The Los Angeles Times Layoffs Will Impact Music Coverage

The Los Angeles Times announced on Tuesday that it would be laying off 115 people across their newsroom in one of the largest “workforce reductions in the history of the 142-year-old institution.” 

These layoffs come off the heels of a one-day strike by the L.A. Times Guild on Friday last week in protest of this 20% staff cut. Their efforts were in vain as editors, videographers, and writers across sections like sports and relatively new reporting initiatives like Latino-focused De Los, which was founded in June of last year, are now out of jobs with plenty of ink in their pens and stories to share. 

“An absolutely devastating day for @latimes and @delosLAtimes,” Martina Ibáñez-Baldor, the design director for De Los, said on Twitter. “Everyone on the De Los team believed in the mission: telling Latino stories and serving our community.” 

According to a statement from the Black, Latino, AAPI and MENASA Caucuses in the L.A. Times Guild, these layoffs will reduce their caucus size by over 30% each, significantly affecting news coverage of these groups and a big step backwards in the L.A. Times commitment to increasing the racial diversity of their staffers. 

In music, De Los published stories on industry heavyweights like Kali Uchis and current sensations like Xavi. With De Los being one of the only major news publishers to feature artists like Xavi so prominently on their page, layoffs in their department will make this sort of new coverage less frequent and more scarce. 

In a city where 48% of its residents are Latino, 8.6% are Black, and 11.8% are Asian, according to the U.S. Census, such a staggering loss in diversity within the L.A. Times will see many issues in these communities fly under the radar and many new artists undiscovered. 

The L.A. Times claims that the layoffs are a product of their deteriorating economic health, from continual losses in advertising revenue over the years to failures by people like Executive Editor Kevin Merida who sought to increase the paper’s audience through documentaries and podcasts. 

The L.A. Times isn’t the only news publisher struggling to establish a footing after the pandemic and during a time where most people consume their news on social media. In 2023, the news industry cut over 2500 jobs in outlets like CNN, ABC, and more according to a report by employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. 

TIME magazine and National Geographic also laid off some of its staff on Tuesday, while Pitchfork staffers protested Condé Nast’s decision to absorb the publication into GQ. 

These layoffs, while unfair and unexpected, will serve to underscore the importance of journalists when audiences begin to experience a decline in the quality, availability, and depth of stories available online.