Content Update

Sample The Los Angeles Times front page
Do you have ancestors or relatives from Southern California? Come check out the recently added Los Angeles Times on Newspapers.com. Newspapers.com has issues of the Los Angeles Times ranging from 1881 to 2016—135 years of Southern California history! With a Newspapers.com Basic subscription, you can see issues from 1881 through 1922; or, with a Publisher Extra subscription, access the years previously listed and additional issues from 1922 to March 2016.

The Los Angeles Times began publication on December 4, 1881, under the name the Los Angeles Daily Times. However, since it originally wasn’t published on Mondays, it wouldn’t become a true daily until February 1887, when it began putting out a Monday issue. It was renamed the Los Angeles Times in the masthead in 1886.

After some rocky first years, the Los Angeles Times became successful, though due to competition with other area papers, it wouldn’t become the leading paper of Los Angeles until the 1940s. To date, the Los Angeles Times has won 42 Pulitzer Prizes, winning the first in 1942 (for a freedom of the press campaign) and most recently in 2016 (for coverage of the San Bernardino mass shooting). It also won Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of the Watts Riots (1965) and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.

Masthead for Los Angeles Times' 1920 Midwinter Number

The Los Angeles Times was originally a Republican paper, though its political leanings would shift over the years. One long running feature of the paper was the so-called Midwinter Number, published on New Year’s Day between 1885 and 1954, to promote Southern California. For a few years, 1891 to 1895, it also had a similarly themed Midsummer Number. Since 1968, the Los Angeles Times has run a daily first-page feature known as “Column One,” which highlights interesting and thought-provoking topics.

One memorable event in Los Angeles Times history was on October 1, 1910, when a union radical bombed the Los Angeles Times’ building in retaliation for the paper’s fight against unions. The bombing killed 21 employees and decimated the building. The current Los Angeles Times building was completed in 1935.

If you have Los Angeles area ancestors, you might find them mentioned in a variety of places within the Los Angeles Times, including in lists of weddings, marriages, births, divorces, deaths, or war missing or killed. They might also appear in news about Los Angeles area locals or society news, among many other columns.

Start searching or browsing the Los Angeles Times on Newspapers.com!

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