The Chicago-based owner of The Los Angeles Times is expected to announce it is selling the newspaper. The move ends the long-troubled relationship between Southern California’s leading news outlet and their owner. The buyer, according to The Washington Post, is Patrick Soon-Shiong, a Los Angeles-area physician and a major shareholder of the paper’s current parent company, Tronc. He is the billionaire founder and chief executive of NantHealth, based in Culver City and is also planning on buying the LA Times’ sister newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune. Over the past few months, the LA Times has seen rapid turnover and major clashes between management and journalists over a proposal to have more non-staffers contributing news content. Tronc’s forerunner company, Tribune Co., acquired the LA Times back in 2000, and since then, the parent company and the paper have engaged in a cross-country feud about the paper’s management and direction. Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy court protection in 2008 and eventually emerged from bankruptcy in 2012, but the LA Times suffered. Its news staff has been pared to about 400 from more than 1,300 at its peak in the late 1990s. Last month, the paper’s journalists voted overwhelmingly to form a union. The LA Times is the sixth-largest daily paper as measured by print circulation and one of the leading news providers online.
Soon-Shiong, 64, made his fortune, estimated around $9 billion by Bloomberg, by starting and selling biotech companies and by operating a number of interlocking enterprises. He has no background in newspapers. He advised Donald Trump on health-care issues during the presidential transition last year and also consulted with former Vice President Joe Biden on Biden’s cancer initiative. He has directed his political contributions primarily to Democrats.
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