Editorial Endorsement Drama 101: Q&A With Matt Pearce, President of Media Guild of the West

In the days leading up to the election, the media world delivered a minor October surprise. In a break with tradition, the editorial boards at The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times did not endorse either presidential candidate. In both cases, the editorial boards had drafted endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris that were subsequently quashed by the newspapers’ billionaire owners. Both Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times who has made his fortune in the pharmaceutical industry, and Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, offered murky explanations. 

On Twitter/X, Soon-Shiong claimed that he offered the editorial board the “opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation.” But the editorial board refused.  

Soon-Shiong’s daughter said that the decision not to endorse the vice president was attributed to the Biden-Harris administration’s continual support for Israel. However, her father denied that claim. Bezos, on the other hand, wrote an op-ed arguing that the non-endorsement was done as an effort to restore the public’s trust in the media. 

Following the controversy, members of the respective editorial boards have resigned. Both newspapers have been hit with a wave of subscriber cancellations (250,000-and-counting at The Washington Post, 18,000-and-counting at the LA Times).  

To get a better sense of the crisis, I caught up with Matt Pearce, president of the Media Guild of the West, which is the parent union representing editorial employees at theLos Angeles Times. Pearce was a reporter at the Los Angeles Times until earlier this year, when he accepted a buyout during a round of layoffs. He’s been writing opinion pieces about the editorial endorsement crisis on his Substack newsletter. 

In our conversation, Pearce broke down the uniqueness of the editorial boards’ sudden neutrality, what this move means from a labor perspective, and why the surge of subscriber cancellations is troubling. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.