Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the controversial owner of the Los Angeles Times, announced that he will take the newspaper public “over the next year.”
Soon-Shiong made the statement during Monday night’s edition of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart on Comedy Central.
He did not provide additional details regarding the Los Angeles Times’ public offering, but he said that by going public, it would “democratize” the publication, giving the general public a chance at ownership of the newspaper.
“It’s important for the paper to have voices of all,” Soon-Shiong told Stewart.
The Los Angeles Times was purchased by Soon-Shiong in 2018 from Tribune Publishing, formerly Tronc, for $500 million. Under his stewardship, the paper continues to lose money, incurring a $50 million loss in 2024, alongside a 25,000-subscriber decline in recent months.
A significant portion of the subscriber loss has occurred amid a swirl of drama surrounding the storied news operation, with Soon-Shiong adopting an increasingly hands-on approach to the Times’ business over the past two years.
Several of Soon-Shiong’s new initiatives are political, such as his October decision to revoke the paper’s presidential endorsement and his December directive to append a bias meter to the Times’ reporting. In April, the paper introduced a product, powered by artificial intelligence, that generates opposing viewpoints to its opinion columns.
These decisions, combined with the impact of the Pacific Palisades fires on some of its readers, have led to an exodus of both paying subscribers and advertisers.
In response to the declines in revenue, the publisher has resorted to buyouts, budget cuts, and headcount reductions to stem its losses, according to multiple sources.