An Old Fashioned Newspaper War in LA?

Call out the Newsies! Haul out the headless bodies in topless bars! And dust off an old-fashioned circulation war ... we think.

Yesterday, the Murdochs declared war on the Los Angeles Times. They plan to launch a La-La Land version of the New York Post in Southern California, bringing its tabloid mentality and take-no-prisoners promotion style to a metropolitan area where broadsheets are less relevant and exciting than Rachel Zegler's next career steps. The LA Times has had a default monopoly for decades now, and the Hollywood Reporter seems at least intrigued by the notion that may change:

On Aug. 4, his Robert Thomson-run papers business, News Corp, unveiled a plan to bring the New York Post to the West coast with the launch of The California Post, a daily print tabloid headquartered in L.A. to be led by Nick Papps, a veteran of Murdoch’s Australian papers, by next year. Yes, the idea of an old-school newspaper war in L.A. — a metro area with 3.8 million led by one daily broadsheet, The Los Angeles Times, and no fiery tabloid — seems radically incongruous with media appetites in 2025, where executives are fretting about how to place TikTok-like vertical video templates on to news pages and AI-proof their business.

But there’s a lot of logic to News Corp’s bet: Back in Gotham, the Post arguably won the tabloid wars against its resource-constrained, progressive-minded The New York Daily News as it languishes under Alden Global Capital (a private equity firm often considered an archvillain to journalists for its perceived biz model of milking profits out of papers as it cuts editorial down to bare bones) as well as subway reads like amNew York and others that have faded away in the iPhone era. On the other coast, The Los Angeles Times‘ one daily print rival, The Daily News, which targets the San Fernando Valley and has a weekday average circulation of 26,056, is another one of the many papers owned by Alden.

In one sense, the Murdochs have already beaten Patrick Soon-Shiong. The NY Post gets over 50 million unique visitors per month, with News Corp claiming 3.5 million from the LA Times' turf. The national figure is 150% higher than the LA Times' unique visitors, according to Comscore and THR. The launch of a new paper in LA with West Coast-focused reporting will perhaps eat into the national brand's PVs, but it certainly will impact the LA Times' numbers as well. 

Ironically or not, this comes at the same time that Soon-Shiong is shaking up the staid LA Times and attempting to achieve more relevance. Recent disaster coverage has improved their visibility, but their one-note promotion of the progressive narrative has bored Angelenos for at least the last two decades. That includes Soon-Shiong himself, but he's been slow to do much about it -- thus far:

Ever since ousting editor Kevin Merida last year and scuttling the paper’s Kamala Harris presidential endorsement, the billionaire biotech mogul has been musing about what to do with the brand — More conservative voices? Less opinion news? An AI-generated bias meter? A new effort to IPO? More streaming TV-like content? — while shedding staff and frustrating allies that had largely backed him when he was hailed as the paper’s savior in 2018 for his $500 million purchase from the strategically confused, publicly-traded owner Tronc.

Soon-Shiong has sent some interesting signals, but thus far not much action except downsizing. The Murdochs may be doing Soon-Shiong a favor by launching the California Post, if that's really the name of the new paper. A threat of real competition -- and the Murdochs and News Corp certainly are that, and more -- will force Soon-Shing to either fish or cut bait on reforming the dull-as-dishwater LA Times. The Hamlet act has grown as tiresome as his newspaper's one-sided approach to news, and seven years should be more than enough time for a multi-billionaire to develop a strategy to achieve necessary changes for future growth.

However, one has to wonder whether relevance can be achieved by either combatant in a newspaper war. Broadsheets or tabloids, newspapers no longer occupy the same space in consumer attention that they did when Los Angeles actually had newspaper wars. Even in my lifetime, LA County had multiple newspapers that actually competed for county-wide footing: the Times, of course, as well as the Long Beach Press-Telegram and especially the Herald-Examiner. The latter occupied the same niche that the Post wants to exploit -- tabloidy coverage, splashy headlines, and a pugilistic approach to competing with the drab LA Times. That Hearst paper died off 36 years ago, ironically after a potential deal with News Corp fell through. (The Press-Telegram is still around, but mainly hyper-local.)

That may be what holds back Soon-Shiong from making too many changes, too. What if the LA Times is Peak Newspaper these days in LA, as consumers mainly look elsewhere for relevant news? The introduction of new competition might just end up cutting a relentlessly small pie into smaller slices rather than expand the market and interest in the medium. One has to think that News Corp would perform due diligence on market potential and see good prospects for expansion, but color me skeptical. Newspapers have not exactly grown more trustworthy in the three-decades-plus of the LA Times' effective monopoly among Angelenos, and any curiosity factor will be short-lived. 

Still, a newspaper war will be fun to watch ... even if it's as short as I expect it to be. At least we can look forward to more fun headlines than the Los Angeles area has seen in decades. Enjoy it while you can, Angelenos!

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