Around twilight on Thursday, Los Angeles Times journalists gathered at Flora, a rooftop bar not far from the paper’s headquarters, to toast their departing editor, Kevin Merida.
As reporters and editors sipped cocktails under a darkening sky, the talk was focused on why Mr. Merida, the paper’s editor for nearly three years, had decided to suddenly leave — and about the prospect of deep layoffs discussed in emergency meetings earlier that day, according to four attendees.
In the days since, internal negotiations between the company and the employee union have included talk of about 100 job cuts, or about 20 percent of the newsroom, according to two of the people, who also have knowledge about the discussions. It has put journalists at The Times at odds with their owner, the biotechnology billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong. Those relations reached a nadir on Friday when employees walked off the job, in the newsroom’s first union-organized work stoppage in the 142-year history of the newspaper.
The tensions escalated even further on Monday, after several of the state’s congressional representatives sent Dr. Soon-Shiong a letter raising concerns about the scope of the cuts and employees received a note informing them that two other senior editors had departed.
