This is old news but I never heard of it until I saw a tweet saying the LA Times is hiring reporters in Seattle “under new ownership”. I looked up who the new owner is and found this piece:
There’s a bio of the guy in the article. A very interesting fellow. A Chinese boy genius born in South Africa and went to medical school at age 16. Came to LA via Canada and teached at UCLA medical school. Founded and sold a couple biotech firms and is now worth about 8B.
His wife was pretty good looking and became an actress in LA. America is so full of opportunities.
I think he views the LAT buy as a philanthropy, similar to what Bezos did with the Washington Post. Ever since Trump started attacking the media the NYT and WaPo were actually doing very good business. People start to value professional reporting more than some random fake news pieces on facebook.
But just like with book stores, that sand castle is bound to be toppled by the crashing wave. I get the Sunday Chronicle in paper form and frankly because I am so busy I barely get a chance to read it now.
Newspapers don’t have to be in paper form though. In fact for LAT to have national and even international reach they need to ramp up their digital operations.
This guy is an independent, not affiliated with any party and friendly to both parties. LA Times can actually flourish if it can remain neutral politically.
Come on, Singapore government, shouldn’t you be on your knees praying to him and paying him??? My god, the tourist dollars that are their way is going to be huge from now on…