Terry Tang, top editor of the Los Angeles Times, discussed the challenges faced by the newspaper amid a backdrop of cuts, restructuring, and questions about the owner’s influence on editorial direction during a keynote address on Friday, March 28, as part of the 26th International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ) at the University of Texas in Austin.
Moderator Evan Smith, co-founder of the Texas Tribune and senior adviser at the Emerson Collective, opened with a direct question about recent staff cuts. On Thursday, journalist Oliver Darcy’s newsletter Status reported dozens of administrative employees had been laid off in yet another wave of job cuts. Tang confirmed the layoffs.
“It’s a very difficult time, there is no way to sugarcoat it,” Tang said. “Our owner Patrick Soon-Shiong continues to support and finance the paper to a huge deficit. And I think it means a tremendous amount to the communities in Los Angeles. We have gotten to a point where the financial aspect of this business, especially for big metro newspapers, is extremely challenging.”
Tang emphasized that despite the difficulties, the LA Times remains the largest newsroom west of the Potomac River, covering a region of eight million people—“the size of New Jersey”—and producing content about a range of aspects of life in California.
“We continue to cover every part of California,” Tang said. “It’s water quality and then, of course, the fires. Every person in the newsroom was involved with that because we are part of that community. Everybody who lives in Los Angeles is affected by it, no more than our journalists.”
Smith also mentioned the anxiety and uncertainty within the newsroom and the growing concern that the newspaper is being hollowed out, asking Tang if she could guarantee the newsroom would be protected from future cuts.
“No, of course I can’t say that,” Tang replied. “No organization can say that there are not going to be future changes. That would just be untrue. There’s no way to not be anxious about the work we do. The only way to calm your mind and feel that this profession is worth pursuing is to go back to the mission. Everybody is going through a version of this.”
Tang reiterated that no professional news organization is not going through difficult times. She said journalism is the only industry where everything is unique and made from scratch every day, while no other industry works this way.
“If you want to have a great story of what is happening at city hall, somebody has to have those sources. Somebody has to write it up. Somebody has to confirm it. Somebody has to design it. Apple doesn’t do that. All those iPhone 16s that come out, you’ve got a prototype”, Tang said. “We do this every single day, multiple times a day. It’s completely handmade. What industry does that every single day? As everybody is confined and constrained by resources, we continue to live by that. Every single day the news is new, it’s fresh, it’s urgent. And you have to get it done with less resources.”
When asked about the influence of owner Patrick Soon-Shiong on the newsroom’s journalistic independence, especially after his appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, where he criticized editorial coverage of Donald Trump, Tang was unequivocal.
“He doesn’t intrude. Absolutely not,” Tang said. “And I don’t make all of the choices in the newsroom because I have some of the best editors I’ve ever worked with. They make those choices. Otherwise it would be a one-person show. And that is not what journalism is about. Great journalistic enterprises are collectives. That means everybody is working towards the same mission, but we are not doing each other’s jobs.”
Smith followed up seeking more details about the top editor’s relationship with the owner of the newspaper. He asked how they communicate, whether Soon-Shiong specifically approached the editor to criticize coverage or if he had any issues with the journalism produced by the team. Tang denied such a situation. Smith also referenced a letter published last month by the Los Angeles Times Guild, in which there were complaints that Soon-Shiong was distorting the paper’s journalism, sharing incorrect information, and making false statements about the newsroom’s work.
“It’s a positive relationship. If you had a negative relationship with your boss, you’re not gonna be there. We talk. We don’t talk about coverage. And because, even in that, it would be sort of a bit intrusive in some ways”, said Tang. “I only look at what it is that we are producing and I would challenge anyone to look at every piece of journalism we are producing and see if that’s been influenced. If anybody wants to give me feedback, they can say it to my face, tell me exactly what you think it’s wrong. And Patrick Soon-Shiong has the right to tweet what he wants. He’s got the right to speak to whoever he wants to speak to and I think that’s fine.”
Regarding the need to make choices about what will be included in the Times’ coverage in the current context of reduced journalistic resources, Tang said “we write about stuff that we feel the reader really needs to know.”
Asked whether she sees the publication as a national newspaper with exceptional local coverage or as a local newspaper that ideally has exceptional national coverage, Tang said she believes the LA Times is a large regional newspaper. The goal is to ensure the publication’s reach within California.
“When we look at our Trump administration coverage, it’s very much focused on what those decisions do to people who live in California,” Tang said. “What’s happening in a Texas federal court is going to bounce right into what’s going to happen in California, in LA. If we had the luxury of having national bureaus all over every region in this country, we probably would do more.”
On the issue of trust in journalism, which has reached historically low levels according to recent surveys, Tang pointed out that during crises like the wildfires in California, the importance of local journalism was evident.
“There’s no cure for people who are inundated with misinformation, disinformation. I think it’s very hard for people to tell the difference [between a TikTok influencer and a journalist on TikTok]”, Tang said. “During the fires no one thought that they could not trust the journalism being produced out of the LA Times. And why is that? Because it was an emergency. They could see that it was 360 degree coverage. Every aspect of that hits you on the ground where you are. Your concerns are answered, and that’s where trust comes in. So for local papers, as I think those surveys also show, that the more local the story, the greater the trust.”
Toward the end of the conversation, Smith asked Tang which stories published during her tenure stood out, aside from coverage of the wildfires. Tang mentioned an investigation on toxic pesticides in legal cannabis products in California. The newspaper’s investigative team collected samples and sent them to a lab for analysis to determine whether pesticides were present in oils and vapes.
“It turns out there’s a lot of toxic stuff in there and none of it is really regulated,” Tang said. “California has three agencies supposedly regulating health and safety for cannabis. None of them did this. And unless we had done that lab testing, no one would have known. It was so great because we had a search engine for your favorite cannabis vape and see what it tested for in terms of toxic pesticides.”
