When civic leaders partnered in 2022 with the American Journalism Project to survey the state of Los Angeles media, the findings, said Monica Lozano, were “stark.”
“For the most part, people felt disconnected from the city, didn’t understand how they could keep government accountable, wanted more explanation and context, didn’t feel that their communities were well represented, or if they were represented, that they were misrepresented,” she told TheWrap.
Lozano, the former editor, publisher and CEO of La Opinión serves as board chair of The LA Local, a nonprofit organization that’s raised more than $19 million to fund journalism initiatives. “There was a clear call,” she said, “for a reinvestment in local news.”
What has transpired in Los Angeles is part of the national crisis, as large city dailies once flush with advertising dollars have contracted, while many smaller papers and muckraking alt-weeklies have shuttered or shrunk. The number of news deserts, communities lacking reliable and timely information, climbed from 206 to 213 this year, according to Medill’s latest study, and this phenomenon isn’t relegated to large, rural expanses. In Los Angeles, a major metropolis where Hollywood and Big Tech are covered from all angles, there are communities, or news “islands,” as former Los Angeles Times executive editor Kevin Merida put it, “without coverage to serve them.”
Merida is advising The LA Local as it partners with existing outlets, like Boyle Heights Beat and LA Taco, and stands up new sites serving Koreatown, Pico Union and Westlake and Inglewood and South LA, with the goal of strengthening a thriving news ecosystem.
With nearly 10 million people living in Los Angeles County, there will always be stories untold. Even the Times at its most robust, with a newsroom of roughly 1,200 staffers two decades ago, couldn’t comprehensively cover every community at every moment. But the cutbacks at the Times, and elsewhere, have revealed significant gaps in coverage that journalists and civil leaders are hoping to fill through a variety of models, both for-and-non-profit.
Forbes veteran Scott Woolley is co-founding and editing LAReported, which launches on January 8, and will utilize Substack as its primary distribution model. “Our plan is to publish a small number of deeply reported stories, written as lively and engaging narratives,” he told TheWrap. Woolley expects the outlet, which will rely on freelance writers, to cover housing, affordability, political malfeasance, transportation and public safety policy, as well as “some lighter pieces that don’t deal with such weighty topics but are just damn fun to read.”
Meanwhile, Julia Turner, a former Times executive at top Slate editor, is teaming up with Times alum Julia Wick and former Crooked Media COO Sarah Wick to create a magazine-style digital publication, with an audio component, that’s scheduled to roll out early next year.
And then there’s a bombastic newcomer joining the fray in early 2026: the California Post. Like its right-leaning New York sibling, the tabloid can be expected to dive into local politics and crime, scandal and celebrity, and, according to its editor, Nick Papps, fill holes in local reporting.
“We’re stepping into a news desert to tell the stories that haven’t been told,” Papps told TheWrap. “We will tell the stories that matter. We will tell those stories boldly. We will also bring a common sense approach to all we do, something sorely missing right now from legacy media and from those in power. We will put the people of California first — writing for everyday hard working people who are being ignored by the elites.”
“This is a big task”
Earlier this year, LA Local hired Michele Siqueiros, the longtime president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, as its founding CEO, and the organization has been busy funding reporter positions at regional partners, like Cal Matters and LAist, providing grants, and gearing up for new launches. The organization recently hired several reporters and editors, according to Siqueiros, and is kickstarting daily coverage at news sites, like Koreatown, Pico Union and Westlake, in January.
Both Siqueiros and Lozano cited Boyle Heights Beat, which has been covering Boyle Heights and the Eastside community for 15 years, as a model for hyperlocal news. In some cases, LA Local will fund a standout local site, as the group is doing with Boyle Heights Beat, or expand coverage to “local neighborhoods that are severely underserved,” said Siqueiros. “In a place as large and diverse as LA, where local journalism has been devastated, this is a big task.”
Siqueiros stressed that its critical to have reporters, editors and staff who are connected to the community. “Core to what we are building is a relationship with our audience — we’re not just delivering content, we’re listening to what content they want from us and responding to provide it,” she said. “Our goal is to ensure that people feel heard, seen, and reflected in the information they’re getting from us and that they feel connected and empowered to address the things happening in their community.” That approach is reflected in stories alerting residents where to vote and the reinstatement of a local youth orchestra program.
“If you’re the LA Times, you don’t have enough resources to go neighborhood to neighborhood,” Merida told TheWrap. “The conceit of the LA Local is that we can, in fact, go neighborhood to neighborhood.”
Merida also noted that this approach isn’t exactly new, given that local papers, in more prosperous times, sent reporters out to cover community beats.
“We don’t spend enough quality time in neighborhoods and communities to discover what the story really is, and discover it organically, because the digital era has sped us up and changed our reporting habits,” he said. “In a different newspaper-dominant era of journalism, there were more reporters who worked their beats by just hanging out. We need our profession to be less transactional and more rooted in learned, observed knowledge based on our presence in the communities we cover.”
The LA Local works on a model of collaboration rather than competition, because, according to Lozano, “no one newsroom can have the resources or the breadth to cover a city as large and complex.” But by working in partnership — and with more than 20 local outlets already on board — Lozano believes everyone can thrive. “We create a local news ecosystem that is robust and resilient,” she said.
“I root for all media. I root for journalism,” said Merida. “And I think, in a city like Los Angeles, it’s so vast, so complex, so diverse in a real way, that there’s room for everybody here.”
A Murdoch tabloid goes west
Nick Papps, who, like Rupert Murdoch, was born in Australia, is no stranger to California. He served as News Corp Australia’s Los Angeles correspondent from 2004 to 2006, and told TheWrap that his son was born in the Golden State and the family is happy to return. “To oversee the California Post is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to bring fresh eyes and a new perspective to Californians,” he said.
Murdoch has considered launching a California edition for several years, according to a recent Vanity Fair feature on the 94-year-old mogul’s “last hurrah” to conquer Hollywood. Papps will report to New York Post editor-in-chief Keith Poole, who’ll oversee both papers.
The New York Post has been known to antagonize Democratic politicians (and occasionally Donald Trump), and it wouldn’t be shocking to see the California tabloid hammer Governor and 2028 presidential contender Gavin Newsom or Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — especially on an opinion page led by Breitbart veteran Joel Pollack.
When asked about covering the state from a right-leaning perspective, Papps responded, “The California Post will fearlessly support what is good for the state and its people and we will do so by calling it like we see it: clearly and honestly.”
Not everyone is thrilled about a Murdoch tabloid coming to town. Mariel Garza, a former Times editorials editor who resigned last year in protest to the paper killing an endorsement of Kamala Harris, wrote on her new opinion start-up, Golden State Report, that “publishing GOP-talking points disguised as independent commentary won’t help.”
The California Post is hiring reporters to cover city hall, politics, sports and gossip, with its own Page Six column led by Ian Mohr. “The California Post will maintain the DNA of the New York Post which is bold, direct, fast-moving and fearless journalism,” Papps said. “But we will put a California lens on all we do.”
Papps said the “timing is right” for the California Post given major political events, including a 2026 governor’s race, along with next year’s World Cup, a couple of Super Bowls in the coming years, and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Not to mention, “every day the tech industry, based in our great state, is reshaping the world.”
Tacos and ICE raids
Earlier this year, LA Taco found itself in the national spotlight, gaining widespread recognition for its standout coverage of ICE raids and protests across the city. “We were well-positioned when the siege started, which allowed us to spread our wings and our journalists to get stories out,” said publisher Alex Bloomingdale, who goes by Blazedale on the site.
But getting to this point wasn’t easy. LA Taco, which started in 2006 as a blog covering street food and graffiti, was relaunched as a news site in 2018, an era when Bloomingdale says “there was nothing else out there.” The LA Weekly had been sold the previous year, as LAist was shuttered; the latter returned in 2023 as part of Southern California Public Radio.)
Bloomingdale was forced to furlough staff last year, for a day, when the site couldn’t meet payroll, though news of the LA Taco’s financial troubles drove donations to the site. Bloomingdale said the site has a content partnership with the LA Local, and has raised some money from the organization, but is primarily funded by memberships, starting at $59.95 a year.
The site is now financially stable and has sunk its teeth in a national story with a strong local angle, Bloomingdale said. LA Taco continues to provide sharp and sustained coverage of Trump’s immigration crackdown and how it affects local community. The site has achieved a long-running goal. “We wanted to cover important stories that were grabbing people’s attention,” said Bloomingdate, “which were impactful and meaningful.”
Bloomingdale is hopeful about growth of local media, noting that “all of a sudden there are a lot of new ideas and new things going on.,” adding that “it’s a moment in which you’re seeing “smaller, more nimble organizations out there chasing stories and inspiring each other to do more.
“We’re excited about having a more active media landscape.”
