The LA Times’ owner wants to take the struggling newspaper public again

Subscribers, circulation, and staff numbers all slumped at the paper last year.

7/23/25 5:34AM

Having reportedly lost $50 million, laid off more than 20% of its newsroom, and shed some 26% of its daily print readers last year, billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s announcement that he plans to take the Los Angeles Times public “over the next year” came as a bit of a shock to some on Monday’s “The Daily Show.”

Jon Stewart and his studio audience cheered the news from Soon-Shiong, who made his money in pharmaceuticals and bought the paper for $500 million in 2018. However, whether investors will share that enthusiasm about the company — where internal tensions have bubbled recently and finances have been shaky for even longer — remains to be seen.

It is, as you might expect, a tough time to be running a newspaper that still depends on its print business.

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Per February figures from industry publication Press Gazette, the 25 largest newspapers audited in the US last year saw daily print circulation slip 12.7% on average in the six months through September, with the Los Angeles Times seeing the biggest drop of the lot. Daily print circulation for Soon-Shiong’s paper dropped some 25% from the same period in 2023.

Not one publication posted increasing print circulation compared to the year before, however, with Press Gazette reporting that there isn’t a single US newspaper with a daily average circulation exceeding 500,000 anymore, after The Wall Street Journal slipped by more than 81,000 copies.

Unlike The New York Times, the LA Times doesn’t have a gargantuan games or cooking side hustle to fall back on, and it didn’t even break the top 50 most visited English-language news websites in May, according to Similarweb data via Press Gazette.

There has been much ink spilled (mostly online, naturally) about the death of print newspapers, and it doesn’t seem like the LA Times is any exception, despite the buzz it got on a late-night talk show — another media mainstay in slow decline.

Max Knoblauch10/24/25

Premium seats help push airlines higher following third-quarter results

Shares of American Airlines are climbing toward the carrier’s best trading day since August 12, when ultra-budget rival Spirit issued its initial warning about its ability to survive. American’s shares are up more than 7% on Friday afternoon.

Investors’ optimism comes a day after American posted a better-than-expected full-year earnings forecast. In a call with investors, American said that it’s ramping up its premium cabin offerings.

“Our ability to grow capacity in premium markets will be further supported as we take delivery of new aircraft and reconfigure our existing fleet. These efforts will allow us to grow our premium seats at nearly two times the rate of main cabin seats,” CEO Robert Isom said. American CFO Devin May said that nose-to-tail retrofits of certain wide-body jets will bump the number of premium seats available on those planes by 25%.

Extra legroom has been a boon for major carriers, particularly this quarter. Delta Air Lines said its premium product revenue grew 9% in Q3, compared to a 4% drop in economy seat revenue. Similarly, United Airlines said its premium revenue grew 6%, outpacing economy. Shares of both airlines were up more than 3% on Friday.

Carriers with less exposure to first- and business-class tickets like Southwest Airlines and JetBlue didn’t see the same amount of momentum on the day.