Oh, hell no!
That was my first thought when I heard months ago that Rupert Murdoch’s media empire was expanding to Los Angeles next year with a West Coast version of the New York Post. Just what the state needs, I thought, another news outlet owned by a billionaire buddy of President Trump. (Apparently they are back on dining-at-the-White-House terms, despite the $10 billion lawsuit.)
At the time I was in the early planning stages of what would become Golden State with Paul Thornton, my former colleague at the Los Angeles Times. We both left the paper to escape the machinations of the billionaire whose ham-handed meddling in editorial decisions had driven away loyal readers and undermined the credibility of his own newsroom. And the news of the impending launch of the California Post lit the fire under my, ah, keyboard to turn the idea for Golden State into a reality.
Look, there’s plenty of room for new outlets in the media void that Los Angeles has become in recent years. And I would love to see a cheeky tabloid in L.A. A modern version of Mayor Sam’s Sister City blog – IYKYK – with its biting, gossipy and well-informed swipes at City Hall? Yes, please!
And Los Angeles has had a large conservative base that has been underserved for years, if not decades, ever since the L.A. Times Opinion section morphed into a reliably liberal voice and the relatively more-conservative Los Angeles Daily News was folded in to the vast Southern California News Group empire. (Full disclosure: I was the final editorial page editor of the LADN’s standalone era.)
Californians and Angelenos may have shifted hard to the left over the last two decades, but there are more than a million registered Republicans in L.A. County. Statewide there are 5.8 million — more than in most GOP-controlled states.
But I can’t help but wonder about the Murdoch family’s motive for making such a huge investment; printing newspapers is not cheap. Why now? Is it simply a move on the L.A. Times, weakened as it is by the owner’s self-inflicted wounds? Or is there some larger agenda at play? Such as an attempt to derail the Gov. Gavin Newsom presidential train before it reaches cruising speed? Newsom does appear to be a particular item of disdain for the newly named California Post opinion editor, Joel Pollak.
The California Post is getting a lot of media buzz right now, such as in this fawning piece in Vanity Fair. But what the reports don’t explain is whether the West Coast paper will be anything more than a N.Y Post clone, with the usual uninformed commentary that’s the staple of out-of-town outlets that fundamentally misunderstand the nuances of California’s history, politics and culture. It’s what my colleague calls the California Derangement Syndrome (looking at you, Washington Post editorial board), and social media is already awash in it.
There’s so much going on in this city and state that truly deserves to be called out, challenged and, yes, ridiculed with smart and well-reported criticism, and not nearly enough people doing it. Publishing GOP talking points disguised as independent commentary won’t help.
