LA.com’s New Owners Ready “Portal” For Los Angeles News and Events, Plus a Pricey email address for only $99.
by Domain Buddha
After years of just sitting in the ownership bin of the Tribune-Tronc crew, LA.com has been sold and is ready to launch under new ownership. The purchase price was not revealed, but it was listed for sale for 5 million. I said at the time that was a fair price, although the head Tronc had paid one million for it a few years before. He was intending to link it to the Los Angeles Times, but things went wild for the Troncs, and they sold the Times and the San Diego Tribune to another rich guy in the Medical business. Only they didn’t mention LA.com, or he didn’t want it. Big mistake.
So now LA.com has a new owner. Who is it? Not announced yet. Elon Musk? Probably not, he’s chasing the little bluebird. I would have guessed Eli Broad, who had at least a passing interest in owning the Los Angeles Times at one point. He passed away last year, so we can rule him out, unless he’s running it from the spirit world. Any clues? Not much. The logo for the new email service looks kind of like a sports patch, like a baseball patch for the St. Louis Cardinals. Hmm, a whole new dimension could be around the corner. Could the new owner be a rich retired sports guy?
The new site is billed as a “Portal”, with a focus on local news and events. That sounds like PR talk for a site that will flood out corporate news releases and put an event calendar full of happy-talk wine and cheese meet-ups and lectures on metaphysics and woke-ism.
The main push right now is for all of Los Angeles elitists and Hollywood high-lifers to pop for the exclusive $99 per year for your new, very “in”, very cool, email address: like “[email protected]” for example. If you act now, you can get it for half price. (Even Hollywood folks like a bargain once in a while).
But who cares that much about email? Everyone is now on their phones, messaging or using signal. Email is fading. Everybody has an address, but so does the post office. Who writes and mails a letter anymore? Not many folks compared to how many are using their iphones for messages. I’m not saying email is dead yet, but it is not what it was. The phone is the thing. Is this a grand old time to launch an elitist email service? G-mail, Outlook, and many others are free. Is it an “ad-free” service? No details were posted on LA.com. With the economy turning down and raging inflation, is the bottom 99% going to blow about a hundred bucks a year for an email address? How does the new owner expect to make back his 5 million purchase price by selling an expensive email service? And then there was the big London email and phone scandal a few years ago, but I digress. The important thing about email is privacy and security, meaning no snooping by anyone.
The big picture is that LA.com could become the go-to site for big news, scandals, Hollywood, entertainment, etc. A big city tabloid on your phone (or ipad or computer). The trend is that the new powerful phones are what folks are using. Even laptop use is somewhat fading.
Stay tuned for more information on LA.com. Hope it’s not going to be a cross between the old L.A. Weakly during it’s last 5 days and Friday’s Calendar section from the El Segundo Woke News. We don’t need that great name to be wasted on a Portal to Ho-Hum land.