Yesterday, after months of speculation, the
LA Times appointed its next executive editor. The paper has given the job to Kevin Merida, the editor in chief of
The Undefeated, an arm of ESPN that reports on the intersection of sports, race, and culture; prior to working there, he spent twenty-two years at the
Washington Post, including as a managing editor, and also worked as a reporter at the
Dallas Morning News and
Milwaukee Journal. Merida, who is Black, will be just the third top editor of color in the history of the
LA Times; his hiring follows a public promise that Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner, made last year to diversify the paper’s ranks. Merida will be tasked with growing the paper’s digital-subscriber base, which currently lags those of bigger rivals, as well as its own goals. “I see nothing but opportunity,” he told Meg James, an
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Media executives often extol the importance of reaching Spanish-language audiences, and if a flurry of recent investments and deals is any indication, Latino and Hispanic viewers are becoming a key part of the streaming wars.
Netflix is spending $200 million to produce content in Mexico this year, an amount expected to increase in 2021, and has also invested significantly in Spain. Disney, which launched Disney+ in Latin America in November, has said it plans to make 70 original programs for the region. WarnerMedia will be investing heavily in Latin American markets with HBO Max.
Patrick Soon-Shiong may be the most important newspaper owner in the country after Jeff Bezos of The Washington Post. So Monday’s announcement that the next executive editor of the Los Angeles Times will be Kevin Merida of ESPN was significant as much for what it says about Soon-Shiong’s commitment to the paper as it does about Merida’s own considerable abilities. Given the Times’ size, influence and unrealized potential, its fate is crucial to the journalistic ecosystem.
It was just a few months ago that Lukas I. Alpert of The Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell: Soon-Shiong, a billionaire surgeon who bought the Times in 2018, was looking to get out. Soon-Shiong denied it, but actions speak louder than words and now he has acted. The fact that he could recruit someone who is regarded as the best free-agent editor out there suggests he was able to reassure Merida about stability in the owner’s suite. The Times itself, in a story by Meg James, puts it this way:
Oscars 2021 snubbed movie theaters in an hour of need
By not calling audiences to action for traditional moviegoing, the Oscars snubbed struggling theaters in a time of need.
(Nicole Vas / Los Angeles Times)
April 27, 2021 6 AM PT
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As the cinematic experience mounts a tenuous recovery more than a year into the pandemic, one might think that Hollywood’s brightest stars, basking in Oscar glory, would have taken the opportunity to call audiences back to film’s natural home: the big screen.
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