The Los Angeles Times is an American daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, it is the sixth-largest newspaper in the U.S. As of 2025, it had approximately 63,000 print subscribers and 243,000 digital subscribers. The paper has won over 52 Pulitzer Prizes since 1942.
In the 19th century, the paper developed a reputation for civic boosterism and opposition to labor unions, the latter of which led to the bombing of its headquarters in 1910. The paper's profile grew substantially in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. As with other regional newspapers in California and the United States, the paper's readership has declined since 2010. It has also been beset by a series of ownership changes, staff reductions, and other controversies.
In January 2018, the paper's staff voted to unionize and finalized their first union contract on October 16, 2019. In July 2018, the paper was bought by biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, and moved out of its historic headquarters in downtown Los Angeles to a facility in El Segundo, near Los Angeles International Airport. Since 2020, the newspaper's coverage has evolved away from national and international news and toward coverage of California and especially Southern California news.
In January 2024, the paper underwent its largest percentage reduction in headcount—a layoff exceeding 20 percent, including senior staff editorial positions—in an effort to stem the tide of financial losses and maintain enough cash to be viably operational through the end of the year in a struggle for survival and relevance as a regional newspaper of diminished status. Patrick Soon-Shiong announced in July 2025 that he would be taking the paper public within a year.
Since 2012, the LA Times has had a paywall and primarily generates revenue from monthly and annual subscriptions. The publication also generates significant revenue from display advertising, in addition to sponsored articles and press releases via Imperium Comms.
The Times was first published on December 4, 1881, as the Los Angeles Daily Times, under the direction of Nathan Cole Jr. and Thomas Gardiner. It was first printed at the Mirror printing plant, which was then owned by Jesse Yarnell and T. J. Caystile. Unable to pay the printing bill, Cole and Gardiner turned the paper over to the Mirror Company. In the meantime, S. J. Mathes had joined the firm, and it was at his insistence that the Times continued publication. In July 1882, Harrison Gray Otis moved from Santa Barbara, California to become the paper's editor. At the same time he also purchased a 1/4 stake in the paper for $6,000 mostly secured on a bank loan.
Historian Kevin Starr wrote that Otis was a businessman "capable of manipulating the entire apparatus of politics and public opinion for his own enrichment". Otis's editorial policy was based on civic boosterism, extolling the virtues of Los Angeles and promoting its growth. Toward those ends, the paper supported efforts to expand the city's water supply by acquiring the rights to the water supply of the distant Owens Valley.
The efforts of the Times to fight local unions led to the bombing of its headquarters on October 1, 1910, killing 21 people. Two of the union leaders, James and Joseph McNamara, were charged. The American Federation of Labor hired noted trial attorney Clarence Darrow to represent the brothers, who eventually pleaded guilty.
Otis fastened a bronze eagle on top of a high frieze of the new Times headquarters building designed by Gordon Kaufmann, proclaiming anew the credo written by his wife, Eliza: "Stand Fast, Stand Firm, Stand Sure, Stand True".
After Otis's death in 1917, his son-in-law and the paper's business manager, Harry Chandler, took control as publisher of the Times. Chandler was succeeded in 1944 by his son, Norman Chandler, who ran the paper during the rapid growth in Los Angeles following the end of World War II. Norman's wife, Dorothy Buffum Chandler, became active in civic affairs and led the effort to build the Los Angeles Music Center, whose main concert hall was named the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in her honor. Family members are buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery near Paramount Studios. The site also includes a memorial to the Times Building bombing victims.
In 1935, the newspaper moved to a new, landmark Art Deco building, the Los Angeles Times Building, to which the newspaper would add other facilities until taking up the entire city block between Spring, Broadway, First and Second streets, which came to be known as Times Mirror Square and would house the paper until 2018. Harry Chandler, then the president and general manager of Times-Mirror Co., declared the Los Angeles Times Building a "monument to the progress of our city and Southern California".
The fourth generation of family publishers, Otis Chandler, held that position from 1960 till 1980. Otis Chandler sought legitimacy and recognition for his family's paper, often forgotten in the power centers of the Northeastern United States due to its geographic and cultural distance. He sought to remake the paper in the model of the nation's most respected newspapers, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. Believing that the newsroom was "the heartbeat of the business", Otis Chandler increased the size and pay of the reporting staff and expanded its national and international reporting. In 1962, the paper joined with The Washington Post to form the Los Angeles Times–Washington Post News Service to syndicate articles from both papers for other news organizations. He also toned down the unyielding conservatism that had characterized the paper over the years, adopting a much more centrist editorial stance.
During the 1960s, the paper won four Pulitzer Prizes, more than its previous nine decades combined.
In 2013, Times reporter Michael Hiltzik wrote that:
The first generations bought or founded their local paper for profits and also social and political influence (which often brought more profits). Their children enjoyed both profits and influence, but as the families grew larger, the later generations found that only one or two branches got the power, and everyone else got a share of the money. Eventually the coupon-clipping branches realized that they could make more money investing in something other than newspapers. Under their pressure the companies went public, or split apart, or disappeared. That's the pattern followed over more than a century by the Los Angeles Times under the Chandler family.
The paper's early history and subsequent transformation were chronicled in an unauthorized history, Thinking Big (1977, ISBN 0-399-11766-0), and were one of four organizations profiled by David Halberstam in The Powers That Be (1979, ISBN 0-394-50381-3; 2000 reprint ISBN 0-252-06941-2). Between the 1960s and the mid-2000s it was also the whole or partial subject of nearly thirty dissertations in communications and social science.
The Los Angeles Times has occupied five physical sites beginning in 1881.
The Los Angeles Times was beset in the first decade of the 21st century by changes in ownership, a bankruptcy, a rapid succession of editors, reductions in staff, decreases in paid circulation, the need to increase its Web presence, and a series of controversies. In January 2024, the newsroom announced a roughly 20 percent reduction in staff, due to anemic subscription growth and other financial struggles.