Sign in The media todayCJR's daily newsletter.

Mariel Garza, Editorial Editor of the Los Angeles Timesresigned Wednesday after the newspaper's owner blocked the editorial board's plans to support Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

“I’m stepping down because I want to make it clear that I don’t agree with us remaining silent,” Garza told me in a phone conversation. “In dangerous times, honest people must stand up. So I get up.”

On October 11, Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the newspaper for $500 million in 2018, told the newspaper's editorial board that the Just would not express support for the president. The message was delivered to Garza by Terry Tang, the newspaper's editor.

The board had intended to support Harris, Garza told me, and she had drawn up the outline of a proposed editorial. She had hoped to receive feedback on the draft and was taken aback when she was told the newspaper would not comment on it.

“I didn’t think we would change our readers’ minds — our readers are largely Harris supporters,” Garza told me. “We are a very liberal newspaper. I didn't believe we were going to change the outcome of the election in California.

“But two things worry me: This is a time to definitely speak your conscience. And an endorsement was the logical next step after a series of editorials we wrote about how dangerous Trump is to democracy, about his inability to become president, about his threats to put his enemies in prison. We have argued in editorial after editorial that he should not be re-elected.”

So why was confirmation needed?

“It was a logical next step,” Garza told me. “And it’s confusing and potentially suspicious to readers that we didn’t support them this time.”

Indeed, hours later Semafor After it was reported Tuesday that Soon-Shiong had blocked the endorsement, former President Donald Trump's rapid response team sent out an email calling the newspaper's decision “the latest blow” to Harris.

“In Kamala’s own home state, the Los Angeles Times“The state's largest newspaper has refused to support the Harris-Walz ticket despite supporting Democratic candidates in every election for decades,” the campaign said. “Even her fellow Californians know she’s not ready for the job. The Just Already supported Kamala in her runs for California attorney general in 2010 and 2014 and in her run for U.S. Senate in 2016, but not this time.”

(As all too often, the Trump campaign got one fact wrong: the Just endorsed Republican Steve Cooley, not Harris, for attorney general in 2010.)

The Just was historically a Republican newspaper. From its founding in 1881 to Richard M. Nixon's re-election campaign in 1972, it supported the Republican candidate in every election. At this point, however, Southern California, in many ways the birthplace of modern conservatism, became more politically diverse; The paper's staff grew in size and ambition thanks to heavy investment from the Chandler family, who owned the paper. After Watergate, the 1972 endorsement was seen as an embarrassment. From 1976 to 2004 it was Just has not endorsed any candidate for president.

That changed in 2008, when the newspaper endorsed Barack Obama, the first Democratic candidate for president to win his support. In 2012, 2016 and 2020, the Democratic candidate was supported.

I served as the newspaper's editorial page editor in 2020 and 2021 and led the board's endorsement of Joe Biden in 2020. Months earlier, before I took the job, Soon-Shiong had blocked the editorial board from making an endorsement in the Democratic presidential primary. (The board wanted to support Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.) Internal tensions over this decision played a role in the departure of my predecessor, Nicholas Goldberg.

I have great respect for the Soon-Shiong family who saved the newspaper from the doomed and recently bankrupt Tribune Company. He is a decent and considerate person, and as the owner of the newspaper, it is ultimately up to him to set the editorial direction. I worked well with Soon-Shiong during my time as Head of Opinion and when I left Just to process the nonprofit organization Texas TribuneThings went well in 2021.

Still, I believe Soon-Shiong could have communicated his intentions better — both in 2020 and now — and I worry that his decision has sparked unnecessary speculation that California's largest newspaper has serious doubts about Harris, the former was the state's attorney general and then a junior U.S. senator.

While it is fair to question how useful the president's support is – and the outcome of the California election is hardly in doubt – it is Just“The assessment would have carried more weight than other publications,” because Harris is the first major party nominee from California since Ronald Reagan.

Owning a newspaper carries with it a great public responsibility. In my opinion, media owners should hire leaders they trust and then give them the opportunity to exercise their judgment. If the goal here was to isolate them Just Given the allegations of political bias, it appears that this intervention may have had the opposite effect. Numerous employees have told me how painful and even embarrassed they felt after Trump used it Just to make a political point.

Garza, 57, is an outstanding and candid journalist. She agreed Los Angeles Times in 2015 by the Sacramento Beewhere she was deputy editorial page editor. I promoted her to deputy editorial page editor Los Angeles Times in 2021. After I left the paper, Terry Tang, who had headed the editorial department, succeeded me. In April, after Tang was named editor of the newspaper following the resignation of Kevin Merida, Garza was promoted to editorial editor.

“Terry is not to blame,” Garza told me.

The text of Garza's resignation letter is below:

Terry,

Since then Dr. Soon-Shiong vetoed the editorial board's plan to endorse Kamala Harris for president, I'm struggling with my feelings about the impact of our silence.

I told myself that the president's support doesn't really matter; that California would never vote for Trump; that no one would notice; that we had written so many “Trump is unfit” editorials that it was as if we had supported them.

But reality hit me like cold water on Tuesday when news of the decision not to support her broke without even a comment from LAT management, and Donald Trump turned it into an anti-Harris rant.

Of course, it matters that the state's largest newspaper – and still one of the largest in the country – has refused to endorse such an important race. And it's important that we don't even openly talk about it with people.

It makes us seem cowardly and hypocritical, maybe even a little sexist and racist. How could we rail against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country for eight years and then fail to support the perfectly decent Democratic challenger – the one we previously supported for the US Senate?

Failure to support undermines the integrity of the editorial board and every single recommendation we make, including school board elections. People will rightly wonder whether each recommendation was a decision by a group of journalists after extensive research and discussion, or a decision by the owner.

Seven years ago, in its series on Donald Trump, “Our Dishonest President,” the editorial board wrote: “Men and women of conscience can no longer withhold judgment. Trump’s unpredictable nature and impulsive, demagogic style endanger us all.”

I still believe that's true.

In these dangerous times, silence is not just indifference but complicity. I am resigning from the editorial team. Please accept this as my formal resignation, effective immediately.

Mariel

Sewell Chan joined the Columbia Journalism Review as editor-in-chief in 2024. He was previously editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune from 2021 to 2024, in which the nonprofit newsroom won its first National Magazine Award and was a Pulitzer finalist for the first time. From 2018 to 2021 he was deputy editor-in-chief and then editorial page editor at the Los Angeles Timeswhere he oversaw reporting that won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Chan worked in New York Times from 2004 to 2018 as a Metro reporter, Washington correspondent, deputy managing editor and international news editor. He began his career as a local reporter at the Washington Post in 2000.