L.A. Times Performs Public Self-flagellation
Part fable, part fact
By James R Smith
Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine was sitting in his office suite a few days ago and as usual, pursuing his financial portfolio, when the strangest thought entered his mind. It must have been his pesky subconscious listening to a news report about a Black Lives Matter demonstration.
The 77-year-old arbitrator of all things L.A. Times jumped up, steadied himself, and exclaimed “Where are all the Black people?”
His Executive Secretary, Ms. Edith Penneyworth, who had been monitoring his intercom, as usual, said, without thinking, “Why I believe they are out protesting somewhere. Do you want me to find out?”
“No, no, no, not them,” said Norman. “I mean the ones who work here.”
“I don’t believe we have any working here,” responded Edith. “Let me check with Human Resources.”
“A very short time later,” a smiling Edith announced, “I’m happy to report that we have some Black people. It seems that it’s required. I have the entire list right here. Would you like me to bring you one?” inquired Edith.
“One what?” said Norman, “who had quite forgotton the whole conversation, and was once again perusing his stock options.”
“Why, one of these fine gentlemen or ladies,” said Edith, not quite catching his drift. “I’m sure it will be quite safe, but I can ask the security guard to stop by.”
“No I don’t have to see one, just tell me how many there are,” said Norman.
“We have 26 of them,” Edith beamed.
“Oh dear, oh dear, that won’t do at all.” Norman slumped down in his chair, all thought of a stock purchase replaced by darker, much darker thoughts.
Norman had seen photos and videos from back in 1992, when “those people” had stormed the old Times building downtown. They had wrecked the entire first floor, and they did it before they got on with their looting.
Then there were those awful union people who blew up the entire building back in 1910, and now they are right here in the newsroom. I mean the union people, not the Black people.
And those protests, day after day … Something must be done. We have to find a fall guy who will have to resign. Won’t be me. No Siree. We’ll have a meeting. Someone will always says it was their fault.
—————————-
And so, a meeting was held, outrage was expressed, reporters pointed fingers at editors as if they were their equals, Pearlstine expressed dismay and shock.
In fact, Pearlstine took the blame, sort of. In a front page article, June 24, entitled, “L.A. Times faces a reckoning on race,” we are privy to the best in board room dissembly: “ … Pearlstine acknowledged he’d failed because his deputies didn’t do an adequate job of hiring diverse talent.” So, it was those lousy deputies of his who are responsible. Heads will roll.
As expected, several of those deputies, says the article, fell upon their swords, more or less insuring their continued employment, and leaving their fellow editors in a lurch. No one ever said office politics was pretty.
Not taking any blame at all is billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong. One might say that billionaires don’t have to take any blame, which is exactly the problem with having billionaires. Thanks to the mea culpa meeting, we know that Soon-Shiong participates in a 14-member leadership group, which also includes nine white editors, three Asian American editors, one Latino editor and one Black editor.
This is a problem for two reasons: 1) Soon-Shiong by his active participation was just as responsible for the lack of Black editorial staff as anyone else, and 2) Publishers/owners are not supposed to take part in making decisions on content or hiring. Even though he’s a billionaire, Soon-Shiong, has no more experience in journalism and objectivity than any of you dear readers. It’s like letting the advertising department make the editorial decisions, but even more dangerous.
Soon-Shiong and his wife, Michele B. Chan. had become something of local heros a couple of years ago for rescuing the Times from the clutches of the Chicago Tribune, which had sold off The Times’ beautiful art deco headquarters, and had been looting the Times of its 140 years of wealth.
Before the 1960s, the Times did not see itself as the voice of Los Angeles. It was the voice of the old money of Pasadena. That tradition began in 1882 when Harrison Gray Otis arrived at the newly founded paper. He was a manipulator who was always looking for a fast buck. His wealth would come to him down the railroad tracks carrying trains filled with new residents of Los Angeles. The bigger the city became, the wealthier Otis grew. He thrived on real estate speculation that was destroying this orange grove paradise. The only flies in the ointment were those damn unions. The Times hammered away to a receptive readership that Los Angeles must remain an ”open shop,” that is, no unions allowed. When Otis died in 1917, son-in-law Harry Chandler took over. The Chandler dynasty including Norman and Otis continued on for nearly a century.
The Times did not circulate its paper in Black sections of Los Angeles until after the Watts Rebellion of 1965, nor did it cover news in that part of town. According to the book, Red Ink, White Lies, by Rob Leicester Wagner, the Times had an unwritten policy of not sending reporters into Black districts.
The unions mostly left the Times alone. It paid union wages, or even higher, for decades. Besides, there were many other newspapers in town, all of them union. The Hearst’s Herald & Express, an evening newspaper, was the biggest, followed closely by its morning edition, the Examiner.
The Times launched the Mirror, into the glut of newspapers to compete with the Herald & Express but it was unsuccessful and folded after a few years. But the addition of one more daily newspaper drove the Daily News (not to be confused with the one in the San Fernando Valley) to near bankruptcy, and ultimately, Times Mirror bought it, creating the Mirror-News. Before that happened, most of the progressives and union supporters read the Los Angeles Daily News, which had the best writers and a New Deal orientation. It also hired “minorities,” which the other papers didn’t do. The loss of the Daily News deprived working people of having a non-Republican daily newspaper. The best we have gotten since then is the liberal Republican L.A. Times.
Full Disclosure: I was involved in a Los Angeles Newspaper Guild organizing drive at the Times from 1991-93. We had an organizing committee of more than 100 staff, and many more were signing union cards. We could have won unionization of the 1,100 editorial employees had we not run afoul of our own union leadership. The International President in Washington DC, Charles Dale, was an old-line union president who didn’t know anything about computers, how to organize or win good contracts. He cut off the funding for our only organizer and made it clear that he thought it was impossible to have a union at the L.A. Times. As a result the labor movement didn’t get the kick in the ass that it needed, and a thousand people worked under lower pay and undemocratic conditions until 25 years later when the union finally came to live in what had been the heart of anti-unionism for a hundred years.
By the time Otis Chandler died in 2006, the family had made the evolution to coupon clippers and no one wanted to take over a big job like running a newspaper. The Times was sold to the Chicago Tribune, which nearly wrecked it. Finally, for half a billion dollars, it became the property of Soon-Shiong and Michele B. Chan in 2018. The rump now resides in the town of El Segundo. Probably the main reason protesters didn’t attack the headquarters, as they did in 1992, is that they couldn’t find it.
Meanwhile, the editorial staff has fallen from 1,100 in 1992 to 502 today. Circulation has fallen from 1,132,920 daily and 1,418,697 Sunday in 1988, when L.A. was less populous, to 616, 606 weekdays and 941,914 on Sundays. This past year circulation has dropped 14.7 percent weekdays and 7.6 percent on Sundays, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation.
Even though the Times is suffering circulation and advertising woes, that is no reason to avoid hiring people of color. Rather, it is a reason to shake up management that could not innovate during hard times.
In 1996, the L.A. Times endorsed Prop. 209, the anti-affirmative action initiative (this was not mentioned in the Times article). While the proposition only legally applied to public employers, its win set off a cascade of “color-blindness,” that is, white-only hiring throughout the country, and apparently at the L.A. Times. The lack of diversity is now so bad at the Times that what is needed is not just affirmative action, but quotas.
The aforementioned Times article gives some helpful statistics on the impact of racist hiring at the Times. Read it and weep:
whites: L.A. County is 26 percent white, the Times newsroom is 61 percent white
Latinos: L.A. County: 50 percent; Times newsroom: 13 percent
Blacks: L.A. County: 8 percent; Times newsroom: 5.6 percent
Asian Americans: L.A. County: 15 percent; Times newsroom: 15 percent
Native Americans: not mentioned, probably zero in the newsroom
There is mention in the article that there is only one underpaid Black journalist in local news, but when City Editor Hector Becerra tried to get her a raise, Pearlstine vetoed it and she had to wait 14 months before a union contract that mandated the pay raise was negotiated. This kind of treatment will not encourage journalists of color to aspire to work at the Times.
Meanwhile, we can expect a lot more drama at the El Segundo Times. So far, management has been only baby steps, when disruption is sorely needed. The paper’s Black Caucus has made some demands for parity in employment with the population. What I believe is needed is an executive editor who is a person of color selected from the current workforce, and yes, they are qualified.
The Times troubles could be an opportunity that doesn’t come along every day for any writers of color reading this. Get yourself down, metaphorically speaking, to El Segundo and grab a good union job, while they last.
By the way, I appauld the Times for capitalizing “Black,” which is an ethnic group, even if they were at least 40 years behind the times. Now, how about you stop calling Watts and L.A. 1992, “riots.” Down here on the street, they are known as the “Watts Rebellion, “ and the 1992 L.A. “Uprising.” What will the George Floyd protests be called? I prefer, “Only The Beginning.”
I’ll close by quoting from the Times’ article:
One reporter asked whether Pearlstine would step down. No, absolutely not, he said, noting that his contract extends into next year.
We shall see.
_________________________________
You can catch up on back issues at our news site, The Left Coast.
If you want more articles like this, please support The Left Coast news site with a sustainer of $5/mo, or $35 for the entire year. With your support, we can help build the new media, and pay other progressive writers for their labor.