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Soon-Shiong’s Hollywood Summit

Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong welcomed Cheryl Hines and Rob Schneider to the newspaper's offices last month amid talk of a possible partnership.

Author

Oliver Darcy
January 02, 2025

Rob Schneider, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and Cheryl Hines. (Status Illustration/Jerod Harris/Joshua Blanchard/Darren McCollester/Getty Images)

Last month, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong made his way to the newspaper's headquarters for a special meeting. Soon-Shiong, the pharmaceutical billionaire who has turned heads by obnoxiously championing MAGA voices in the wake of Donald Trump's election, arrived at the El Segundo workspace to meet two Hollywood celebrities: Cheryl Hines and Rob Schneider.

Schneider had thought up an idea to create a conservative answer to "The View," ABC's popular daytime program in which a group of hosts discuss the day's news. The actor and comedian, who uses his X account these days to rant against the left and promote MAGA causes, had spoken with Soon-Shiong about possibly partnering on the effort, I'm told. And so Soon-Shiong invited him and Hines to the beleaguered newspaper's offices for…

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The Fourth Estate

The Washington Post building. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Walking From WaPo: The talent exodus continued apace at The Washington Post on Thursday, with star reporter Tyler Pager being the latest to, well, turn the page on the newspaper. Pager will take his talents to The New York Times, where he'll report on the White House from The WaPo’s longtime rival. Of course, Pager's exit comes on the heels of The Atlantic announcing earlier this week that it had poached Ashley Parker and Micahel Scherer. And it follows other top journalists leaving the newspaper, including managing editor Matea Gold and deputy Opinion editor Chuck Lane.

What — if anything – owner Jeff Bezos, publisher Will Lewis, and top editor Matt Murray can do to stop the bleeding is unclear. To be frank…

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