When I was suddenly laid off Los Angeles Times Via a form email in June 2023 — no calls, no meetings, no personal contact, just a mass email sent to 74 employees — I spent time wondering whether the newspaper’s management was so dysfunctional that it no longer knew how to run a simple business. staff reductions, or whether he simply doesn’t care about basic courtesy towards his people, including someone like me who has been writing and/or editing the paper since 1989.

Now I found my answer.

As it turned out, four months later I was hired again for a temporary assignment to help during the election season; this requires a tremendous amount of time and research to produce responsibly. Election endorsements are so important to readers that subscriptions increase every time they are published. Eventually, the temporary assignment resulted in an offer to rejoin the editorial board on a permanent basis.

I’ve spent exactly half my life working for this company. Times. Then, last week, I resigned abruptly due to my confusion (a polite term for how I felt) about not approving this offer. Kamala Harris. And I won’t come back.

Understand, I respect owner Patrick Soon-Shiong’s right to intervene in editorials; It’s the only place he can ethically do that. This is hardly the first time in my 22 years of editorial writing. Times. Publisher/CEO Eddy Hartenstein wanted an editorial about for-profit trade schools ripping off students, and he was right. Another broadcaster, Jeff Johnson, wanted to know why we shouldn’t approve legislation that would put L.A. schools under some kind of mayoral control; After listening to my logic, he took my side. Sometimes I agree with the results, sometimes I don’t. But I never even remotely considered giving them up.

This is very different. It would have been fair, impartial and legitimate if Soon-Shiong had decided early last spring that she no longer wanted to support presidential runs. Not to weigh in on the most important choice in my life, but an odd decision regarding his calling. But his decision comes at the 11th hour, when the candidates are in place, the polls are tight, and just about anything could tip the race one way or another, Soon-Shiong’s anti-editorial stance is actually a de facto decision to make an editorial decision. – a wordless, convincingly invisible story that unfairly insinuates Harris’s serious faults that put her on the same level. Donald Trump. Whether he realizes it or not, Soon-Shiong practices the exact opposite of the impartiality he claims to seek.

Confirming Harris changes little; The editorial board has been criticizing Donald Trump for eight years, and it doesn’t seem to bother the owner at all. A progressive board in a Democratic state, Harris is from California. So naturally the next step was an approval. Disapproving of him is a surprise move that casts a shadow over him and could harm him in his more shaky situations. The risks for this kind of monkeying are too great.

The belief that I would resign was formed and reinforced with the arrival of Soon-Shiong. sent He told X about the idea of ​​the board doing an unbiased analysis of the pros and cons of Harris and Trump during their tenures in the White House.

The news side already does an outstanding job of unbiased reporting and analysis. He was providing important information from the beginning. This is not an editorial. Editorials use good analysis to take a stand. This is exactly why we have an opinion staff separate from the news staff. Who can trust this “impartial” analysis when the board has been railing against Trump for so long? (Although I give her credit for opening more federal jobs to people without bachelor’s degrees in 2020; this is not an original Harris idea). And how do we compare a vice president’s performance to a president’s? These are two completely different jobs. This would be like comparing apples and oranges.

So why this sudden passion for neutrality and avoiding divisiveness on the editorial page? By that time, we had demonstrated our attitude in 45 races. Soon-Shiong spent extra money to re-cast me to help generate these ideas. Have we suddenly become neutered—sorry, neutral—truth tellers in the presidential race?

The author of this article wrote infuriating words, “The Editorial Board chose to remain silent.” This is completely wrong and seems like a convenient attempt to throw exactly the wrong people under the bus. No one on the board has ever chosen to remain silent. It stifled our voice and led to the resignation of nearly half the editorial board. It’s his prerogative, but in this case at least OWN it.

Karin Klein is the author of two books, including newly published ones. Rethinking College: A Guide to Thriving Without a Degree (HarperCollins) and worked at the Los Angeles Times for 35 years; the last 22 of whom were editorial board members covering education, health, and science.