This has been a tough fall for super-rich newspaper owners. Both Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns the Los Angeles Times, pulled presidential endorsements pre-publication. Denials notwithstanding, it sure looked as if they were protecting the primary businesses that made them billionaires from the wrath of Donald Trump. Fierce internal criticism and resignations followed.
Each was back in the news on Wednesday. Bezos was interviewed at an investors’ conference, while Soon-Shiong issued editorial directives after a headline he found objectionable.
Soon-Shiong’s offense was far more objectionable — one of a long series of his interventions, arbitrary and erratic, that undermine the professionals nominally in charge of the place.
As media newsletter writer Oliver Darcy reported, he took umbrage at a mildly negative headline: “Elon Musk bought himself a starring role in Trump’s second term. What could go wrong?” The remedy: Soon-Shiong is now asking that all headlines on opinion pieces be sent to him and cleared.
Separately, Soon-Shiong talked to a conservative commentator about developing an artificial intelligence-driven “bias meter.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, he told radio host Scott Jennings, “I’m giving you some little breaking news here, but this is what we’re currently building behind the scenes. And I’m hoping that by January we launch this.”
A Soon-Shiong spokesperson did not reply to an email request for comment.
Off-and-on meddling has been a hallmark of his six years as owner. The company has a president and chief operating officer but Soon-Shiong functions as publisher and CEO when not pulled away by his medical and biotech ventures. His daughter, Nika Soon Shiong, also intervenes now and then.
The pace of resignations was already in progress but it has picked up this fall. Key newsroom leaders are gone, including former editor Kevin Merida, who left in January.
I won’t belabor the case against Soon-Shiong. It was ably stated by legal contributor Harry Litman on his Substack Thursday on the occasion of his resigning in protest.
Soon-Shiong — and Bezos — both have a point about the financial precariousness of their papers. Big continuing losses may be just a rounding error to them, but not acceptable, either. Part of what’s sad about the situation is that a path out of the business crisis at the Post and the Times is not evident — it’s been a long fall from the old days when big profits accompanied distinguished journalism.
Bezos was interviewed Wednesday by New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin. Some of his comments were arguable — like wishing success for Elon Musk, who has a few trillion dollars’ edge on him in net worth, and his eyes set on cutting the federal regulatory apparatus — but there was nothing there to provoke outrage.
Bezos also took the more dubious tack of detecting a new “calm” in Trump. He stuck with his position in spiking the endorsement editorial and in a subsequent op-ed that the action improved reader trust. Bezos hopes to save the Post from a tottering business crisis for a second time (since his 2013 purchase). He didn’t specify how.
I’d argue that disappointment with Soon-Shiong and Bezos should not be extrapolated as proof that ownership by a wealthy patron just doesn’t work. Sometimes it doesn’t, other times it does.
Three examples:
- John Georges (a food service entrepreneur) and his wife Dathel moved from the base of the Baton Rouge Advocate to acquiring The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, then launching outposts in Lafayette and Shreveport. President Judi Terzotis told me recently that even broader coverage of Louisiana is coming.
- The old-money Manigault family owns The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. Like the Advocate, The Post and Courier has been expanding statewide. President and publisher P.J. Browning runs the operation; a holding company keeps a double layer of independence from the owners.
- The Minnesota Star-Tribune has been owned for more than a decade by Glen Taylor, who made his fortune in printing and electronics. It is often touted as the model of an enterprising and successful regional publication. When publisher Mike Klingensmith retired, Taylor hired Steve Grove, who has refreshed the executive ranks and expanded a statewide footprint. “It’s not every day you get to reimagine a 157-year-old publication for a new era,” he said, “so we don’t take this moment lightly.”
A common denominator of these three is hiring the best available talent for publisher and editor, then letting those professionals do their jobs with only the lightest of oversight. Terzotis, Browning and Klingensmith each were named publisher of the year by Editor and Publisher, and each paper has won many editorial awards, including Pulitzer Prizes.
Two more:
- John Henry has kept editorial quality top-of-the-line at The Boston Globe and it has long led the pack in paid digital subscriptions. Henry installed his wife Linda as CEO, which I suppose would not fit a strict ban on nepotism. I was impressed, though, when I interviewed her about the Globe’s spectacular vertical health startup, Stat. And Henry, who also owns the Red Sox, has stayed true to his word that sports writers could continue their feisty coverage of the team. (Not for nothing, Globe editor Nancy Barnes and Times-Picayune/Advocate editor Rene Sanchez each had stints as top editor at The Star Tribune.)
- Surprise! After a bumpy start, the Adelson family has paid for newsroom growth at The Las Vegas Review-Journal and has kept hands off, publisher and editor-in-chief J. Keith Moyer told me a few years back. (The Adelson family does reserve the prerogative of advocating in editorials for Israel and Republican causes, both passions of the late patriarch Sheldon Adelson.)
Not to be Pollyannaish, but this tough stretch for the Post and Los Angeles Times brings to mind a comment from a friend I worked with at The Philadelphia Inquirer in the late 1970s and early ’80s. It took a long time for the Inquirer to get good, he said, if it declines, that will take a long time, too.
I’m a paid subscriber to both the Post and Times and still find imaginative stories very much worth reading every day.
Rick,
Thanks, as always, for your insights.
A couple things. As you know, the Inquirer, led by Gene Roberts and boosted by Knight Ridder, was a great newspaper and a great business in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Today, it’s a weak news medium and a bad business.
Also, WashPo and the LAT have simply been unable to compete as businesses in the contemporary environment. Their failures, in part, stem from antiquated definitions of what to cover and how to cover it. I’ve subscribed to WashPo for nearly 35 year, and the depth and breadth of its daily report have been declining steadily over the last 15.
Best,
Paul Kitzke