What’s his angle? Will the Times now be anti-ACA, etc.?
The announcement Wednesday means that for the first time in 18 years the Times will be under local ownership.
Not many places in the world where a person of Chinese ancestry, born in South Africa, and who had lived and studied in Canada would still be called “local.”
E pluribus unum.
According to his wikipedia entry he’s been in Southern California since 1983–was professor at UCLA 1983-1991.
His medical and business resume is really impressive, but no information on his politics.
Unfortunately, as an example to the other billionaires, I still want him to go bankrupt trying to redo the world into his fevered imagination.
He’s a mixed bag.
In 2008, he supported Giuliani whereas in 2016 he supported Clinton.
He has also supported McCain in Arizona, against challengers from both parties.
I never thought the Washington Post would be worth reading again, but it has been much better since Bezos bought it. Fingers crossed for LA Times.
Also, L.A.
Not sure how that’s a mixed bag. Neo-con neoliberals.
Drink!
I’m trying to remember how flagrantly crazy Giuliani was circa 2008. Certainly he has undergone a dramatic descent into madness (further into madness, if you prefer) over the last decade.
“Was a Republican ten years ago” means I probably disagree with some of his politics, but it doesn’t directly indicate complete whackdoodle-hood.
Not that flagrant then; mostly entitled and vague about policy (9/11 all the time) The flagrantly crazy didn’t take over until he became a has-been.
Giuliani started out on the liberal side of the spectrum. While he was a student at NYU, he volunteered for RFK’s presidential campaign. Immediately after the 1980 election, applying for a DOJ position, he became a Republican. As Mayor of NYC he did make a dent in crime but in almost every other way he was pretty bad at the job — and his 2000 Senate campaign against Clinton was a joke — but then came 9/11, which made him a celebrity on a larger stage.
Until his presidential campaign in 2008, his views on “social issues” such as abortion, gay rights, and gun control were still noticeably to the left of his Republican compatriots. Once he began trying to sell himself to a national Republican audience, however, he was completely intolerable.
I wonder what the reporting will look like on the Great Billionaire Wars of 2032?
It sure would not hurt to have another sane, competent major media voice at the table right now. Fingers also crossed.
ETA: Hmm.
I grew up reading the L.A. Times in it’s heyday under Otis Chandler. It was worthy of 45 minutes a day.
Here, too. I was a journalism student in high school when he took it over, and it had a major impact in the formation of my ideas about what the press should be.
Like you, I was in high school when he took over, although I had no sense of it happening nor would I have appreciated the significance of it had I known. I was just a dumb jock who thought Jim Murray was really a good read and came to discover Jack Smith in the bargain. The Marine Corps, Southeast Asia and the assassinations of MLK and RFK woke me up to the world. I never knew the L.A. Times was a marginal daily. Otis and I arrived at about the same time.
Ah…Reagan strikes again.
I suppose it was because I grew up in the Los Angeles area that our journalism teacher often used the L.A. Times as an example in class and, therefore, discussed things like the influence a change in ownership or editorial staff has on a daily newspaper. I can’t imagine anyone other than a kid studying the news business would have noticed or given it a lot of thought – those were the days when the general public were more trusting of the purveyors of news.