The most heartbreaking industry in Los Angeles isn't Hollywood. It's local news

Whenever I think about the perilous state of local news, I think of Delicious Pizza in West Adams.

Great pizza! Small space, cool atmosphere. In the fall of 2017, I found myself there with other journalism rejects cursing the news gods.

I had just resigned as editor-in-chief of OC Weekly after refusing to lay off half the staff. Daniel Hernandez was unemployed at VICE News after nearly four years there. Julia Wick had run the original LAist until its owner shut down the website because he claimed it was not an economic success. Former LA Weekly editor-in-chief Mara Shalhoup has been let go alongside most of her writers and editors after a new owner acquired the venerable alt-weekly.

Over beers and slices, we laughed, shared stories and worried about the eternal erosion that is American journalism. However, none of us were about to give up our beloved profession. We talked about creating our own publication, but nothing serious. Instead, we hugged each other and moved on with our lives.

Today, Mara is Publisher of ProPublicas South. Daniel edits the food section of The Times. Julia is part of the Times 2024 elections team. I am a Times journalistof course, frequently using Southern California's past as a prism to understand what's happening now and what might happen in the future.

And boy, doesn’t this look good for local journalism once again?

Last month, the nonprofit Long Beach Post, which expertly covered the port city while the Press-Telegram atrophied, laid off almost everyone. The publication's board of directors argued the move was necessary to save the company from financial ruin, but former employees insist it was retaliation for their attempt to form a union.

Journalists at Knock LA, which focuses on issues of social justice and law enforcement corruption, accused the publication's fiscal sponsors, the left-wing group Ground Game LA, of exiling them after they demanded transform Knock into its own autonomous entity.

In the for-profit world, LA Taco, which focuses on food coverage while covering working-class communities in Southern California, has put almost everyone on its small team out of work. Editor-in-chief Javier Cabral said they would be fired if the publication failed to reach 5,000 members by the end of April. (they were at 2,800 on Monday). This follows the closing last year of one of California's oldest continuously operating newspapers, the Santa Barbara News-Press.

And of course there is this document. More than 100 of my colleagues were laid off last summer and earlier this year. Others have accepted buyouts, and it seems that lately, farewell emails from colleagues who are changing jobs or retiring are arriving in my mailbox daily.

It's easy to describe what's happening in local media as unprecedented and catastrophic, especially in the face of similar layoffs nationwide during an election year where accurate facts and nuanced coverage matter more than ever . But Southern California has always been a boneyard of failed publications, made by apathetic readers, clueless owners, or a combination of the two.

Every generation in Los Angeles seems to suffer a mass extinction of journalism. In addition to what is happening now and what happened in 2017, there was the closure of two alternative weeklies, Los Angeles CityBeat and the Long Beach-based The District Weekly, around the turn of the years. I remember the demise of La Banda Elastica and Al Borde, two Spanish-language publications focused on rock. in Spanish Older folks will remember the demise of the LA Herald Examiner in 1989, whose grandiose downtown headquarters is now used as a satellite campus by Arizona State University.

The heartbreaking industry of Los Angeles is not Hollywood; his journalism. To paraphrase what the late A. Bartlett Giamatti said about baseball, it is designed to break the hearts of those who work in it.

You join the profession knowing that long hours, low pay, and lack of respect from the public are the norm, and yet you go for it anyway. You delight in your colleagues, your shared sense of mission, and the stories you make, but then the reality of the economy sets in and you realize the good times won't last. You wonder why readers don't subscribe, why editors and publishers don't innovate. You see colleagues losing their jobs or leaving the profession and then it's your turn, one way or another.

It’s easy to understand why posts fail. Blaming technology, fragmented audiences, lack of trust in information, it's all of these and more. But these conditions existed before the photos appeared in the newspapers, and will persist long after whatever Elon Musk inserts into our brains, so we can't leave X.

What's happening in Southern California journalism is sadly familiar, but not hopeless. There is something new with this generation of journalism orphans. In the past, we shot down and mourned the death of our publications. Now, to paraphrase another literary luminary, Dylan Thomas, journalists do not ease into that good night.

Employees of the Long Beach Post and the Times publicly protested their bosses. Banned Knock LA writers and editors are shaming their former benefactors online. LA Taco asks for money as an NPR host at a nitro cold brew fundraiser.

We made our dire situation public, because how can you expect help if you don't ask for it? said Cabral, 35, who I've known since he was a teenager with his own food blog. For me, journalism has always been a fleeting, evolving career that pulls the rug out from under you once you start to feel comfortable.

I wish good luck to all those people trying to make this happen, including my colleagues at the Times, which has been unionized since 2018 and where we worked for almost a year and a half without a contract. But even if we all fail, the dream of doing good journalism in Los Angeles will never die. More and more publications are already multiplying.

THE Los Angeles Public Press is barely a year old but is already making an impact with its coverage of the San Fernando Valley and southeast Los Angeles County. California News, which focuses on Latino issues, will launch its own initiative this summer to cover southeast Los Angeles County. Newsletters managed by individuals fill information gaps and get subscribers in the process. Hyperlocal publications like Easter and This Side of Hoover continue to inform readers about their communities.

Last month, I attended a forum at City Club LA hosted by the nonprofit Latino Media Collaborative, which sponsors Cal News, on what it saw as a crisis in Southern California journalism . Speakers included Monica C. Lozano, former editor of La Opinin, and Miguel A. Santana, executive director of the California Community Foundation. The conference room was filled with journalists, young and old hoping to take advantage of the millions of dollars that local and national philanthropies plan to spend on Los Angeles-focused information operations in the coming years.

I wish them luck too, because someone has to make it in this damn industry, right? RIGHT?