Two More LA Times Editors Exit Over Owner’s Decision Not To Endorse In Presidential Race
Veteran LA Times staffers Robert Greene and Karin Klein have quit the paper following its decision not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 race.
Greene and Klein’s resignations came just a day after the Times’ former editorials editor Mariel Garza ditched the paper in protest after the decision not to endorse a candidate was made public.
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Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review that she is “resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Times, informed the editorial board earlier this month that the publication would be making no endorsement in the presidential race. The Times has endorsed a candidate in each cycle since 2008. According to CJR, the editorial board planned to endorse Kamala Harris.
In her resignation letter, per CJR, Garza wrote that while she had told herself “presidential endorsements don’t really matter,” the “reality bit me like cold water on Tuesday when the news rippled out about the decision not to endorse without so much as a comment from LAT management, and Donald Trump turned it into an anti-Harris rip.”
After the news on Tuesday that the Times would not be endorsing, the Trump campaign sent out an email calling the decision the “latest blow to Harris-Walz.” “Even her fellow Californians know she’s not up for the job,” the Trump campaign wrote.
Garza wrote that the decision not to endorse “makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist. How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger — who we previously endorsed for the US Senate?”
LA Times subscription numbers are said to have taken a hit since the paper’s non-endorsement, according to a report in Semafor. The outlets reported that LA Times cancellations doubled following the news and nearly 400 subscribers cited “editorial content” as the reason.
In a post on X on Thursday, Mark Hamill said he has also ditched his subscription to the paper.
He posted: “I canceled our subscription to the LA Times because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with them being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is the only way to show I’m standing up.”
There has been a wave on unsubstantiated rumors online that the Washington Post also plans not to endorse a candidate.
Election day is November 5.
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