The Scoop
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.
The pharmaceutical billionaire who owns the publication, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, has publicly expressed a desire to revamp the editorial board and appointed Scott Jennings, CNN’s pro-Trump commentator, to a role with the paper. He’s also said he did not want to run a piece criticizing Trump’s nominees for Cabinet roles if the paper did not publish an opposing view as well. (The paper’s unsigned editorials this year have focused exclusively on the dominant local issue — the fires.)
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.
Soon-Shiong’s plans to reshape the paper’s opinion section remain slightly opaque, even to senior members of the newsroom. A Times insider told Semafor that Soon-Shiong is considering a host of national and California-based conservatives to join both the traditional editorial board and the opinion forum, and has interest in adding new media personalities on the left as well. The media newsletter Status reported last year that Soon-Shiong had invited Rob Schneider and Cheryl Hines to the office to pitch them on collaborating with the publication in some capacity. On X, Schneider teased an upcoming collaboration with the paper. It’s unclear whether Beach’s role is paid or simply informal and advisory.
All these moves have caused some uncertainty. Both Jennings and Soon-Shiong said initially that he was joining the editorial board. However, a source at the paper clarified that he was not joining full-time. The Times still has several open positions listed for jobs on the editorial board, which some have confused for roles within the new opinion forum that Soon-Shiong is working on.
Soon-Shiong, the LA Times, and Beach did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
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Max’s view
The months since Soon-Shiong’s decision not to endorse may not have been fruitful for the LA Times from a business perspective — as we reported in October, the paper lost 18,000 subscribers almost immediately following Semafor’s story about its decision not to endorse in the presidential election. But they have elevated Soon-Shiong’s profile as an actor in the national media and California politics.
Soon-Shiong’s purchase of the LA Times in 2018 was what first put him on the radar of media and political figures nationally. For several years, Soon-Shiong largely stayed out of the spotlight, making himself known to the paper’s leadership and staff but rarely commenting on media issues publicly. But in recent weeks, the pharma exec has wielded it as a means of garnering attention for his political views.
In addition to advocating on X and wooing celebrities like Schneider and Hines, he has publicly criticized Mayor Karen Bass, saying he regretted the paper’s endorsement of her in the 2023 mayoral election. He has repeatedly appeared on centrist and right-leaning media outlets, including NewsNation, a podcast hosted by former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, and Fox News (which has introduced him as the owner of the LA Times), to criticize California Democrats and share his vision for changing the media.
He shared confusingly different accounts of various incidents, such as how the Gaza war influenced his decision not to endorse Harris. Some journalists have begun to go around the official LA Times communications department to speak to him, successfully reaching him through the spokesperson of his pharma company.
How all of it sits with the newsroom and local readership is less clear.
The LA Times newsroom has an uneasy relationship with its current owner dating back to when he bought the paper. The move was heralded at the time as courageous — the paper had suffered from a series of short-lived owners who had threatened to let it whither like other regional newspapers. Some staff at points have been friendly with Soon-Shiong’s daughter, Nika Soon-Shiong, whose interest and involvement in the paper has waxed and waned. But employees were frustrated by the way the non-endorsement process played out, and the cancellations by readers, which some believed would eventually result in another round of cuts. The Times’ employee union also released a statement last year criticizing Soon-Shiong’s suggestion that the paper’s journalists were biased.
But the current crisis in Los Angeles has produced a momentary truce with its owner.
The recent wildfires have reinvigorated the paper with editorial purpose, producing notable scoops and rallying staff and readers. It’s yielded strong financial results as well. As Semafor previously noted, the Times told staff online web traffic was up 800% between January and December. According to the note, 4,140 readers subscribed in the days immediately after the devastating wildfires — despite the fact that the Times said it had made most fire-related articles free — helping make up for some of the subscriber losses.
Notable
- In an interview with Fox News’ website last week, Soon-Shiong Soon-Shiong said that it has been a “struggle” to convince staff of his new, more conservative editorial vision. But he also said that he believed the ultimate strength of the paper would be “investigative reporting and really going after the facts on the reporting side.”
- The local dynasty that owned the Times for most of its 143-year history, the Chandlers, generally ran the paper as an unapologetically conservative outlet; a historian remarked to the Times when Soon-Shiong bought it that he’d be well-served by studying the family.