The Los Angeles Times appointed Terry Tang, the paper’s first female executive editor, on Tuesday. Tang is a former New York Times reporter with over two decades of experience, and she first joined the Times as an Op-Ed editor in 2019.
“The Los Angeles Times and its superb journalists make a difference every day in the life of California and this nation,” Tang said in a Los Angeles Times article announcing her promotion. “It’s an honor to have the opportunity to lead an institution that serves our community and to make our work indispensable to our readers.”
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the executive chairman of the Los Angeles Times, shared a letter to readers on Tuesday in which he highlighted her decades of experience and expressed his optimism about the paper’s future under her leadership.
“She is a champion for the critical role that The Times plays in revealing the truth, explaining life in this sprawling region and bringing attention to issues that matter most, especially for those whose voices are often unheard,” Soon-Shiong wrote.
Tang took her interim position at a tumultuous time for the paper, as 115 employees — nearly a quarter of their newsroom — received word in January that they would be laid off. In response, members of the Los Angeles Times Guild walked off the job in a one-day strike — the first newsroom union work stoppage in the paper’s history.
In 2023, the Times launched a vertical named De Los, which makes content aimed towards English-speaking Gen Z and millennial Latinos. De Los, alongside the Washington D.C. division, was hit hard by the layoffs, according to the NiemanLab. At least three De Los reporters, a De Los assistant editor and a De Los culture columnist were laid off. A 2023 article from De Los titled “Meet the De Los Staff” shows 14 staffers in all.
“It’s really disappointing to see demographically disproportional cuts in a newsroom during an age when diversity of sourcing and diversity of reporters has become so key to examining the debate between objective reporting and informed reporting,” said Lyla Bhalla-Ladd, a junior majoring in journalism and one of Annenberg Media’s 2024-2025 executive editors.
The Los Angeles Times Guild has a seniority rule in its contract with the paper, meaning that the latest hires were the first to go.
“They shouldn’t be making those decisions based on who’s been there the longest,” said Alexa Avila, a junior majoring in communication and an opinion editor at the Daily Trojan. “It should come down to the quality of their work … you should always be trying to set a higher standard for yourself.”
Bhalla-Ladd said objective reporting “can’t exist” because everyone holds different biases. She says the way to combat this is to hire and keep people of different perspectives in the newsroom.
“When you lay off or gut entire desks that are made up of that new hiring demographic … we kinda go back to where we were,” Bhalla-Ladd said. “Now, rather than championing objectivity and we only have white male cis reporters, now we’re not actually championing objectivity … [and] we’re still keeping the same reporting demographic. That has the potential to be very harmful.”
Data from the Pew Research Center shows that 76% of newsroom employees are non-Hispanic white and six out of 10 employees are men. According to that same research report, 64% of U.S. employed adults are non-Hispanic white and 53% of all workers are male.
“There’s a reason we say ‘The first female’ or ‘One of the few Asians,’ because it’s motivating,” said Zain Khan, a junior majoring in journalism and international relations and Annenberg Media’s 2024-2025 second executive editor. “I don’t think anybody should grow up with this one idea that somebody who fits this box is all we need. For a very long time, that box has been the white male in almost all institutions.”
The Pew Research Center report also found that 47% of newsroom employees are non-Hispanic white and male, which is higher compared to the entire U.S. workforce (34%).
“As a woman of color, this feels very affirming,” Avila said. “Being at this school, as a whole, has been very much imposter syndrome left and right and feeling invalidated.”
“Something I’ve come to realize, now that I’ve been here a while, is that you can do it,” Avila said. “You just have to work really hard, actually work double, I would say, just to get the same kind of recognition. I think overall this is a step in a really positive direction.”
Khan said it’s important to not burden people who come from underrepresented communities with certain expectations, namely, that they have to be the ones to bear the responsibility for covering their entire community. He also warned against soloing reporters off to cover only groups that they are a part of.
“I don’t think that is an ethical practice,” Khan said. “I think a good leader … [makes] sure that every community, regardless of how big or how small, feels that their news reporting is equitable. A white person should be able to cover Black and brown communities and a Black and brown person should be able to cover white communities.”
Bhalla-Ladd recognized that it may be difficult for newsrooms to diversify their staff when hiring more people is not financially feasible, especially considering consumers are less willing to pay for their news, according to a research article in “Journalism,” an academic journal.
“It’s very hard to actually take ideals like wanting a more diverse newsroom and actually implement them by hiring more people because some people are caught in a financial catch-22,” Bhalla-Ladd said. “At the same time, that’s why places like Annenberg [Media Center], which is student-run, are special places because we don’t have to experience those financial pressures.”
Bhalla-Ladd said hopefully with Tang’s promotion from interim executive editor to executive editor, the newsroom will be stabilized.
“The LA Times [layoff] news has been disappointing over the past couple weeks,” Bhalla-Ladd said. “I’ve seen it in my professors who are just very upset to see all of their friends either be fired themselves or have their desk so diminished. Perhaps my hope is not well supported, but I’d like to think that under new leadership, the Times is going to do better.”