The story of Los Angeles Times It is full of milestones. The newspaper founded in 1881 lent its building to Charlie Chaplin to make his first film in 1914. Readers learned in its pages about events that changed the city, such as the Zoot Suits riots and the macabre murder of Elizabeth Short, well known in journalism. of events like the black Dahlia. The political power of its editors was famous. They were responsible for launching Richard Nixon's political career and burying socialist writer Upton Sinclair's ambitions to become governor. In all this time, however, the newspaper had never experienced a strike by its reporters. Until this Friday.
“The Administration of Los Angeles Times has announced that it plans the imminent dismissal of a significant number of journalists,” the newspaper's union said in a statement made public on Thursday. As a protest, the newsroom employees left their offices in Sacramento, the state capital, Washington, Austin (Texas) and Los Angeles for one day this Friday.
Dozens of journalists demonstrated in Grand Park, the space where Los Angeles City Hall is located. They came dressed in t-shirts with the eagle that crowned the newspaper's original building, a short distance from the mayor's office, on the chest. The heavy bronze sculpture accompanied the editorial office in two moves and today is in the lobby of the newspaper's offices, near the airport.
Employees complain that the newspaper's management is pressuring them to cut benefits in the new collective contract, which “gives them more freedom to choose who to fire.” “The changes that the administration is trying to make to our contract are obscene and unsustainable,” said Brian Contreras, the leader of the union organization.
This is the first strike for the newspaper, which began publishing on December 4, 1881. But labor tensions are not strange for the newspaper. On October 1, 1910, a bomb exploded in a warehouse where ink for the printing presses was kept. The device, which killed 21 people, was planted by union activists to repudiate the hostile policies of the Chandlers, the owner family, who were rabidly anti-union workers.
The employees of Los Angeles Times They are fighting for some of the oldest labor rights in American journalism. Norman Chandler, the son of the iconic owner Harry Chandler (the businessman who gave Hollywood its famous sign), in 1937 granted the newspaper's employees one of the most important benefit packages in the country, a transfer in favor of employees to dissipate the concerns of forming a union. This, however, became a reality in 2018. It is made up of about 450 people.
Union organizing was made possible by the Los Angeles Times changing hands. The Chandlers sold the newspaper to Tribune Publishing in 2000. The Chicago-based newspaper giant, an expert in squeezing newsrooms and cutting staff, reduced the number of employees, from 1,200 to 500. After a brief period within the property millionaire's portfolio roots Sam Zell, the LA Times was acquired by doctor Patrick Soon-Shiong, a pioneer in pancreas transplants whose fortune is around $5.5 billion.
Several Los Angeles journalists believed that Soon-Shiong's arrival was similar to Jeff Bezos' landing in Washington Post. That fortune would serve as a safety net for a century-old organization in turbulent times for journalism. It was not so. The honeymoon ended last year, when the company's administrators announced the dismissal of 13% of the workforce (about 74 people) to face the complex times that the media is experiencing worldwide. The Post, owned by one of the richest men in the world, laid off 240 employees in 2023.
This Friday's protest is a new example of the adjustments that the American media are making to their staff. The strike comes in the same week that Pitchfork, an influential music criticism outlet, fires most of its writers. And the same day that Sports Illustrated, perhaps the most famous sports magazine in the country, announces that the employment of the publication's 82 workers is in danger, after a conflict between the brand and the license owner. These are hard times for the press.
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