The Los Angeles Times will become a publicly traded company, its billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong announced on “The Daily Show.”
“Whether you right, left, Democrat, Republican, you’re an American. So the opportunity for us to provide a paper that is the voices of the people, truly the voices of the people [is important],” Soon-Shiong said. “So I’m going to announce something with you tonight…that we are going to take LA Times public and allow it to be democratized and allow the public to have ownership of this paper.”
Soon-Shiong explained that the shift will happen “over the next year” and that the LA Times is “working through with an organization that’s putting that together right now.”
“Ethics get cloudy if, in fact, the truth is not told,” he added. “Our institutions today, there’s so much distrust. Unless you have truth and trust, those two words, I think we’re not gonna have any healing in the county….I live this American dream. I’m an immigrant here, right? So to me, this is really a wonderful opportunity for us to have the privilege of being an American.”
Soon-Shiong is an L.A.-based surgeon and businessman who invented the cancer drug Abraxane and founded NantWorks, an umbrella company for various healthcare and biotech start-ups. In 2018, he bought both the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune in a deal worth nearly half a billion dollars. He sold the San Diego paper to MediaNews Group in 2023.
Soon-Shiong’s leadership at the Los Angeles Times has proved to be controversial among the staff and subscribers. In 2020, he blocked the editorial board from making an endorsement in the Democratic presidential primary (the paper was set to back Elizabeth Warren) but allowed an endorsement of Joe Biden in the general election. Then, in 2024, as the editorial board was set to throw its support behind Kamala Harris in the general election against Donald Trump, Soon-Shiong blocked the endorsement. His decision led to a wave of subscription cancellations and several resignations in protest from esteemed editors and writers. In the past couple of years, Soon-Shiong has expressed a desire to feature more conservative voices at the Los Angeles Times.
Watch the entire conversation below.
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