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.

Millie Giles

WITHDRAWALS

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Bank branches are still closing at breakneck speed in the US

Institutions such as Chase and Wells Fargo closed 76 locations in just six weeks over the summer, per the OCC.

Indianapolis - March 2016: Chase Bank III

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Fox and News Corp slide as investors digest $3.3 billion Murdoch succession settlement

Fox and News Corp shares dropped on Tuesday after Rupert Murdoch’s heirs agreed to a $3.3 billion settlement to resolve a long-running succession drama.

Under the deal, Prudence, Elisabeth, and James Murdoch will each receive about $1.1 billion, paid for in part by Fox selling 16.9 million Class B voting shares and News Corp selling 14.2 million shares. The stock sales will raise roughly $1.37 billion on behalf of the three heirs.

The new trust for Lachlan Murdoch will now control about 36.2% of Fox’s Class B shares and roughly 33.1% of News Corp’s stock, granting him uncontested voting authority over both companies for the next 25 years. Originally, the Murdoch trust was designed to hand over voting control of Fox and News Corp to Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan, and James after his death.

Investors are weighing the trade-off. Clear leadership under Lachlan may resolve conflict internally, but the share dilution, executed at a roughly 4.5% discount, means long-term investors now hold slightly less clout than before.

Both companies’ stocks were trading close to all-time highs prior to the announcement.

385 ✈️ 434

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Boeing on Tuesday announced that it delivered 57 commercial jets in August, its best total for the month in seven years. That brings its year-to-date delivery total to 385 planes, eclipsing its full-year 2024 figure by about 11%.

The August figure marked Boeing’s second-highest delivery total of 2025 and represented a 43% jump from the same month last year. Through August, Boeing has boosted its deliveries by 50% from last year.

The plane maker is still trailing its European rival Airbus, which delivered 61 planes in August and 434 year to date.

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