The Los Angeles Times, the city's main newspaper, has suffered from circulation numbers that have declined since the mid-1990s. It has not been able to pass the one million mark, a milestone easily surpassed in earlier decades. The circulation drop may be because of a number of short-lived editors.

Other considered reasons for the circulation decline include an increase in price, from 25 cents to 50 cents, or in the growth in readers preferring to read the Web edition. A leading editor said that the decrease was an industry-wide issue that the paper had to deal with by uploading more content online and placing breaking news there. One prominent journalist attributed the decline to the dearth of local coverage featuring news items of interest to working people and organized labor.

The paper's content and design style has been overhauled various times in recent years in attempts to help increase circulation. In 2000, a major redesign more closely organized the news sections and adjusted the Local section to the California section, with more detailed coverage. Another major change in 2005 had the Sunday Opinion section renamed the Sunday Current section, with a drastic change in its presentation.

In 2006, The Times shuttered its San Fernando Valley printing press, leaving such operations in nearby Orange County. Also in 2006, the paper announced its circulation down 5.3 percent from 2005. The paper's loss of circulation is the highest out of the leading newspapers in the United States Despite this recent circulation decline, many in the newspaper industry have lauded the newspaper's moves to augment its reliance on building its individually-paid circulation base.

In other negative news, the credibility of the Times suffered greatly when it was revealed in 1999 that a revenue-sharing relationship was in place between it and Staples Center in the creation of a magazine heralding the establishment of the sports arena. The magazine's editors and writers were not made aware of the agreement, which breached the separation between advertising and journalistic functions at U.S. newspapers. The Times has also come under scrutiny for its decision to discontinue the weekday examples of the Garfield comic strip in two years ago, in favor of a hipper comic strip, while keeping the Sunday edition. The comic was dropped altogether shortly after that.