May 5, 2025 (Adweek) –
Last week, for the first time since before the pandemic, employees at The Los Angeles Times were required to work from the publisher's headquarters Monday through Thursday, according to documents reviewed by ADWEEK--the result of a return-to-office mandate issued by The Times' billionaire owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.
At the water cooler, the conversations might be grim.
Anna Magzanyan, the president of L.A. Times Studios, has told staff in recent months that the publisher lost around $50 million in 2024, according to a person with direct knowledge of the remarks. Magzanyan did not respond to requests for comment. The shortfall comes on the heels of a roughly $30 million loss the year prior, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The declines have come amid a swirl of drama surrounding the storied news operation, whose owner has adopted an increasingly hands-on approach to The Times' business over the last two years. Soon-Shiong first acquired The Times for $500 million seven years ago.
Several of Soon-Shiong's new initiatives are political, such as his October decision to revoke the paper's presidential endorsement and his December directive to append a bias meter to The Times' reporting. Earlier this month, the paper introduced a product, powered by artificial intelligence, that generates an opposing viewpoint to its opinion columns.
These decisions, combined with the impact of the Pacific Palisades fires on some of its readers, have led to an exodus of both paying subscribers and advertisers, according to interviews with seven current and former employees, as well as documents obtained by ADWEEK.
In response to the declines in revenue, the publisher has resorted to buyouts, budget cuts, and headcount reductions to stem its losses, according to multiple sources.
"I don't see the paper having a very long life if this continues," said one person familiar with the situation, whose sentiments were echoed by others. "The company could be in imminent danger of collapsing."
The Los Angeles Times did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Subscription woes worsen
The Times' struggles became public in January 2024, when former editor in chief Kevin Merida left the company after clashing with Soon-Shiong. But the crisis took a further turn for the worse in October.
That month, Soon-Shiong made the call to end the publisher's longstanding practice of endorsing a presidential candidate, mirroring the decision made by Jeff Bezos at The Washington Post.
The pronouncement angered readers. The publisher, which had 286,000 digital subscribers at the time (excluding Apple News+ readers), lost around 23,000 digital subscribers by January, according to internal metrics seen by ADWEEK.
The nearly 10% drop in digital subscribers left The Times, which once aspired to reach 5 million paying readers, with around 335,000 total subscribers at the beginning of 2025. Of those, 260,000 were digital and roughly 75,000 print.
In January, when the Pacific Palisades fires first struck, The Times' coverage of the disaster led to a small increase in its paid digital readership, according to one source, boosting its digital subscriber base to 270,000.
But that silver lining would not last. In a grim irony, the fires disproportionately affected several wealthy Los Angeles neighborhoods, including the Palisades and Altadena, which were home to a dense concentration of The Times' print subscribers.
These subscriptions, which can cost more than $1,000 per year, bring in roughly three times more revenue than their digital counterparts, according to a person with direct knowledge of the business. In 2024, for instance, the publisher was bringing in around $1.5 million in print revenue per week, compared to around $300,000 to $500,000 for digital, the person said.
When the fires destroyed several thousand homes in the area, it led The Times to lose a substantial tranche of its most valuable subscribers. The resulting loss of cash flow was "catastrophic" for the business, outweighing even the revenue bump generated by the addition of 10,000 digital subscribers, according to the person.
Combined with the cancellations prompted by the endorsement scandal, the effect was both demoralizing and commercially material.
"The trickle effect of cancellations from the presidential endorsement ended shortly before the whole fire situation," said the person. "It was like getting punched twice in a row."
These hits to the subscription business exacerbated the company's financial situation. In February, The Times offered a round of voluntary buy-outs to any staff who had worked at the publisher for more than two years, according to multiple sources.
The next month, the company enacted a targeted round of layoffs, multiple people said, which affected several divisions of its commercial operations, including communications, consumer marketing, and sales.
While the reductions will lower The Times' costs in the short term, people familiar with the business said, they will also hamstring its ability to acquire and retain subscribers in the future.
Netflix stops spending, citing Soon-Shiong's 'changes'
Subscribers are not the only paying customers upset with The Times' new direction.
In March, the streaming service Netflix let a key deadline pass that it needed to meet to participate in an annual advertising campaign timed to the Emmys.
This time last year, Netflix spent several hundred thousand dollars on ads supporting the effort, according to documents seen by ADWEEK. In fact, the streamer has so consistently bought these ads in recent years that it has a legacy privilege on the inventory, meaning other advertisers can only bid on it if Netflix passes, according to people familiar with the matter.
But this year, Netflix withheld its spend.
The streamer told The Times the reason was because of the changes under Soon-Shiong, but did not specify which changes led to the decision to not renew spending, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
A representative for Netflix denied both the pullback and its relation to changes under Soon-Shiong.
In a statement, the company disputed "many points" of this account, but did not respond to questions about which specific areas of this reporting are inaccurate.
And despite missing the March deadline, Netflix could still change course and buy into the campaign, the sources said.
"[Netflix] was already outwardly uncomfortable with the choices that Dr. Patrick was making, and they took a wait-and-see approach after the endorsement fiasco," said a source with direct knowledge. "But as it unfolded into more questionable decisions, that is when they pulled the budget."
This story has been updated to include expanded comment from Netflix.
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