The owner of the Los Angeles Times on saving the newspaper.
The Los Angeles Times may launch an AI-powered “displacement meter” as early as January, amid the latest shakeup as the paper’s owner tries to change the format of the outlet.
LA Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong announced the upcoming AI feature Wednesday in an interview with the conservative columnist and newly appointed member of the Times editorial board Scott Jennings on “The Mike Gallagher Show,” which Jennings was guest hosting.
“Whether it’s news or opinion—rather opinion or votes—you have a bias meter so that someone can tell by reading it that the source of the article has some level of bias,” Sun-Shiong, billionaire tech entrepreneur and Ph.D. which bought the Times in 2018, – said Wednesday.
He added that readers can then “press a button and get both sides of the same story based on that story and then leave comments.”
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire who made his fortune in the medical industry, purchased The Los Angeles Times in 2018. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
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The announcement came as Sun-Shing vowed to overhaul the paper, which he said would “combine news and opinion”.
“If it’s news, it should just be facts, period,” Sun-Shiong said.Fox News @ Night” host Trace Gallagher last month, adding that he wanted the paper to be more than an “echo chamber”.
Although the features of the “displacement meter” are few, Sun-Shiong expressed hope that it will be launched by January.
“So we’re talking about a confluence of journalist-generated content and technologies that you’re developing that will give readers a more comprehensive or complete view of any story at any time?” Jennings asked.
“That’s right,” Soon-Shiong said, pointing to X as an example of the discourse he hopes to foster at the Times.
On X, “the commentary is important, as is the story sometimes, because you get a sense of what people are thinking,” he said. “You could have a conversation, a discourse, a respectful disagreement, and that’s what I want to evoke here.”
Soon-Shiong has promised to overhaul the Times, which he says “brings news and thought together.” (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
Some of the paper’s liberal staff did not welcome Sun-xiong’s overhaul.
Three editions board members resigned after Soon-Shiong decided that the newspaper would not support a candidate in the 2024 presidential race.
The Times editorial board endorsed presidential candidates from the 1880s to 1972 and resumed the practice in 2008 with the endorsement of then-Sen. Barack Obama. Since 2008, the newspaper has supported only Democratic presidential candidates and was supposed to support Vice President Kamala Harris as well.
Soon-Shiong also addressed the dust over Wednesday’s rejection.
“I started to see that it was an echo chamber, not a reliable source,” he said of his editorial team. “When the editorial staff and editorial board of my next level informed me that they had prepared a preliminary endorsement without meeting any of the candidates, I was a little outraged and felt that everything they were going to say had to be based on facts.”
Soon-Shiong announced last week that Jennings, a former aide to President George W. Bush and a CNN commentator, would join the Times editorial board as part of an effort to make the paper more balanced. Jennings often garners attention online for his televised debates with liberal CNN colleagues.
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Jennings praised Sun-Shiong’s reconstruction of the newspaper message on X.
“Roughly half (or more) of the country often feels that the outdated media doesn’t care what they think and has little interest in fairly representing their views and values. I plan to represent those Americans who feel they are often ignored or even ridiculed as older speakers,” Jennings wrote.
Fox News Digital’s David Rutz contributed to this report.
