Times Executive Editor Terry Tang
Talk to OFS is POSTPONED
By Bob Rawitch
Faced with sinking revenues, rapidly declining print circulation and slow digital growth, Terry Tang, Executive Editor of the L.A. Times, HAS POSTPONED HER TALK to the OFS which had been scheduled for Oct. 30. A new date has NOT been set.
Terry Tang
There would have been no shortage of questions for the first female and first Asian-American editor of the paper. Tang last spoke to the OFS when she was editorial editor of the paper, before her appointment earlier this year first as interim and then permanent executive editor.
She succeeded Executive Editor Kevin Merida, who resigned shortly before his contract expired, reportedly because of differences with Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.
Tang will talk about how she is addressing the challenging Times labor environment. Issues include a seeming impasse in contract negotiations with the newsroom’s guild unit, and the refusal by editorial staffers to return part-time to the El Segundo newsroom; staffers consider this management mandate a violation of the union contract, which although expired remains in force.
Tang joined the paper in July of 2019 after two years at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she was director of publications and editorial. She previously spent 20 years in a variety of positions at the New York Times and before that at the Seattle Times and Seattle Weekly.
A former Nieman fellow, she graduated from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in economics and earned a J.D. from the New York University school of Law.