Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-As if the problems weren’t already bad enough at the LA Times and its parent company Tronc, as of last Friday, the content of both entities could no longer be accessed by nearly 800 million people in Europe, by its own choice, raising the issue of why the Times has been virtually silent on it.
New European privacy regulations known as GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, took effect last Friday. Rather than face the severe financial consequences of mishandling user data, some media companies, including Tronc, pulled out of the European market altogether.
While doing so may have been a wise business decision for Tronc (Google and Facebook were hit with $8.8 billion in GDPR lawsuits on its first day), the Times has been largely silent on its sudden loss of a continent’s worth of readers, other than its burying the lede by republishing a Washington Post article tucked away in its Technology section.
While mostLA Timeswriters are very active on social media, sharing colleagues’ articles with their own followers; telling us about their recent formation of a writer’s guild; exposing race and gender pay inequality at the paper; and touting their role in the recent resignation of USC president Max Nikias, they have essentially gone dark when it comes to plummeting readership and your privacy rights.
Bigger than the issue of why there is no LA Times homegrown story about GDPR’s impact on the paper, is whether the Times was ordered to stay quiet about it by Tronc in order to preserve the sale of the Times and San Diego Union-Tribune to Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. (Recently I wrote that Soon-Shiong appears to be grossly overpaying for both entities.)
Here is why that may be the case…
Each time you go to the Times’ website, it collects personal information about you depending on your device settings and physical location. It also collects content that you may not be aware that you’re sharing, such as your response to “cookies” that it places on your devices, and from articles and advertisements that you click on. Every bit of information that you voluntarily or involuntarily share is available to advertisers, as the Times explains in its media kit:
“The Los Angeles Times delivers proven results with a large portfolio of products, which ultimately allows advertisers to generate more revenue by leveraging our massive reach and tapping into our influential audience.”
But now that the Times’ reach is suddenly not so massive, neither is the already sinking value of Tronc shares, and therefore the value of the entities being sold to Dr. Soon-Shiong. Is the Times caught in a tug-o-war between preserving its value and informing the public, which includes is prospective new owner?
Aside from this business controversy, the Timeshas also yet to address ways that its SoCal readers’ privacy is under-protected compared to Europeans. Wired explains it well.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. Verifiable tips and story ideas can be sent to him at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
