Los Angeles Times management has laid off two more veteran reporters in its already-decimated Orange County bureau, according to Times sources.
The latest to leave will be Gil Reza and Christian Berthelsen, two outstanding veterans with long lists of accomplishments.
Amazingly, the Times OC editorial staff of six reporters (including three relative rookies) and one columnist is now smaller than ours at OC Weekly.
The bureau has lost veterans David Reyes, William Lobdell, Roy Rivenburg and David Haldane.
“Everyone here is devastated to be losing two more seasoned journalists,” one Times OC employee told me. “Reza has had a long, distinguished career, and this is not the way he deserves to go out. Christian is one of the newspaper's most intelligent, committed and savvy journalists. No one here understands the decision.”
LAObserved.com published a letter Times editor Russ Stanton sent to staffers today about 75 new “job reductions.” Stanton blames the economy.
— R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime ReportingĀ for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise fromĀ New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.