It had opened in 1990 and could print 70,000 96-page newspapers an hour. The last issue of the
Times printed at Olympic Boulevard was the March 11, 2024, edition. Printing moved to
Riverside, at the
Southern California News Group's
Press-Enterprise printer, which also prints Southern California editions of the
New York Times and
Wall Street Journal. In preparation for the printing plant closure and with a refocusing of sports coverage for editorial reasons, daily game coverage and box scores were eliminated on July 9, 2023. The sports section now features less time-sensitive articles, billed as similar to a magazine. The change caused some consternation in the
Los Angeles Jewish community, for many of whom reading box scores was a morning
Shabbat ritual. On January 23, 2024, the newspaper announced a layoff that would affect at least 115 employees. It named Terry Tang its next executive editor on April 8, 2024.
Circulation , in 2011 The
Times has suffered continued decline in distribution. Reasons offered for the circulation drop included a price increase and a rise in the proportion of readers preferring to read the online version instead of the print version. Editor Jim O'Shea, in an internal memo announcing a May 2007, mostly voluntary,
reduction in force, characterized the decrease in circulation as an "industry-wide problem" which the paper had to counter by "growing rapidly on-line", "break[ing] news on the Web and explain[ing] and analyz[ing] it in our newspaper." The
Times closed its
San Fernando Valley printing plant in early 2006, leaving press operations to the Olympic plant and to
Orange County. Also that year the paper announced its circulation had fallen to 851,532, down 5.4 percent from 2005. The
Timess loss of circulation was the largest of the top ten newspapers in the U.S. Some observers believed that the drop was due to the retirement of circulation director Bert Tiffany. Others thought the decline was a side effect of a succession of short-lived editors who were appointed by publisher Mark Willes after publisher
Otis Chandler relinquished day-to-day control in 1995. Subsequently, the Orange County plant closed in 2010. The
Timess reported daily circulation in October 2010 was 600,449, down from a peak of 1,225,189 daily and 1,514,096 Sunday in April 1990. By 2024, print circulation was 79,000.
Internet presence and free weeklies In December 2006, a team of
Times reporters delivered management with a critique of the paper's online news efforts known as the Spring Street Project. The report, which condemned the
Times as a "web-stupid" organization, and a rebuke of print staffers who were described as treating "change as a threat." On July 10, 2007, the
Times launched a local
Metromix site targeting live entertainment for young adults. A free weekly
tabloid print edition of Metromix Los Angeles followed in February 2008; the publication was the newspaper's first stand-alone print weekly. In 2009, the
Times shut down Metromix and replaced it with
Brand X, a
blog site and free weekly tabloid targeting young,
social networking readers.
Brand X launched in March 2009; the
Brand X tabloid ceased publication in June 2011 and the website was shut down the following month. In May 2018, the
Times blocked access to its online edition from most of Europe because of the European Union's
General Data Protection Regulation.
Gaza war According to an early 2024 analysis by
The Intercept, the
Los Angeles Times, along with other U.S.-based newspapers, exhibited a consistent bias against
Palestinians in their coverage of the
Gaza war. The study, which examined over 1,000 headlines from multiple U.S. newspapers during the first six weeks of the war, was obtained by "searching for all articles that contained relevant words (such as “Palestinian,” “Gaza,” “Israeli,” etc.) on three news websites." The analysis claims that the outlets disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths, used emotive language to describe Israeli casualties but not Palestinian ones, and focused more on
antisemitism in the U.S. than on
anti-Muslim discrimination. Additionally, despite the high Palestinian death toll, their suffering was underreported compared to coverage of similar events that took place during the
war in Ukraine. The
bias in media representation influences public perception and U.S. political support for
Israel, even as younger audiences increasingly turn to social media for alternative narratives.
Other incidents In 1999, it was revealed that a revenue-sharing arrangement was in place between the
Times and
Staples Center in the preparation of a 168-page magazine about the opening of the sports arena. The magazine's editors and writers were not informed of the agreement, which breached the
Chinese wall that traditionally has separated advertising from journalistic functions at American newspapers. Publisher Mark Willes also had not prevented advertisers from pressuring reporters in other sections of the newspaper to write stories favorable to their point of view.
Michael Kinsley was hired as the Opinion and Editorial (
op-ed) Editor in April 2004 to help improve the quality of the opinion pieces. His role was controversial, for he forced writers to take a more decisive stance on issues. In 2005, he created a
Wikitorial, the first
Wiki by a major news organization. Although it failed, readers could combine forces to produce their own editorial pieces. It was shut down after being besieged with inappropriate material. He resigned later that year. In 2003, the
Times drew fire for a last-minute story before the
California recall election alleging that
gubernatorial candidate
Arnold Schwarzenegger groped scores of women during his movie career. Columnist
Jill Stewart wrote on the
American Reporter website that the
Times did not do a story on allegations that former Governor
Gray Davis had verbally and physically abused women in his office, and that the Schwarzenegger story relied on a number of anonymous sources. Further, she said, four of the six alleged victims were not named. She also said that in the case of the Davis allegations, the
Times decided against printing the Davis story because of its reliance on anonymous sources. The
American Society of Newspaper Editors said that the
Times lost more than 10,000 subscribers because of the negative publicity surrounding the Schwarzenegger article. On November 12, 2005, new op-ed editor
Andrés Martinez announced the dismissal of liberal op-ed columnist
Robert Scheer and conservative editorial cartoonist
Michael Ramirez. The
Times also came under controversy for its decision to drop the weekday edition of the
Garfield comic strip in 2005, in favor of a hipper comic strip
Brevity, while retaining it in the Sunday edition.
Garfield was dropped altogether shortly thereafter. Following the
Republican Party's defeat in the
2006 mid-term elections, an Opinion piece by
Joshua Muravchik, a leading
neoconservative and a resident scholar at the conservative
American Enterprise Institute, published on November 19, 2006, was titled 'Bomb Iran'. The article shocked some readers, with its hawkish comments in support of more unilateral action by the United States, this time against Iran. On March 22, 2007, editorial page editor Andrés Martinez resigned following an alleged scandal centering on his girlfriend's professional relationship with a Hollywood producer who had been asked to guest-edit a section in the newspaper. In an open letter written upon leaving the paper, Martinez criticized the publication for allowing the Chinese wall between the news and editorial departments to be weakened, accusing news staffers of lobbying the opinion desk. In November 2017,
Walt Disney Studios blacklisted the
Times from attending press screenings of its films, in retaliation for September 2017 reportage by the paper on
Disney's political influence in the Anaheim area. The company considered the coverage to be "biased and inaccurate". As a sign of condemnation and solidarity, a number of major publications and writers, including
The New York Times,
Boston Globe critic
Ty Burr,
Washington Post blogger Alyssa Rosenberg, and the websites
The A.V. Club and
Flavorwire, announced that they would boycott press screenings of future Disney films. The
National Society of Film Critics,
Los Angeles Film Critics Association,
New York Film Critics Circle, and
Boston Society of Film Critics jointly announced that Disney's films would be ineligible for their respective year-end awards unless the decision was reversed, condemning the decision as being "antithetical to the principles of a free press and [setting] a dangerous precedent in a time of already heightened hostility towards journalists". On November 7, 2017, Disney reversed its decision, stating that the company "had productive discussions with the newly installed leadership at the
Los Angeles Times regarding our specific concerns". In October 2024, Soon-Shiong, the owner of the
Times, told executive editor Terry Tang that the newspaper must not endorse a candidate in the
2024 United States presidential election, but should instead print "a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation". The
Times editorial board, which had been preparing to endorse
Kamala Harris, the
Democratic presidential candidate, rejected this alternative to endorsement, and after
Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, alluded to the newspaper not having endorsed Harris, Mariel Garza, the editor of the opinion section, resigned in protest, as did two other members of the editorial board, Robert Greene and Karin Klein. Two hundred
Times staff signed a letter condemning the way in which the non-endorsement was handled, and thousands of subscribers cancelled their subscriptions. Soon-Shiong had previously blocked an endorsement by the editorial board in 2020, when he overruled their decision to endorse
Elizabeth Warren in the
2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. Following the election, Soon-Shiong stated that he plans to add an AI-powered "bias meter" to all of the paper's articles allowing readers to access "both sides" of stories. Amidst Soon-Shiong's public display of support for
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's pick for leader of the
US Department of Health and Human Services, opinion columnist Eric Reinhart alleged the paper cut a critical piece he wrote about Kennedy. ==Pulitzer Prizes==