Laid Off: After 18 Years At The Los Angeles Times
"I had to dust off the resume I used when I applied for the L.A. Times job in 2007."
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In today’s issue, I talk to Adam Tschorn about facing layoffs back-to-back with his wife, dusting off a resume from 2007, and what reinvention really looks like when your industry is disappearing.
Adam Tschorn, 59, was on his way to drop off his car for repairs when he got the email. It was May 2, 2025, just after 8:30 a.m. He was being laid off after more than 18 years as an editor and features writer at the Los Angeles Times. By the time he got home, he was locked out of Slack and his inbox — nearly two decades of reporting and writing gone in an instant.
“It would make a great one-act play,” he said of the Lyft ride home, where he juggled panicked phone calls in the backseat while racing the clock to save what files he could.
It hadn’t been long since he’d watched something similar unfold for his wife, Booth Moore, a longtime fashion journalist and executive editor at Women’s Wear Daily. She was laid off just seven weeks earlier, right after returning from Paris Fashion Week.
“I started to game out just how many mortgage payments we’d be able to make before the wheels fell off,” he said. “In some ways, I was more calm in the aftermath of my layoff than hers. She has always been the major breadwinner in our household and when she got laid off I started canceling scheduled dental cleanings and buying bags of potatoes like a doomsday prepper.”
In media years, 18 is a lifetime. What made you stay at the L.A. Times that long — and what made it worth staying?
I always like to say "I got to see my name in the newspaper and not under the Day in Court listings." But the truth is I love writing and everything that leads up to the actual writing: the research, the interviews, the organizing and re-organizing. Watching a story emerge and take shape from a sea of words floating on a page. And for most of those 18 years, there was a lot of freedom and flexibility within the scope of my job. I worked with some of the most talented wordsmiths around which was a great learning experience, even 18 years in. Also, truth be told, when you called or emailed or walked up to someone and said "I'm working on a story for the L.A. Times" you usually got at least got some kind of response. Where I worked felt like it mattered, and not just to me.
What were some of the projects you worked on while you were there? Anything you were especially proud of?
I wrote everything from obituaries to red-carpet trend coverage and runway show reviews. One of the stories I was most proud of was about my favorite (pot) pipe from college. I tracked down the makers and wrote a story about them. When the story went live they got so many orders their website crashed. Another story I was very proud of was a first-person account of how a silly knit hat in the shape of turkey helped me cope with my father's passing. It ended up winning an L.A. Press Club Award… in the humor category!
What was the energy in the building like in the last few years? Did it feel like the ground was starting to shift, or did the layoff take you by surprise?
Even after the work-from-home pandemic restrictions were lifted, most off the newsroom continued to work remotely. I think I was only physically in the offices for a handful of days in the last few years. But there did seem to be a palpable shift over the last couple of years when the infrequent rounds of layoffs and buyout offers became a more common occurrence. And a round of layoffs in January 2024 was particularly painful and resulted in the loss of several of my dearest colleagues. It was clear that the paper would be laying off more people but I have to say I was surprised when I was among the most recent round, as were my bosses who apparently didn't know until I told them.
What has it been like navigating two major career shakeups under one roof?
We celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary a few weeks ago and I gave her a card that had a design on the front of two people in a rowboat with the words "In the same boat, on the same page." She laughed long and hard at that. As financially challenging as it is, the fact that we were both laid off at pretty much the same time and for the same reason — the decline of the publishing industry — means that neither one of us is harboring a hidden resentment that the other "put us in this situation." I feel we're in a better place to support each other, emotionally at least. Logistically it makes my head hurt. This house is a near constant hum of Substack newsletter tap, tap tapping, Zoom interviews, phone calls, resume writing and rewriting and lots of editing each other's work. We both feel like we have a personal copy editor and punch-up writer in house. Literally in house.
Are there conversations you’re having now — about work, life, purpose — that you weren’t making space for before?
Absolutely. There was no work-life balance at all. We used to think that if we kept working as hard as we could at the top of our game we would ultimately be rewarded. As we look for work, we discuss with each other if we're applying for or attracted to the job simply because it looks and feels like what we had before. And we make it a point to check in at the end of every day for a "debrief,” a sort of check-in/update on how the job search and soul search went. It also helps put a closure button on the day.
You both know this industry intimately. How are you making sense of where it’s headed? And does the outlook feel different now that you’re on the outside?
This is our pillow talk. When she got laid off, one of the first things she said was "I thought it was going to be you first." And I said "So did I." Since the time I was in journalism school people were forecasting the imminent death of the newspaper. The delivery method has changed, and will continue to change, but we hope people will still need and want reliable news — as in written by knowledgable people who have done the footwork and due diligence not AI-generated and not people simply regurgitating press releases. The challenge is getting people to pay a fair value for it. We both worry about — and talk far more about than is probably healthy — that people increasingly don't seem to care about the veracity or quality of what they're consuming as news.
You had a front-row seat to almost two decades of change at a legacy institution. What were some of the most visible signs of decline — or survival — that others might not notice from the outside?
The loss of institutional knowledge camouflaged by an abundance of wire copy — like the Associated Press for example — and freelance pieces. I have nothing against either of those sources of news, but the whole point of having a dedicated newspaper staff is to learn a beat and cultivate sources, kind of "get to know where the bodies are buried," for lack of a better term. With wire copy and freelance you don't get that. Related to that is thinking that paying the same amount to hire two entry-level reporters instead of one seasoned reporter, columnist or a critic is always the better deal. It might be shortsighted in a way, but it degrades the overall product and erodes reader trust. If your newspaper is full of stuff that can be found in other newspapers, what on Earth makes it worth buying?
How do you think being a long-timer shaped your layoff experience versus someone who’d only been there a year or two? Did conversations like those come up with peers who had been there for shorter periods of time?
Those in my "class,” or laid off around the same time I was, with far less time under their belts seemed more resilient and had less of an attachment to the job — and they didn't seem to define themselves through the job they'd just lost in quite the same way as I did. On the other hand, having been there as long as I had, I got to see many, many more layoffs than they did so there was a whiff of inevitability to it when it finally did happen.
After 18 years in one place, how do you even start to look for what’s next? What was your “oh shit” moment?
The "oh shit" moment was: "Do I even have a resume in a computer-readable format?" Do the kids even do those any more or do they just AirDrop everything they've ever done into a prospective employer's brainstem? Actually at this point, it feels like I'm starting from scratch. Resume vs. website? I did both. Obviously I know I need to have a presence on LinkedIn, which seems like it might be the place for one demographic of potential employers, but where else? How does this even work?
Following my wife's lead, I'm taking every meeting, coffee chat, and offer to Zoom. Everybody has some nugget of wisdom on what would look good on a website. "You should get people to write testimonials and put them on a web page," someone told me. I did. And I think it looks good. Will it land me a job? I have no idea. But it can't hurt. And it underscores my skills in an organic way.
Did you have to dig up an ancient resume, call people you hadn’t talked to in years, create a personal website from scratch?
I had to dust off the resume I used when I applied for the L.A. Times job in 2007, though in reality I've done so much since then it felt like a fool's errand. Am I even the same person, potential employee-wise any more? As far as calling people, I didn't really do that outside of my immediate family members. A post to LinkedIn and well-timed posts to Instagram and Facebook pretty much did the trick as far as getting the word out to people I was already connected with. And yes, as far as a website, I'd had the adamtschorn.com URL for years as a placeholder so I taught myself quickly how to use the tools provided by Squarespace to get one up and running. I think it could use some tweaks but it's getting there.
How has the job market changed since the last time you were in it — especially in media? And how are you navigating it now?
In addition to the radical reshaping of the media landscape I've mentioned, the shrinking number of newspapers and newspaper jobs that pay a living wage. There are also a whole lot more unemployed journalists scrambling for those increasingly fewer jobs. I'm navigating it by relying on personal connections and leads where I have them to help me stand out from the crowd of applicants. I've also decided to broaden my search from simply the kind of job I had before to ones that are related to and key into it, like PR and brand consulting. The chances of getting the kind of job I had for the wage I was earning are pretty much nil. So it's pivot or die, or get two or three gigs that can be juggled around.
Are you looking for something that feels like what you had, or something totally different? Do you feel like you’re choosing reinvention, or has it been forced?
I think it would be akin to running back into a burning building to go back to a job exactly like I had, if it even exists any more. And if I by some miracle did land that kind of job, you can bet that, from the outset, I'd be prepared for the rug to be pulled put from under me again. And what's forced reinvention really but evolution. That being said, I'm looking for what I had — old habits die hard — but I'm certainly not limiting my search to that. The hard part is to get those who've seen you solely in one capacity for so long to consider you as a candidate for something else, even though you may have the skills.
What’s your advice for someone who’s feeling like it’s too late to reinvent — or who’s worried about being perceived as “expensive” or “outdated” in the hiring process?
First, I'd say: "What other real choice do we have but to move forward?" Humans are never good with times of transition and uncertainty. Think about airports: we go through them, certainly, but we usually know what time we're boarding. The period of job seeking after being laid off is kind of like being in a strange airport with a boarding time that's missing from your boarding pass. Once person's outdated is another person's vintage. One pro tip I got in in that department: If your resume includes the actual dates of when you went to high school and college and think you may have a perceived "expiration date" issue, simply remove them. It doesn't matter when you got educated and it makes slightly harder for someone to triangulate your age on the fly. As far as being perceived as expensive, you get what you pay for. The big problem is that in some jobs experience used to be worth paying for. Now? Not so much.
I had a recent situation where a freelance job was offering a per-word rate that was half of what someone of my skill level and experience would get. I wanted to be a people pleaser and say yes but knew that if I agreed to it I was negotiating downward on my self worth. I knew the assignment wasn't going to solve all my problems anyway and I said that I was worth more. After a very tense 24 hours, they came back and met my rate.
Do you think media has a bias toward youth?
The media has a bias toward reaching a coveted demographic: the demographic their advertisers want to reach. No matter the physical age, if you can deliver stuff that captures those eyeballs, you'll be seen as valuable. Keeping this in mind keeps me from letting it define my value. If my editor had said, "I want to assign you to the TikTok beat" I'd try like hell to figure it out. I like to say I'm a quick study and a gifted mimic but, at the end of the day, if I don't conquer it, it’s essentially like not succeeding because I don't know Mandarin Chinese or COBOL programming language. It's about skills not birthday candles, though it often does not feel that way.
Adam is open to writing, editing, and brand-consulting work. His areas of expertise and greatest familiarity are fashion and cannabis, but stringing words together and telling stories is his jam no matter the topic. You can find him on his website, LinkedIn, and Substack.
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Wow it’s so clear that Adam is a great writer as made super evident in how thoughtfully crafted all of his responses were. And he has a cat. Anyone would be crazy not to hire this guy!
"Where I worked felt like it mattered, and not just to me." Feel this sooo deeply.