"I'm Drawn to Underdogs": Kevin Merida Wants to Reinvent the L.A. Times

Of all the major newspapers in America, or at least the ones that still exist, the Los Angeles Times has weathered more abuse than most. During the dark early days of the print-media apocalypse, the Chandler dynasty’s pride and joy was brought to the brink by a revolving door of nightmare bosses. (A former Times journalist once described them to me as “an unbelievable string of assholes.”) Hope was restored with the arrival in 2018 of the paper’s latest owner, the billionaire doctor, bioscientist, and medical entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, who now runs the Times with his wife, Michele Chan, and daughter, Nika Soon-Shiong. But still, three years after the Soon-Shiong family’s nearly $500 million deal to acquire the Times, it’s not entirely clear whether the paper’s future looks brighter than its tortured past.