- One other billionaire is having a tough time together with his newspaper.
- This time, it is Los Angeles Instances proprietor Patrick Quickly-Shiong, whose editor is leaving.
- Jeff Bezos’s Washington Put up made huge cuts — and Warren Buffett has given up on papers altogether.
It isn’t information that the newspaper trade is in hassle: It has been in hassle since at the least the beginning of the web period.
However Tuesday’s information — that Kevin Merida, the highest editor on the Los Angeles Instances, is leaving the paper lower than three years after taking the job — illustrates, but once more, simply how awful the scenario is.
That is as a result of the LA Instances is owned by billionaire Patrick Quickly-Shiong, and it’s shedding cash; though Quickly-Shiong is a billionaire, even billionaires have limits.
You will get a few of that info by studying between the traces of Quickly-Shiong’s memo to his workers asserting Merida’s departure. It contains a number of references to the paper’s “challenges” and a line about the way it’s “crucial all of us work collectively to construct a sustainable enterprise.”
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However an individual who’s conversant in the corporate made it even clearer to me Tuesday: The LA Instances, which already underwent important layoffs final 12 months, is now one other spherical of cost-cutting this 12 months — one thing designed to chop greater than $10 million from its finances, this individual mentioned.
It is cheap to conclude that Merida did not need to take that on, so Quickly-Shiong must discover somebody who does.
Requested for remark, an LA Instances spokesperson mentioned that firm leaders “do not typically make forward-looking statements about staffing ranges and are not capable of remark additional right now.”
It is also price declaring that Quickly-Shiong, who purchased the LAT and the San Diego Union-Tribune for $500 million in 2018, offered the San Diego paper final 12 months. In 2021, The Wall Road Journal reported that Quickly-Shiong was contemplating promoting the LA Instances itself, however Quickly-Shiong mentioned that was not the case.
The larger image is that Quickly-Shiong is simply the newest billionaire to have purchased a newspaper — a enterprise that within the outdated days may generate revenue, status, and energy for its proprietor — and decided that even a billionaire does not have the flexibility or will to fund perpetual losses.
Final fall, as an illustration, The Washington Put up — owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — one of many richest males on this planet — underwent large workers cuts. In 2020, Warren Buffett — additionally one of many richest males on this planet — offered Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio of newspapers, together with his beloved hometown Omaha World-Herald.
In the meantime, one of many few traders that wishes to personal newspapers — hedge fund Alden World Capital — has a repute for purchasing the properties solely to strip them of their worth.
So, if billionaires cannot save newspapers, who can?
There are some promising plans for nonprofit publications saved afloat by a mix of advertisements, subscriptions, and native philanthropy — The Texas Tribune is the best-known instance. However, after all, the Tribune itself had layoffs final 12 months.
