The Los Angeles Times confirmed it planned to lay off dozens of staffers on Wednesday in the latest incident of brutal cost-cutting across the media industry. “We have made the difficult decision to undergo a reorganization and eliminate certain positions within the company,” spokesperson Hillary Manning wrote in a statement to The Daily Beast. “The hardest decisions to make are those that impact our employees, and we are not taking this action lightly.” The layoffs will impact 74 positions, according to The New York Times, with 57 members of the LA Times Guild on a proposed list of cuts. “We were blindsided by this news,” Reed Johnson, a Los Angeles Times editor and guild unit chair, said in a statement. “Management did not consult us in advance about other options for cutting costs and saving money, short of layoffs.” Manning declined to say which staffers or what teams would be affected, writing the staffers would be informed Wednesday, and she would not say what criteria was used to determine the cuts.
