A surgeon's touch at the keyboard. And I don't mean pianos.
LA Times owner -- and WaPo owner, too -- try to heal some journalist high fevers, but some of the afflicted say they like it poppin' hot. Hmm, to start with, paging Scott Jennings!
Successful entrepreneurs don’t do whatever in the world they think works. They discover what works and apply that.
They may think all they please that overcharging customers for inferior merchandise makes the company’s owner rich. However, unless the customer is chained within the store, he can walk away from transacting with an unsatisfactory owner. And if he is chained there, he’s not likely to be earning enough money to satisfy the owner’s unrealistic expectations for profits.
Among his accomplishments, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times since 2018, is a medical researcher and transplant surgeon. In medicine, he deals in literally life-and-death physical realities. He doesn’t — you hope! — make surgical decisions based on passing feelings, popular opinions and resentments.
Now he has begun another sanitizing procedure, bringing in some new staff.
The Times has one of the largest daily circulations in the U.S. but, due to the internet and changed reading and living patterns, it’s not the giant it was. No big U.S. newspaper is.
It used to be said that the Los Angeles Times would do anything to keep its circulation above one million copies daily. That was back in the day when hardcopy was the basic way to publish. However, the Statista data website says the Times had a hardcopy circulation of 105,700 “in the United States in the six months to September 2023, by average print circulation.” During the same period, other large daily papers were only shadows of their former selves, too, although their online circulation, which used to be inconsequential or non-existent, easily exceeds the print-edition numbers.
For the same time period of 2023, The Washington Post hardcopy number is listed at 127,700, USA Today at 121,600, and the Chicago Tribune at 73,000. These were big papers that within the last few decades each used to bask in print circulations of hundreds of thousands — or greater.
Online appears to be the way to go
Wikipedia says that as of 2022, the Los Angeles Times was “the sixth-largest newspaper in the nation and the largest in the Western United States, with a print circulation of 118,760. It has 500,000 online subscribers [emphasis added], the fifth largest among U.S. newspapers.” Online appears the way to go.
But, facts being facts, a combined print and online figure of 618,760 is far below what the Times had enjoyed not so long ago as a print-only newspaper, which had to be delivered to each subscriber. There was no ease of calling it up in a variety of ways, including on your phone or computer.
Many media audiences are declining. Something is missing. Or has something offensive been added that audiences don’t want? Like a statist-style propaganda fist in your face?
The largest U.S. print-circulation newspaper, Wikipedia says, is The Wall Street Journal, with “609,650 print subscribers. It has 3.17 million digital subscribers, the second-most in the nation after The New York Times.” The earlier-mentioned Statista chart for 2023 has The New York Times hard-copy figure at 267,600.
The anticipated daily hard-copy circulations for ordinary U.S. metropolitan newspapers in, say, the 1980s have become the shrunken hard-copy circulations for some of the nation’s largest papers.
Far below the peak
Wikipedia says: “The Times's reported daily circulation in October 2010 was 600,449, down from a peak of 1,225,189 daily and 1,514,096 Sunday in April 1990” (emphasis added).
(I worked for a while at the Times’ main competitor in suburban Orange County, The Orange County Register, which thwarted the Times’ dream to beat us in “OC” circulation. The Times had its stronger circulation areas, but we beat them overall. And the Register kept things interesting by, for instance, winning the Pulitzer Prize for its color photography of the 1984 LA Olympics, even though the Times figured it’d be the sure winner. We had only three photographers accredited to cover widely spaced sports venues, so our guys had to keep moving while the Times could let its bigger bunch linger at the venues. But when I drove into the Register parking lot for work on the Pulitzer-announcement day, the continuous cheering and screaming from inside the building could mean only one thing. Well, if you count the champagne all over the floor, more than one thing. A few years earlier a sharply changed Register set a goal of winning its first Pulitzer. Within a few years, it did, with new state-of-the art color presses.
(I mention this just to declare a background. As years passed, the Register’s circulation declined, like other papers’.)
To change our topic focus now, we note that the news pages and opinion pages of much of daily journalism have been on a leftward march. This doesn’t reflect a strong national demand for such a slant. It rather tries to create even more of a slant.
When Soon-Shiong forbade the LA Times from endorsing a presidential candidate shortly before the November 5, 2024, election, he shocked his newspaper staff. That choice would have been the extremist and unpopular Democrat nominee, Kamala Harris, whose endorsement already had been drafted but awaited Soon-Shiong’s approval to run. Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos similarly forbade the Post to publish an endorsement this year, which also would have been nominee Harris.
These owners’ decisions caused turmoil at their papers, which were expected to deliver endorsements. Soon-Shiong and Bezos both reportedly were seeking more-conservative writers to add to their opinion pages, in order to increase their appeal and get out of the rut. Soon-Shiong also reportedly wanted reform more thoroughly throughout the Times, and stricter observance of the difference between writing facts and opinion articles.
Is it bad if your merchandise — in part, a wider look at the world — attracts more customers seeking that scope?
The papers have left-wing staffs, and Harris was the most left-wing Democratic Party candidate nominated for president. To join her on the ticket, Harris chose weirdo extremist Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, whose nickname, Tampon Tim, noted one of his creepy orders that public-school lavatories for BOYS had to have tampons.
Evidence on Trump as Hitler still is “TK”
The Harris ticket crumbled before national voter support for the Republican Party nominees, Donald Trump and JD Vance — despite Trump having been media-denounced for years as a power-mad incipient dictator, even another Adolf Hitler. However, awaiting the Hitler evidence is “to kum,” or “TK” — old editing slang meaning there’s still more to write or edit.
Among media interviews Soon-Shiong did after announcing his plans for changes at the Times, he said that CNN’s Scott Jennings — a dexterous conservative commentator surrounded by liberals — was the kind of voice he had in mind. It didn’t take long for that to come true.
(As the news originally came out, I first wrote about Soon-Shiong’s plans in a Substack post that was dated November 16, “Earthquake-like waves of Trump's win shake up LA Times, too — How much more reality will we see after California paper's owner believes serious changes are needed?”)
Jennings confirmed at “X” in late November that he was hired, writing in part: “I love newspapers and believe in strong journalism and strong opinion pages that represent a wide array of views. I approach my commentary jobs by starting with the truth and then providing my honest opinion based on my conservative values and experience. I think Dr Soon-Shiong is doing something important and groundbreaking and am honored he asked me to play a role in that. Roughly half (or more) of the country often feels like legacy media doesn’t care what it thinks and has little interest in fairly representing its views and values. I plan to represent those Americans who believe they are often ignored or even ridiculed in legacy media and applaud Dr Soon-Shiong’s move to bring balance to the editorial board. My other professional obligations won’t be impacted by this new opportunity.”
On November 26 Soon-Shiong posted a widely viewed tweet at “X”: “That’s why I want Scott on our new editorial board!!! Growing the board with experts who have thoughtful balanced views, and new candidates are accepting the challenge to join us! Way to go Scott and thanks for accepting@latimes@ScottJenningsKY Stay tuned we are making this happen.”
Left-wing commentator Oliver Darcy, who recently left CNN to start his own Status newsletter, tried to get a comment from the LA Times about Jennings, but soon received a call from Soon-Shiong himself, which sounds as if it deserved points for accessibility. Darcy, however, didn’t seem impressed. His November 26 Status report was headlined, “The Lost Angeles Times — In an interview with Status, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong demonstrated that he is editorially inept.”
It was a phone talk that seems to have gone downhill rapidly. A November 27 account at Mediaite said, in part: “Darcy asked Soon-Shiong about how including ‘voices that are inherently dishonest’ would fit with his new editorial board, and the Times owner ‘then accused me of arguing that his entire editorial board will be dishonest, pointing out that I do not know who — aside from Jennings — will sit on it’.”
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Often apparently forgotten is that media people may perform for each other. A left-wing writer could care less how Joe from Dumpville views his article. It’s how many smiles he gets from left-wing activists on the newsroom payroll.
Sort of the same thing during the holidays. A photo of two local liberal columnists showed they work at desks next to each other. You probably could seat them anywhere in the newsroom, with the same hospitable result. Like dinner guests, isn’t it easier when everyone at the table is on, or feels compelled to order from, the same plate? Er, page.