LA Times to be sold to billionaire

The Los Angeles Times, one of the country’s most prominent newspapers whose reporting has exposed municipal corruption, felled local figures and chronicled California’s relentless natural disasters, is being sold to Patrick SoonShiong, a billionaire Los Angeles doctor, for $500 million.

Tronc, the newspaper’s parent company, announced the agreement, which includes the paper’s sister publication, The San Diego Union-Tribune, on Wednesday morning. The deal includes the assumption of $90 million in pension liabilities. It is expected to be completed within three months.

With the sale, The Los Angeles Times would once again come under local ownership, ending nearly two decades of corporate control. It would also represent a significant retreat for Tronc, which entertained national and international ambitions after Michael W. Ferro Jr. became the company’s chairman and biggest shareholder two years ago.

Its decision to sell The Los Angeles Times, its crown jewel, comes after months of turmoil and management turnover at the paper, during which journalists increasingly clashed with Tronc executives and the leaders they had sent to run the paper’s newsroom.

“We are pleased to transition leadership of The Los Angeles Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune to local ownership,” Justin Dearborn, the Tronc chief executive, said in a statement. “We are certain that the journalistic excellence in Southern California will continue long into the future.”