I’ve lived in Los Angeles nearly as long as Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, and I’ve worked in media a lot longer than he has. Granted, he’s dabbled in other areas like medicine and biotech research, and his net worth is far, far better than mine–admittedly anything but a high bar.
But some of my most intense and involved times in media were spent in a company run by Rupert Murdoch and his minions who came from Britain and Australia, where tabloid journalism has thrived for years relying upon heavily blue-collar urban commuters with traditional values who were inclined to plop down a few coins for a portable, digestible wrap-up of eye-catching headlines and right-leaning opinions. I lived first-hand through his reshaping of the moribund NEW YORK POST and its centrist family ownership under Dorothy Schiff into a right-pilled alternative to their arch-rival DAILY NEWS and saw his willingness to absorb countless millions of dollars of losses just to get what he felt was an underrepresented point of view. And I personally interacted with him and those he deployed into his new toys, including newly acquired papers and TV stations, to spread his version of gospel farther and wider. Relative to relevant benchmarks, he was more successful in cities that were closer to the mold of New York, London and Sydney–Boston, Chicago and, to an extent, Washington, D.C. He never did attempt to launch or buy a paper in Los Angeles and the shows that mirrored that approach–A CURRENT AFFAIR and FOX’s ill-fated attempt to emulate 60 MINUTES, THE REPORTERS–were modest performers enhanced only by the strength of the station.
And I was interacting with him enough when the long-time more populist city daily, the LOS ANGELES HERALD-EXAMINER, was in danger of folding and the city was rolling out an ambitious transit alternative now known as the Metro. I was brazen enough to ask him why he wouldn’t consider saving it as he did the Post and adding to his sphere of influence. To my surprise, he gave my suggestion more credence than it probably deserved. “This is a city of immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries and is addicted to their cars”, he calmly but sternly lectured. “They care more about celebrities and their desire to be one more than do about themselves. They’re far less politically active and the weather’s usually too nice for them to get that upset. Not an option I want to consider”.
So I do feel I’m at least somewhat qualified despite the obvious earnings gap to look at what the LOS ANGELES TIMES’ ever-notorious czar has been doing of late and if offered the opportunity would grab him by his lapels and ask “WTF are you doing?!?!?!”
Look, I’ve arguably been as snarky as anyone of late in labeling the efforts I’ve observed since these musings began as qualifying it to the called the Left Angeles TIMES. I’ve personally called out obsessives like Rong-Gong Lin II for gaslighting its readers with regular lengthy diatribes on wastewater statistics and our imminent demise if heaven forbid we actually didn’t cover our faces. I’ve railed against several of its sportswriters for taking a UCLA bias. There’s no question that the paper needed a course correction. But Soon-Shiong has done an about face that now has it careening toward outright EPOCH TIMES territory, and now apparently has multimedia aspirations that go way beyond mere centrism.
Earlier this week L.A. TACO’s Hadley Tomicki dropped a fairly thorough timeline of the past 13 months of the evolution of both Soon-Shiong and the TIMES, beginning with last January’s round of layoffs that resulted in the resignation of editor Kevin Merida. After a relatively quiet spring and summer, things began to heat up as the presidential election drew nigh, and really peaked when Soon-Shiong refused to follow the recommendation of his editorial board to endorse Kamala Harris. Subsequent to the re-anointing of Fat Orange Jesus by a plurality of Americans who weren’t too lazy to actuall vote, Soon-Shiong reaffirmed his personal motivation to make the paper more “fair and balanced”–or at least as the likes of Roger Ailes once defined it. Tomicki took particular note of one mid-December X-eet:
@latimes to move to the center ! Trying hard. Interesting chart. But chart itself is just an opinion.
At the time, it was also about twelve months outdated. The January 2025 version shows a more current overview. But I guess he was telegraphing something by that somewhat dismissive observation, because once the New Year began whatever broad defense of the word “centrist'” that he may have been trying to imply became increasingly distant in his rear-view mirror. MEDIAite’s Charlie Nash dropped this nugget three days into 2025:
The owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, reportedly spoke with actor and comedian Rob Schneider about creating a “MAGA-friendly” version of ABC’s The View last month following President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory. Former CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy reported in his Status newsletter Thursday that Soon-Shiong held a “special meeting” with Schneider and Cheryl Hines – the wife of Trump Health Secretary appointee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – at the Los Angeles Times headquarters in El Segundo, during which Schneider brought up his idea for a new show.
A few weeks late, SEMAFOR’s Max Tani threw this log onto the–pardon the expression–fire:
The owner of the Los Angeles Times has been leaning on a veteran Republican who ran a pro-Trump PAC to shape the future of one of the West Coast’s biggest news organizations. As part of the new strategy, Semafor has learned, Soon-Shiong recently enlisted Eric Beach to help recruit new voices to join the editorial board and a new opinion forum that the LA Times is forming that will sit alongside it. A veteran of California Republican politics, Beach ran Great America PAC, the pro-Trump super PAC that supported the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 and 2020, and paid a large FEC fine after accepting a contribution from undercover journalists from the Telegraph posing as representatives of a Chinese donor. Beach also worked to elect Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 2000s.
Last week, one of Mr. Murdoch’s current employees, the NEW YORK POST’s Ariel Zilber, authored yet another update:
The Los Angeles Times will reportedly slash commentary from its left-leaning opinion writers — and staffers are said to be fuming over the owner cozying up to President Trump. Robin Abcarian, Jackie Calmes and LZ Granderson were informed by their superiors that they are expected to publish one opinion piece per week rather than their usual two, according to a report in Oliver Darcy’s Status newsletter.
It should be further noted that Granderson, a one-time ESPN radio co-host, is openly gay.
All of this is now apparently beggining to mushroom into something fungible, as Darcy once again took to his STATUS megaphone via last night’s newsletter to share with his paying subscribers:
| While forcing cost cuts at the newspaper he once promised to breathe new life into, the pharmaceutical billionaire, I’m told, has been directing his focus — and his resources — toward a new media venture. | |||
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So it appears that’s where the likes of Schneider and Hines will land among with these other “personalities”. It’s debatable whether there’s actually a need for yet another outlet for overreaction on a national basis, assuming that’s what the ultimate intent will be. But given that it will be eminating from Los Angeles and will integrate at least some of the brand equity of LAT, it’s an even more questionable play.
As Mr. Murdoch so astutely observed, there’s no attempt even being hinted at to appeal to Latinos, even the growing sector of them that apparently are open to Trumpism. Schneider may be a failed 90s comedy star a la Joe Rogan, but he’s anything but relevant to the young male demographic that drives the adoption and evangelicalism necessary for a multimedia venture to succeed these days. And if he thinks that Hines is the red-leaning alternative to Whoopi Goldberg, failing to consider her own street cred has diminished considerably with her clearly transactional refusal to stick by her openly disloyal and oversexed hubby, as a producer he compares to Rogan even more disfavorably.
I highly doubt Soon-Shiong or Beach has done any sort of market research to actually determine if there’s a white space, both in chart placement and in the demography of Los Angeles, to justify this sort of commitment. There very well could be some voices that are worth going after that are emerging–and I for one would be looking to Spanish-language media to find them. There’s also folks on platforms like Outkick, for example, or some of the other less well-known ones documented on the Media Bias chart. And what’s Granderson’s one-time ESPN colleague Sage Steele doing these days?
But perhaps his timing might be just a tad premature and chasing the wrong medium. Judging by the tedious construction I’ve been observing when I was commuting to work–yes, in my car–I’ve noticed that the Metro will soon be introducing new routes that will open up its viability to a far wider swath of this city, just in time for the still-scheduled 2028 Olympics that will likely bring in enough tourists to secure every possible Waymo in exisence. They’re gonna need something to read because, as I can further personally attest, even the best noise-cancelling headphones can’t drown out the din on those trains.
Maybe now’s the time to right-size the TIMES in more ways than just politically, Pat?
Until next time…