LOS ANGELES — Aiming to shake up the Golden State’s media landscape, the California Post launched Monday with a new tabloid newspaper and news site that brings a brash, cheeky and conservative-friendly fixture of the Big Apple to the West Coast.
The New York Post’s Los Angeles outpost will be “digital first” — with social media accounts and video and audio pieces — but for $3.75 readers can also purchase a daily print publication that will include the newspaper’s famously splashy front-page headlines. Perhaps most memorable: 1983’s “Headless Body in a Topless Bar.”
“The most iconic thing about the New York Post and now the California Post is that front page,” said Nick Papps, editor-in-chief of the L.A. newsroom. “It has a unique intelligence, and that’s our calling card, if you like.”
Monday’s inaugural edition goes straight to Hollywood during awards season with a full-page headline: “Oscar Wilde – The Shocking Truth Behind the Secret Split of Director Safdie Brothers.”
Papps refused last week to reveal what stories its correspondents were pursuing and what bombs political columnists would drop in its first edition. But he promised that the growing staff of between 80 and 100 will focus on issues important to “everyday, hard-working” Californians, including homelessness, affordability, technology and “law and order.”
Of course, the Post’s notorious gossip column will get a Tinseltown edition, Page Six Hollywood, which will keep a sharp eye on red carpet and celebrity culture. And sports fans can expect extensive coverage of the state’s major league teams, as well as the upcoming World Cup and Olympic games in Los Angeles, Papps said.
“It doesn’t matter what your politics are, sports is a big connection,” he said.
Adding another title to Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, The California Post will draw inspiration from and build on the national coverage of the venerable New York paper, known for its relentless and oblique approach to reporting and its comfort with sensationalist or incendiary subject matter.
Robert Thomson, chief executive of Post corporate parent News Corp., said in a statement last year announcing the move, “There is no doubt that the Post will play an important role in engaging and enlightening readers who are hungry for serious reporting and simple wit.” In typically scathing Post fashion, he described California as suffering from “jaundiced, tired journalism.”
The California Post can exert influence with its combative style and conservative stance, said Gabriel Kahn, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, who added, “Our statewide press is as boring as bathwater,” especially when it comes to politics. He expects a key target to be Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who has potential presidential aspirations and has become a Republican boogeyman.
Readers shouldn’t assume that the new publication will be known for breaking big stories through old-fashioned journalism, Kahn said.
“There’s something very clever about the way tabloids present news that works really well on social media,” he said. “This could be entertaining.”
Kahn does not expect California Post to make a profit. He explains that the New York Post is not a big money-maker for News Corp., but rather serves another purpose, which is to “defeat its enemies” and curry favor with those in power on the right.
Nonetheless, the corporation’s New York Post Media Group, which includes numerous media properties, is a player in both local and national politics. It regularly highlights culture-war pressure points, and has broken political stories like the Hunter Biden laptop saga. The Post has one avid reader in President Donald Trump, who gave an interview to its “Pod Force One” podcast last summer.
No matter how bold its intentions, this venture is being launched in a turbulent environment for the news business, especially print papers. There are more than 3,200 of them closed across the country Since 2005, according to data kept by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. The online world gave rise to new information sources and influencers, changed the tastes and habits of news consumers, and overturned the advertising market on which newspapers had relied.
California, with a population of about 40 million, still has dozens of newspapers, including dailies in and around Los Angeles and other major cities. But the country’s second most populous city has not had a dedicated tabloid focused on regional issues in recent memory. Meanwhile, there have been major layoffs at respected institutions like the Los Angeles Times.
Ted Johnson, Deadline’s media and politics editor in Washington, D.C., who spent 28 years reporting in Los Angeles, said the launch of a paper edition of the Post “defies logic” as news outlets in major metro areas are rapidly reducing their print footprint.
“But Rupert Murdoch, his first love is print,” Johnson said.
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