"The LA Times' Glengarry Glen Ross Moment" By Daniel Guss
Owner Patrick Soon-Shiong finally sounds the alarm and walks the talk on existential challenges and changes at his troubled news outlet. He's dropping in on 790-KABC's "The John Phillips Show" today.
Temperament-wise, soft-spoken Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has nothing in common with Alec Baldwin’s hard-charging character in Glengarry Glen Ross, the 1992 crime-thriller based on David Mamet’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play.
But like the employees subjected to Baldwin’s legendarily intense monologue in his only scene in the movie, the message is similar: If you don’t like (our new direction), leave.
As was the case in the movie, where the characters failed to close big sales, people aren’t buying the content they’re hawking at the LA Times, which for a long, long while has harmed all of us with its one-sided editorial board and untrustworthy news reporting (which I have repeatedly witnessed first-hand) including lying by omission.
With an industry that is already struggling on its own, Soon-Shiong is finally appearing front and center to address the Times’ challenges and what he’s doing about them.
A few weeks ago, Soon-Shiong appeared on Fox News @ Night with Trace Gallagher and William La Jeunesse, admitting that the Times “conflates news and opinion.”
That’s not its only existential problem, but he’s right.
Soon-Shiong came across as a calm, fair-minded executive laying out what he is doing about the Times’ well-deserved reputation for bias and imbalance.
One of the doctor’s remedies has been to replace what remains of his Editorial Board after several of its members resigned in a hissy-fit after the owner’s last minute decision not to issue an endorsement in the Trump-Harris presidential election last month.
During the interview, he foreshadowed adding CNN’s moderate conservative commentator Scott Jennings to the Times’ Editorial Board, which he announced a few weeks later.
Since then, Soon-Shiong has floated the idea of a “Bias Meter,” apparently involving artificial intelligence, AI, to address where it may surface in the outlet’s upcoming content. How that might work, given that AI is only as trustworthy as its programming, is unclear. But at least it shows that the owner is digging-in and recognizes that change — perhaps major change — is needed, right now, if the Times is going to survive.
At least two other major issues remain unclear, though.
One is whether Soon-Shiong recognizes that there are even bigger credibility problems in the Times’ news reporting and, if so, what he’s going to do about it before those who still care about the Times look elsewhere for trustworthy content.
That’s especially true in its coverage of Los Angeles and Sacramento political corruption and failure, which is arguably the worst in the nation.
The other is the role at the Times of his daughter, Nika Soon-Shiong, an officious intermeddler with a taste for things to the left of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, though her ability to influence the organization’s content depends on who is complaining and who is denying her role there altogether.
Today, Soon-Shiong gets another round of questions when he sits down with John Phillips on 790-KABC’s “The John Phillips Show,” which starts at 12pm and will likely preview the interview scheduled for the 1pm hour. Phillips, whose knowledge of the Times’ history may be the best in Los Angeles, has said that Soon-Shiong appears to be doing his best with the immensely challenging situation.
As always, the interview will be posted online later in the day if you miss it live.
In a media landscape that is still irked by Trump’s re-election and which remains hostile to the idea of balance, it’ll probably be the fairest interview Soon-Shiong has had since the one with Gallagher and La Jeunesse last month on Fox News Channel.
Whether Soon-Shiong’s efforts are too little, too late, remains to be seen. The meter is running, but now that he’s front and center, he has my attention. I’ll be listening.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards in June ‘23. In June ‘24, he won its “Best Commentary, Non-Political” award. He has contributed to 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.)