Patrick Soon-Shiong plans to take the Los Angeles Times public over the next year, the billionaire owner told Jon Stewart on Monday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The newspaper has been under his stewardship since 2018, when his Nant Capital investment vehicle purchased it in a\u00a0$500 million deal<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n South Africa-born Soon-Shiong helped steady the business after a clash between its editorial staff and the previous owners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If an initial public offering goes ahead, the LA Times would join former parent Tribune Publishing Co. and The New York Times Co. among the largest publicly traded news organizations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It would give investors a chance to own a piece of one of the oldest and largest media outlets in California, the richest US state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ll allow it to be democratized and allow the public to have ownership of this paper,\u201d Soon-Shiong said on\u00a0The Daily Show<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUnless you have truth and trust, I think we\u2019re not going to have healing in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before acquiring the LA Times, Soon-Shiong built his fortune in pharmaceuticals, and he discussed his work on cancer research during the Monday interview. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He said it\u2019s important for the US to have a trustworthy source of news \u2014 for both sides of the political divide \u2014 and therefore wanted to allow Americans the ability to own it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He did not elaborate on a timeline beyond saying it should happen over the next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like other traditional media organizations, the LA Times has in recent years\u00a0struggled<\/a>\u00a0with an advertising and readership downturn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Soon-Shiong, like fellow billionaire owner Jeff Bezos did\u00a0with the Washington Post<\/a>, blocked his newspaper from publishing an endorsement in the 2024 US presidential election, leading some of his editors to\u00a0resign in protest<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Patrick Soon-Shiong plans to take the Los Angeles Times public over the next year, the billionaire owner told Jon Stewart on Monday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":810176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5554],"tags":[23182],"class_list":["post-832382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-la-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":832383,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832382\/revisions\/832383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}