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?
PHOENIX — On November 13, Fox News posted an article headlined: “Los Angeles Times owner announces paper will have a new editorial board soon so 'all voices are heard'.” It cited a post at X by Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong that said in part: “I will work towards making our paper and media fair and balanced so that all voices are heard and we can respectfully exchange every American’s view ..from left to right to the center. Coming soon. A new Editorial Board. Trust in media is critical for a strong democracy.”
Despite being despised by dominant media, Donald Trump had just scored a strong presidential-election victory that suggested these media had lost touch with their audiences again.
I wrote a front-page story overnight from November 13-14 for this week’s Wanderer (story printed below) noting the owner’s pledge of a new editorial board — a development with wide implications that quickly took wing and sprouted new angles.
A subsequent Fox interview with the soft-spoken Soon-Shiong indicated he planned changes in news reporting at the Times, too.
A November 15 Fox story noted that the newspaper’s staff reacted with concern after the owner did the personal interview with Fox News, which headlined this: “LA Times editor addresses staff 'concerns' after owner suggests he wants to overhaul paper — ‘We want voices from all sides to be heard, and we want the news to be just the facts,' LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong told Fox News.”
This Fox story said in part: “The top editor at the Los Angeles Times reportedly reassured worried staff Friday [November 15] after the outlet's billionaire owner vowed to take the paper in a new direction to ensure ‘all voices are heard.’
“L.A. Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong said that he wanted to redo the ‘entire’ paper, after promising earlier in the week there would be a ‘new editorial board.’…
“L.A. Times executive editor Terry Tang reportedly emailed staff after the interview aired to address ‘concerns’ about Soon-Shiong's remarks.”
This was followed with risible boilerplate from executive editor Terry Tang about the reputedly impeccable Times:
"‘Patrick has expressed his full support and confidence in me and the editorial leaders to run the news report as we have. The LA Times newsroom has always strived for factual accuracy, dogged accountability journalism, and comprehensive news coverage, and that principle and practice will not change,’ she wrote, according to a message shared by New York Times media reporter Ben Mullins.
"‘Patrick's interest, as he has expressed in interviews, is to have a greater variety of views represented in the Opinion section and more clearly label for our readers the difference between a news piece and an opinion piece. In the coming weeks, there will be more to share on how the newspaper can accomplish this,’ Tang's email continued.”
In Soon-Shiong’s personal interview with Fox, the newspaper owner said that CNN’s conservative commentator Scott Jennings was the kind of voice he had in mind.
This would be in addition to reforming Times news reporting because Jennings contributes opinion articles, not news stories.
Here is my Wanderer article on this situation, published on November 14 in the Wanderer issue dated for November 21.
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Eight-plus years of media battering, but — Trump and GOP emerge stronger than ever to fight
By DEXTER C. DUGGAN
PHOENIX -- As President-elect Donald Trump was releasing the names of his new administration's selections, a different sort of development emerged that could have far-reaching consequences, although it only was the first loose stones in a potential avalanche in mid-November.
It became known that the owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, fired his newspaper's entire editorial board in an attempt to put together a new board that was more broadly reflective of the U.S.
In other words, not continuing with the current far-left board.
The editorial board is the part of the paper that produces the editorials, that is, the official voice of the paper on the opinion pages.
Often in agreement, not separate
In many cases these days, left-wing editorial boards happen to share the left-wing biases of so-called newsrooms. It's useless to explain that the newsrooms' views are kept separate from the opinion pages because, in fact, their views are far more often in agreement than separate.
During the recently ended campaign season, it was noteworthy that Soon-Shiong decided his newspaper would not be making its expected endorsement of a presidential candidate -- who would have been no one else but radical Democrat Kamala Harris. The endorsement for her already was drafted but awaited his approval to run.
The owner's decision set off shock and amazement not only among opinion staffers but in the newsroom, too, whose writers fully expected an editorial blessing of their own Democrat heartthrob.
Shortly after this, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos said surprisingly that his paper this year also would decline to supply a presidential endorsement, and might continue not to endorse in coming years.
And now we have Soon-Shiong saying that the entire LA Times editorial-writing staff is kicked out the door, in favor of building a more representative staff. We can only hope Bezos is preparing a similar shock for D.C., too.
Such a development for D.C. would be especially rattling because D.C. is a company town whose company isn't Ford Motors or Hollywood but Big Government. If the heartland of Big Government doesn't want ever-more big government, what would the voracious world of politics do? Allow people to attend to their own lives?
Ending insane left-wing politics?
Why, how would Big Government act these days if it's not ordering women to have men loose in their changing rooms and bathrooms? Is this finally the point at which insane left-wing politics battered itself against an immovable force?
For a half-century, wicked Big Government judges ordered that Americans get in line and gleefully slaughter as many defenseless infants as they can, under the baleful gaze of watchdogs Big Media and Big Politics.
These organs of power and journalism have indeed twisted the U.S. beyond recognition and would have liked to continue, but perhaps some owners in powerful journalism didn't like what they were seeing.
It often worked out that both Big Journalism and the Democratic Party were all sail and no anchor. The party never seemed to try to restrain itself from ever-worse outrages. And left-wing journalists seemed to have no inclination to push back against immoral left-wing Democrat politicians, regardless of how vile and loathsome their assaults on souls became.
Was the point finally arriving that they were meeting resistance -- to male assailants of women's sports?
As for Soon-Shiong's goal to make LA Times opinion writers more representative of community opinion, at least some dismissed newspaper opinion-pages writers may argue that it's not their job to be representative but to proffer their superior wisdom.
It'd be interesting if that were the case, but such editorial boards usually just sound like Democratic Party newsletter writers.
Opinion-writing comedians succeed at laughs
As is definitely the case here in Phoenix, too. If Phoenix's opinion-writing comedians want to make people laugh, they've surely succeeded beyond their hopes.
It's often said among Republicans that GOP candidates start off their campaigns down in a hole of negativity dug by left-wing media. The Republicans first have to struggle to get up to ground level before they can hope to attract a big stack of voters.
Actually, many voters already share the common-sense views of conservative Republicans, but by the time the voters hear about these candidates, the political hopefuls have been thoroughly smeared by journalists, or "so-called journalists."
The GOP candidates been slashed and slammed as dangerous, hate-filled neo-Nazi radicals. They have to spend a large chunk of their time saying they're not the devil before they can do serious campaigning.
That might have been the case with Arizona U.S. senatorial candidate Kari Lake, a Republican, who was pummeled by a years-long effort of comedians who staged their political laugh-ins at newspapers to yank her down.
At the same time, they covered up for and excused a far-left Democrat congressman who their hearts pitty-pattered over to get into a Senate seat.
Was this Democrat a good choice, or Lake a poor choice? The debate didn't get that far because the comedian-journalists had their scripts to stick to. Far-left, pregnant-wife-abandoning Cong. Ruben Gallego absolutely had to have a Senate seat. No matter how many lies demanded to be told about him being a heroic moderate.
Kari Lake absolutely had to be dragged through the droppings of the political comedians. Because that's what comedians who are a laugh do.
The inversion of morality in many cases isn't a new development.
L.A. Times’ old twisting of abortionist’s homicide case
Back when I covered the trial in the late 1970s of an abortionist accused of strangling Baby Girl Weaver in an Orange County, Calif., newborn nursery, the Los Angeles Times did all it could to ignore or minimize the case, even though Orange County is adjacent to Los Angeles County.
(The public never has favored permissive abortion throughout pregnancy. But dominant media have favored it for more than a half-century. Soon-Shiong would have a massive bias to resist and correct here.)
The Los Angeles Times censoring and hushing the 1970s' Baby Weaver case was about the same as if The New York Times ignored the homicide trial -- not an abortion trial -- of an abortionist right out on Long Island.
(Well, heck, The New York Times would ignore such a trial even if its own editorial-page editor were the accused. And right in a Manhattan courthouse. In fact, he might as well be the accused killer, seeing as how his paper does all it can to promote infant-slaughter.)
On November 13 a powerful article by dissident Jennifer Sey was posted at the Washington Examiner site. It was headlined, "As a dissident former leftist, I can explain why Trump won."
A small example of her thought reads: "We dissident former lefties have been called racists, misogynists, Nazis, grandma-killers, transphobes, bigots, and fascists and generally cast aside as unworthy of employment or membership in polite society. The election was a big middle finger to all of that.
"The Left canceled too many of us," Sey continued. "The outcasts spoke up and rejected the crazy on November 5. Sure, we may have chosen our own brand of crazy. But that brand of crazy knows men and women are different, boys don’t belong in girls’ sports, inflation is real, free speech is the most fundamental right in a democracy, and Vice President Kamala Harris was installed, not elected, as the Democratic candidate...
"Millions of people who never in a million years thought that they’d cast a vote for President-elect Donald Trump did so as a vote against elitism and smugness and an entire class of overeducated, hysterical coastal elites who think they get to tell us all what to think and how to live -- and punish us with cancellation if we disagree," Sey said.
Perhaps the main lesson for the entire class of left-wing arrogant elite is that their strong arm of media power had been punching and kicking and beating and screaming at Donald Trump for more than eight years. And actually trying to assassinate him. Yet Trump and his GOP emerged stronger than ever from the November 5, 2024, elections.
If this elite continues its entirely unfair attacks now -- not fact-based serious disagreements -- it's time simply to ignore them, like a tiny gnat on the wall.
The Wanderer asked some sources for their post-election thoughts.
Mary Ann Kreitzer, who runs the Virginia-based blog Les Femmes -- The Truth, said on November 12: "The question on everyone’s mind after Trump’s win is, 'What happens next?' The two biggest concerns of voters seemed to be border security and the economy. I wish protecting the vulnerable from womb to tomb was first, but we deal with reality.
"Trump naming Tom Homan as border czar signals the intent to get tough on the invasion. As a former police officer and ICE official with a solid reputation, he seems to be a good pick. Hopefully more control at the border will slow down sex- and drug-trafficking and keep terrorists out, making us all safer. The Left is stoking fears by claiming immigrants will be deported, but those here legally are in no danger and legal immigration will continue," Kreitzer said.
"The situation with the economy involves a number of agencies. The new EPA head, Lee Zeldin, says he will be working toward energy independence while continuing to protect our air and water. Lifting economy-crushing regulations on the energy and auto industries will be welcome, increasing jobs and building prosperity.
"The worst economic problem we face, however, is the massive U.S. debt. I pray that Trump will stop the bloodletting of U.S. taxpayers by cutting off the trillions siphoned off to protect other countries’ borders (like the Democrats did) while enabling a flood of illegals showered with goodies while ignoring the needs of Americans. Time will tell," Kreitzer said. "Actions speak louder than words. Let us pray for our leaders and for our country through Our Lady, patroness of America, that Christ the King will reign in the hearts of all of us."
Arizona-based conservative GOP consultant Constantin Querard uncharacteristically replied to The Wanderer’s questions in all-cap letters, so maybe he was excited.
Regarding the national scene, he said: “Narrow misses for the GOP in Nevada and Michigan kept a good night from becoming a great night. But the GOP has a solid majority for now, they’re getting new leadership, and it will be interesting to see how they function for the next couple of years.”
Nearly two years ago Arizona’s then-new Democrat governor, extremist Katie Hobbs, hoped she could spend her way to Democrat majorities in the state House and Senate, which had narrow GOP majorities, but she failed.
Querard said: “Republicans gained two state House seats and one state Senate seat, so that’s good news. They also narrowly missed out on a couple more Senate seats and House seats, so 2026 presents both parties with potential opportunities depending on the national mood.”
As for the U.S. Senate race between left-wing media’s punching bag Kari Lake and the media-beloved left-wing Democrat Gallego, Querard described them this way.
As for Gallego: “Gallego is a typical liberal senator now, who loves to bash Republicans, hates Trump, and had to pose as a moderate to win his race. Like the rest of them, he’ll go back to being a combative liberal for the next four years before shifting back for his re-election campaign in 2030.”
Lake: “Lake was losing in the polling for the entirety of the race, largely due to Republican and Independent voters who would vote for Trump, but simply would not vote for her. There were a couple of late polls suggesting she was catching up or had caught up, but that wasn’t enough, because if those polls were accurate, there were still three weeks of ballots already cast that favored Gallego.”
Querard continued: “She couldn’t make up the difference and lost, which is too bad, because with a stronger candidate the Republicans should have and likely would have won that race and been in a much stronger position nationally.”
The reference to being in a stronger position acknowledged the possibility of having gained another U.S. Senate seat in a closely divided chamber, even though there's a new GOP majority.