Norman Pearlstine EXITS As L-A Times' Top Editor

Norman Pearlstine

The Los Angeles Times’ leadership transition has accelerated with the departure of Norman Pearlstine, who served as executive editor for 2½ years.

Pearlstine announced in October that he planned to retire, but the timetable for his exit had been unclear, according to The L-A Times.

On Monday, The Times’ owner and executive chairman, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, wrote in a note to staff members that Pearlstine, 78, was no longer overseeing the newsroom and had shifted to an advisory role. The paper recently hired a search firm to manage the process to find a new executive editor, and that endeavor is expected to take several months.

In the interim, two veteran managers will oversee the newsroom and its journalism.

“Times Managing Editors Scott Kraft and Kimi Yoshino will now be responsible for the day-to-day operation of the newsroom, reporting to me,” Soon-Shiong wrote in the note. “Sewell Chan, editor of the Editorial Pages, will also report to me.”

Since his October announcement, Pearlstine increasingly had been delegating duties to pave the way for the transition. Soon-Shiong said the three top editors — Kraft, Yoshino and Chan — would work in collaboration with business-side leaders, including President and Chief Operating Officer Chris Argentieri and Chief Human Resources Officer Nancy Antoniou.

The announcement comes at the end of a turbulent year at The Times, which endured management turmoil after a series of scandals and a painful self-examination over race, along with a dramatic drop in revenue amid the COVID-19 pandemic and stay-at-home orders, which prompted traditional advertisers to scale back their ad buys. Employees have been working from home since mid-March, but members of the newsroom nonetheless fanned out across the country to cover the pandemic, protests over racial inequities and a historic presidential election.

In the spring of 2018, just before Soon-Shiong and his wife, Michele, purchased The Times, the pair tapped Pearlstine to manage the legendary publication and return it to prominence. Pearlstine quickly sought to stabilize a newsroom that had been battered by years of layoffs, cost-cutting and mismanagement under its former owner, Tribune Publishing. He led a dramatic hiring spree, replenishing the paper’s beleaguered ranks and recruiting top editors. Today, more than 520 employees work in the newsroom.