Murdochs New L.A. Paper Is Making Lots of Noise. But Is Anybody Listening?

To reach the newsroom of L.A.’s newest newspaper, you’ll need to take a walk through New York. Or at least the Fox lot’s version of it — a few blocks of make-believe old-timey Brooklyn lined with brownstone facades, rusty fire escapes and the sort of soot-stained concrete stoops that Slip Mahoney and the rest of The Bowery Boys loitered on between capers.

Almost too perfectly, this is where Rupert Murdoch’s California Post — the conservative media mogul’s attempt at a New York Post-style tabloid for a West Coast readership — has set up shop, on the fourth floor of the backlot’s Building 89, overlooking the one place in L.A. that’s pretending to be Flatbush.

“I have to admit, it feels like home,” says Brooklyn-born Ian Mohr, one of the New York Post editors who moved to L.A. to help start up the paper. “I go downstairs, and it’s like I’m in New York. Only it’s quieter. There’s nobody on the streets.”

Since late January, when its debut edition hit newsstands — well, 7-Eleven counters; there aren’t any newsstands left in L.A. — California Post has been trying like crazy to make some noise, both the old-fashioned way, with eye-popping print headlines, as well as with a battery of daily newsletters. It’s gone after Gov. Gavin Newsom on homelessness, crime, gas prices and a slew of other hot-button issues (the governor’s office responded by dismissing the paper as “The California Comic Book”). It’s taken shots at the mayor (“LA Family Who Lost Everything to Homeless Fire Slam Karen Bass”) and a bunch of other progressive City Hall politicians (or, as the Post calls them, “crazed radicals”). And it’s certainly been all over Hollywood. In fact, the Post’s very first cover story promised to rip the lid off one of the industry’s most-talked-about breakups. No, not Megan Thee Stallion and Klay Thompson, but “The Shocking Truth Behind Director Safdie Brothers’ Mystery Split.”

“Right from the start, we said we want to be disrupters,” says Nick Papps, the longtime Murdoch executive who parachuted in from Australia to become California Post’s editor-in-chief. “The media’s never seen anything like us in California. We have a commitment to common sense, telling people how it really is. A lot of people have private thoughts and don’t express them. We’re making sure we express those thoughts publicly.”

But here’s the thing: After three months of shrieking headlines about “The Secret Socialist Plot to Take Control of Our Police” and red-hot scoops about health code violations at the Peninsula Hotel’s rooftop restaurant, is anybody in California listening?

Somewhere there are numbers that could answer that question — they just aren’t being expressed publicly. Nobody at California Post will say how many print subscriptions have been sold or will reveal any figures about newsletter signups or open rates — or, for that matter, how much the operation is costing Murdoch, who, at 95, is said to be keenly involved in the venture (as is son Lachlan, who, according to friends, sees it as a chance to “plant his flag as boldly as his father once did”).

“Our subscriptions and sales have gone up by many multiples,” is about all one gets from Keith Poole, the former Sun editor who hopped over from London in 2021 to become EIC of the New York Post — and who is one of the guiding hands behind the paper’s expansion. “It’s not insane for us — print media is still a large part of our business, and a successful part,” he goes on, cheerfully noting that the New York Post is “the slowest-declining newspaper in America.”

Of course, you don’t need an expert media analyst to tell you that launching anything involving ink in the current media environment actually is insane — especially in a newspaper killing field like Los Angeles (the Herald Examiner, the Mirror, the Daily News, the Register, the list of the dead goes on and on). Still, here’s one anyway. Former New York Post media columnist Keith Kelly notes: “You know how in America it’s hard now to get people to read? California has always been a trendsetter in that. It’s always been way ahead. Californians weren’t reading in the 1970s.” According to Kelly, “It’s impossible to carve a newspaper market in California. History has shown that it’s doomed to fail.”

And yet, the Murdochs obviously see an opportunity, especially as their only competition in L.A. — the Times — seems to be hanging on by its fingernails, shedding staffers (two of its top sports reporters have defected to the Post) while also staking out editorial positions that have left broad swaths of its readership scratching their heads (like that story a few years ago about how L.A.’s freeways are racist). For the Murdochs, the bet is they can find the same sort of red-meat constituency in places like Huntington Beach — and Beverly Hills — that helped make their New York paper such a smash in Staten Island.

But, of course, L.A. is not New York. For one thing, it doesn’t have much of a subway, which is where tabloids were born to be read. For another, Murdoch’s Posts, even the one being published on the Fox lot, tend to have a distinctively New Yawk attitude. Manhattan’s high and mighty are used to getting dinged on its pages — it’s become a rite of passage. If you can make headlines there, you can make them anywhere. But in L.A., skins, like everything else, are thinner.

After Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress over sexual misconduct allegations, for instance, California Post published a cheeky cover story listing the high-profile entertainment figures who, before the scandal broke, had donated to Swalwell’s campaign for governor. The story — headlined “Partners in Slime” and featuring a doctored photo of the ex-congressman in handcuffs and a prison jumpsuit — might have raised a few eyebrows in New York. But sources tell THR that the reporting about CAA partner Bryan Lourd donating $12,500 set off something of a firestorm at the agency. Imagine how it went over at WME. Ari Emanuel reportedly donated $39,200.

“If you’re a journalist and you don’t want to upset people, you’re in the wrong business,” Papps says, waving away the complaints.

The one part of the paper that’ll have to worry most about hurt celebrity feelings, of course, is Page Six, the Post’s gleefully indiscreet gossip column. Here in California, though, the section’s been given something of an unexpected makeover, moving beyond chronicling celebrity canoodling into serious entertainment journalism. Recent stories have included a deep dive into CAA’s battle with Range and a piece uncovering actually interesting revelations about Swalwell, like that he had a project in development at HBO and had visited the set of The White Lotus (who knew?).

“It’s a little bit different than the traditional Page Six,” says Mohr, the well-regarded entertainment press veteran running the section. “It still has the same DNA, but it’s not just gossip anymore.”

For Mohr and the other reporters fielding calls and chasing leads in Building 89, there are some hopeful signs for the future — the paper is indeed starting to make a little noise. You just have to listen very carefully. “To the extent that the industry has noticed the Post,” one high-level entertainment executive says, “it’s mostly as a nuisance and an annoyance.”

It’s a start.