• by Ray Schultz , Yesterday

Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, has announced plans to make a public offering.

“We think over the next year we will,” Soon-Shiong said during an appearance with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. “I’m working through [that] with an organization that’s putting that together right now.” 

Such a move would allow the Times “to be democratized and allow the public to have ownership of this paper,” Soon-Shiong said. 

“Whether you’re right, left, Democrat, Republican, you’re an American,” he added. “So the opportunity for us to provide a paper that is the voices of the people, truly the voices of the people” is important.”

This follows a rough year for the Times. 

In February, the paper offered voluntary buyouts to staff. At that time, Soon-Shiong said “the economic landscape of the media industry continues to be extremely challenging,” according to The New York Post. He added, “The difficult financial situation faced by the Times requires us to remain diligent in managing costs.”

And in May, the Times reportedly laid off over a dozen employees. 

Critics argue that circulation and advertising losses were caused by Soon-Shiong’s killing of a planned editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris last year. In any event, the Times has received its share of negative publicity. 

The Washington Post took a similar action, and has also suffered circulation losses. But many publications have experienced layoffs and revenue losses for industry wide reasons.