LA Times Scraper

Extract full article text or the newest headlines from the Los Angeles Times — no account or subscription needed.

Why use this actor

• No account or login required
• Full article text included, not just a summary — headline, byline (with author bios), section, and publish/update dates
• Also fetches the newest headlines from a single site-wide feed without visiting each article individually
• Stable JSON output suitable for pipelines, spreadsheets, or databases
• Automatic retries on temporary network hiccups

How it works

1. Give the actor one or more article URLs, or switch to "latest" mode to get the newest stories automatically.
2. In article mode, the actor opens each URL and pulls out the full text and every publicly available detail about the story.
3. In latest mode, the actor reads the site's headline feed and returns the newest stories.
4. Results stream into your dataset, ready to download as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

You don't need to manage retries, rate limits, or figure out the site's internal data format — the actor handles all of that.

Input

Article mode (default):

{
  "mode": "article",
  "urls": [
    "https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2026-08-23/will-trump-interfere-in-midterms-democrats-their-allies-are-preparing"
  ],
  "maxConcurrency": 4,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Latest headlines mode:

{
  "mode": "latest",
  "limit": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Field	Type	Description
mode	string	"article" (default) — extract one or more article URLs. "latest" — fetch the newest headlines.
url	string	A single article URL. Used in article mode.
urls	array	Multiple article URLs to extract in one run. Used in article mode.
limit	integer	Max headlines returned in latest mode. Default 10, max 30.
maxConcurrency	integer	How many articles to fetch in parallel in article mode. Default 4.
proxyConfiguration	object	Apify Proxy settings. Residential is on by default.

Output

Article mode — one record per URL (truncated here for readability):

{
  "_input": "https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2026-08-23/will-trump-interfere-in-midterms-democrats-their-allies-are-preparing",
  "_source": "S1-jsonld",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-08-23T19:54:07Z",
  "@type": "NewsArticle",
  "headline": "Will Trump interfere in the midterms? Democrats and their allies are preparing",
  "description": "Across California and the nation, Democratic leaders and voting rights advocates are ramping up coordination and gaming out responses to a raft of potential actions by the Trump administration to subvert the November vote or deny its outcome.",
  "articleBody": "Big-city mayors are giving poll workers panic buttons in case election skeptics question their work. County and state officials are gaming out responses to immigration raids near voting centers ...",
  "articleSection": "Politics",
  "datePublished": "2026-08-23T10:00:00.000Z",
  "dateModified": "2026-08-23T10:00:05.395Z",
  "author": [
    { "@type": "Person", "name": "Kevin Rector", "jobTitle": "Staff Writer" },
    { "@type": "Person", "name": "Justine McDaniel", "jobTitle": "Staff Writer" }
  ],
  "image": [ "... 2 more" ]
}

Latest headlines mode — one record per headline:

{
  "_input": "latest",
  "_source": "S2-rss",
  "_scrapedAt": "2026-08-23T19:53:49Z",
  "title": "Will Trump interfere in the midterms? Democrats and their allies are preparing",
  "link": "https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2026-08-23/will-trump-interfere-in-midterms-democrats-their-allies-are-preparing",
  "guid": "https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2026-08-23/will-trump-interfere-in-midterms-democrats-their-allies-are-preparing",
  "pubDate": "Sun, 23 Aug 2026 10:00:00 GMT",
  "description": "<p>Across California and the nation, Democratic leaders and voting rights advocates are ramping up coordination and gaming out responses to a raft of potential actions by the Trump administration to subvert the November vote or deny its outcome.</p>"
}

Field	Type	Description
_input	string	The URL you requested, or "latest", for traceability.
_source	string	Which strategy produced this record.
_scrapedAt	string	UTC timestamp of when the record was captured.
headline / title	string	Article headline (headline in article mode, title in latest mode).
articleBody	string	Full plain-text article content (article mode only).
description	string	Article summary/dek.
author	array	Byline (article mode only) — name and job title per writer.
articleSection	string	Section name (article mode only).
datePublished / dateModified	string	Publication timestamps (article mode).
pubDate	string	Publication timestamp (latest mode).
link	string	The article URL (latest mode).

A record with _error instead of article fields means that URL could not be processed (for example, "_error": "not_found" for a removed article).