News Corp’s California Post sets sail on 26 January

LOS ANGELES: Boom. Rupert Murdoch is back, this time with a surfboard. News Corp’s much-trailed California Post will hit stands and screens on 26 January, pitching itself as a loud, brash antidote to what it calls California’s jaded legacy media.

Launching in both digital and print, the seven-days-a-week title will run out of a newsroom planted firmly on the Fox studio lot in Century City. Hollywood gloss, newsroom grit.

“26 January is our moment,” wrote NYP Media Group editor-in-chief Keith Poole and California Post editor-in-chief Nick Papps in a memo to staff. The paper, they said, would be “setting the agenda, entertaining and disrupting the status quo.” Subtle it is not.

The California Post is an audacious west coast wager by News Corp, controlled by Lachlan Murdoch, with Rupert still hovering, and steered by chief executive Robert Thomson. The aim is simple: bottle the New York Post’s populist fizz and uncork it in liberal California — politics-baiting, celebrity-stalking and sports-mad, with a local spin.

Expect plenty of heat for the political class, a heavy dose of boots-on-the-ground reporting, wall-to-wall sports, and a Hollywood gossip column styled as a Pacific Coast cousin of Page Six, led by Ian Mohr.

Papps is clear about the target audience. “We will be proudly representing the values of everyday hard-working Californians,” he said. “Not the elites, the powerful or the corrupt.” The reaction so far, he claims, has been “so positive,” tapping into frustration with what he calls tired legacy media. “People want change,” he said. “That change starts on 26 January.”

News Corp first flagged its California push last summer, taking open aim at the Los Angeles Times and other local titles. Thomson was characteristically blunt. Los Angeles, he said then, needed “a daily dose of The Post” as an antidote to “jaundiced, jaded journalism”, promising serious reporting served with “puckish wit.”

The timing suits the drama. California is heading into a bumper year of politics and sport, from mayoral and gubernatorial battles to the Super Bowl, the Soccer World Cup and the Dodgers defending their World Series crown. The Post wants a front-row seat — and a megaphone.

Whether California embraces Murdoch’s latest import or swats it away remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: on 26 January, the Golden State is getting a new noise-maker. Love it or loathe it, the California Post is coming in loud.