Rupert Murdoch’s Last Hurrah: Conquering Hollywood With the California Post

Papps previously served as News Corp Australia’s Los Angeles correspondent from 2004 to 2006, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor and the LA Lakers were enduring the breakup of the Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal dynasty.

On a recent fall afternoon, Poole and Papps are in an upbeat mood in the New York Post newsroom. In his corner office on the 10th floor of the News Corp building, between sips of English breakfast tea, Poole reels off the coverage areas the California Post will hammer: criminal justice, big government, burdensome regulations, high taxes, homelessness, mental health.

“They are not really talked about there in any meaningful way by the outlets, in the way that we would do it at least,” Poole says, in a not unsubtle jab at the Los Angeles Times.

Poole has an ambition for the New York Post to be “America’s local paper,” and it became profitabl e, he says, about four years ago. Now the bean counters at News Corp have devised a five-year business plan for the California Post, whose reporters will cover LA, Silicon Valley, and the capital, Sacramento.

Poole says the inspiration for the California Post in part occurred after the January LA wildfires, when he heard from people in LA and across the state who wanted his paper to hold local politicians to account. The Cali Post wouldn’t be the first new media venture born out of some of the most devastating natural disasters to hit the state. Spencer Pratt lost his Pacific Palisades home in the wildfires. The devastating event inspired the episode “Rebuilding After the Palisades Fires” on The Fame Game, a podcast that Pratt cohosts with his wife, Heidi.

While the economics of launching a newspaper in 2026 don’t make much sense (“LA is not a newsstand town,” an LA-based communications consultant tells me. “Everyone drives. I think that’s important.”), LA media observers tell me they view this as an influence play.

You’ve got to have some fun as well,” Papps tells me about his vision for the California Post. “LA is an amazing, amazing city and California is an amazing state.” (You wouldn’t know it from watching some Fox News shows, where prime-time hosts including Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity are vocal critics lambasting California as a liberal failed state.)

Murdoch has entertained the idea of launching a California edition of the Post for years, I’m told. News Corp CEO Robert Tho mson and his chief strategy officer, Anoushka Healy, have also been instrumental in pulling the trigger on an LA version of the New York Post.