Patrick Soon-Shiong’s Tanking of the LA Times Continues

Katie Robinson, reporting for The New York Times:

After President-elect Donald J. Trump announced a cascade of cabinet picks last month, the editorial board of The Los Angeles Times decided it would weigh in. One writer prepared an editorial arguing that the Senate should follow its traditional process for confirming nominees, particularly given the board’s concerns about some of his picks, and ignore Mr. Trump’s call for so-called recess appointments.

The paper’s owner, the billionaire medical entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, had other ideas.

Hours before the editorial was set to be sent to the printer for the next day’s newspaper, Dr. Soon-Shiong told the opinion department’s leaders that the editorial could not be published unless the paper also published an editorial with an opposing view.

Baffled by his order and with the print deadline approaching, editors removed the editorial, headlined “Donald Trump’s cabinet choices are not normal. The Senate’s confirmation process should be.” It never ran.

I’m not going to keep pointing to the ways Soon-Shiong is debasing the once-great LA Times. Until and if he sells it, which I don’t expect him to do, it’s over. What the LA Times was is gone. That sounds like hyperbole but it’s the obvious truth. One jackass columnist or even a fabulist reporter won’t sink an entire newspaper’s credibility. The Judith Miller reporting on “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq was a disaster for the New York Times 20 years ago, but while that saga did lasting damage to the NYT’s credibility, it didn’t sink the ship. But an owner like Soon-Shiong can sink the ship. The LA Times isn’t really a newspaper anymore — it’s a vanity rag.

I’m just fantasizing here, but someone with money should consider sweeping into Los Angeles and setting up a rival publication, and poaching all the talent from the Times. I’d have suggested Jeff Bezos until recently, but, well, not anymore. Off the top of my head: Marc Benioff (who now owns Time magazine) or Laurene Powell Jobs (whose Emerson Collective is the majority owner of The Atlantic), perhaps?

The newspaper business, alas, isn’t what it used to be. When it was thriving, local competition would have already been in place. Even small cities had at least two rival papers. Now, New York might be the only city in America left with any true competition between newspapers.

★ Friday, 13 December 2024