"LA Times Insists It Isn't For Sale" by Daniel Guss
I asked amid ongoing rumors, but the denials, like the dollars, don't add-up.
@TheGussReport — Despite persistent rumors, the Los Angeles Times says it isn’t up for grabs.
“The Los Angeles Times is not up for sale,” the news outlet’s spokesperson Hillary Manning recently told me. “As (owner) Patrick Soon-Shiong commented on Monday, speaking for himself and his family, ‘Our intention now is to focus on the ongoing work of transforming the L.A. Times into a self-sustaining institution. Our hometown of Los Angeles and the state of California – really, the West Coast – needs a strong, independent news organization. We believe in the L.A. Times and are committed to its future.’”
The Times’ problems, it has said for a long while, are due to the economics of declining advertising revenue that its entire industry faces.
In other words, advertisers see better ways to reach people and that ship isn’t returning to port in an era of social media that only continues to boom.
And just maybe, people have finally rejected the Times’ embrace of, and making excuses for, disastrous woke policies and trouble-magnets like Mark Ridley-Thomas, Jose Huizar, Mitch Englander, Curren Price, Eric Garcetti, Nury Martinez, Herb Wesson, Rocky Delgadillo, Mike Feuer, Sheila Kuehl, Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, to name a few.
Further, as I pointed out recently, if people aren’t clamoring to pay the Times just one dollar for a six-month digital subscription (which is still a money-evaporating business proposition), the handwriting remains on the wall after Soon-Shiong recently laid off dozens of employees and dumped the San Diego Union Tribune after buying it and other news assets in June 2018.
Manning went on to explain that its stated goal of making the LA Times self-sustaining means “earning enough revenue to pay for expenses.”
Note the absence of the word consistently, leading one to comfortably infer that the Times is losing money and lots of it. Hemorrhaging might be the operative phrase, if only the Times cared to disclose its financial health. Rest assured, if it becomes profitable at some point, it would be the first to trumpet the news. Just don’t hold your breath like a maskless Eric Garcetti posing for photos.
At this pace, how long the Soon-Shiong family hangs on should be measured not in five-year increments, but against how long Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani both remain Angels.
That isn’t to say that the Times d’ El Segundo is going away, nor should it. But as an eroding asset without positive business catalysts on the horizon, its value will continue to slide and the good doctor may decide, like the Halos might, that a fire sale is the best remedy for what ails them both; public apathy toward their product.
And let’s be honest.
Who in 2023 thinks Soon-Shiong doesn’t completely regret buying the Times at all, at any price?
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(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a multi-award-winning journalist. In June ‘23, he won the LA Press Club’s Online Journalist of the Year and Best Activism Journalism awards. He is City Editor for the Mayor Sam network, and has been a featured contributor for CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)