The Los Angeles Times (also known as the LA Times) is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California and distributed throughout the Western United States. It is the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States and the fourth-most widely distributed newspaper in the United States. Its daily circulation reported in October 2008 was 739,000, down from a peak of 1.1 million. In addition to its print product, the Times also publishes a 24-hour news Web site at latimes.com. It was founded in 1881.

The Times's most recent Pulitzer Prize was awarded in 2009. Reporters Bettina Boxall and Julie Cart won the Explanatory Reporting prize "for their fresh and painstaking exploration into the cost and effectiveness of attempts to combat the growing menace of wildfires across the western United States." Previously it had won thirty-eight Pulitzers, including four in editorial cartooning, and one each in spot news reporting for the 1965 Watts Riots and the 1992 Los Angeles riots. In 2004, the paper won five prizes, which is the third-most by any paper in one year (behind The New York Times in 2002 (7) and The Washington Post in 2008 (6)).

The paper was first published every week and one half, as an evening paper, bearing the name, Los Angeles Daily Times on December 4, 1881, but soon went bankrupt. The paper's printer, the Mirror Company, took over the newspaper and installed former Union Army lieutenant colonel Harrison Gray Otis as an editor. Otis made the paper a financial success. In 1884, he bought out the newspaper and printing company to form the Times-Mirror Company.