Staffers at the Los Angeles Times are reportedly buying burner phones amid worries of a newsroom crackdown

Karly
Domb Sadof/AP

• 
  Staffers at the Los Angeles Times are reportedly
  growing worried over the newspaper's leadership and have begun
  using encrypted messaging apps and buying burner phones to
  discuss internal politics.
  


• 
  The employees voiced their concerns about an apparent
  crackdown on newsroom leaks, and are worried that Tronc, the
  publisher of the LA Times, may be developing a "shadow"
  newsroom.
  

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Staffers at the Los Angeles Times are reportedly growing worried
about management at Tronc, the newspaper's publisher, because of
an alleged crackdown on newsroom leaks,
HuffPost reported on Friday.

Those worries stem in part from a larger initiative at Tronc in
which sources with knowledge who were interviewed by HuffPost
said
a "shadow" newsroom is being developed as a precursor to
potential layoffs of newly unionized journalists at the LA Times.

Because of those worries, some employees have reportedly begun
using encrypted-messaging apps to communicate with each other.
Some have resorted to using burner phones, HuffPost reported.

"The newsroom has basically become a large-scale intelligence
operation to figure out what the f--k our managers are up to," an
employee told HuffPost.

The situation was apparently compounded by an
investigative
piece the LA Times published in September 2017, which covered
the business relationship between Disney and the Southern
California city of Anaheim, where two Disney parks are located.

Editor-in-chief Lewis D'Vorkin reportedly became livid after Disney
banned LA Times journalists from advance movie screenings after
the investigation was published. But according to employees at
the newspaper cited by HuffPost, D'Vorkin, who was hired in
October, is believed to have directed his concerns, not toward
Disney, but at his LA Times staff instead.

The matter gained renewed urgency after Kimi Yoshino, the LA
Times editor who supervised the Disney piece, was suspended and
escorted out of the building on Thursday.

According to current and former employees cited by HuffPost,
D'Vorkin has quickly developed a reputation as a mercurial
figure. Some said they believe he's "at war with the entire
staff."

Read the full story
at HuffPost »

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