The California Post on Its LA Invasion: ‘We Want to Be Disruptors’ | Exclusive

On an 80-degree day in January, I found myself strolling down a brownstone-dotted New York street — at least it appeared that way. The street, modeled after late 19th-century Lower Manhattan, was built in 1967 for the film adaptation of “Hello, Dolly!” and refurbished during Hollywood’s 2023 strikes, a fitting set for productions seeking Big Apple flavor. Or, in this case, an upstart newspaper aiming to take the “DNA of the New York Post” and filter it through “a California lens,” as California Post editor-in-chief Nick Papps put it to me.

“We’ll have the wit of the New York Post headlines, which is really important to it,” Papps said in his office suite on the Fox lot, the walls littered with framed California-themed New York Post covers. There’s Gov. Gavin Newsom and Kobe Bryant, O.J. Simpson and Paris Hilton — a reflection of the paper’s long-running preoccupations with politics, sports, scandal and celebrity. Papps was dressed in a button-down shirt with his sleeves rolled up, jeans and, ironically, New York-branded socks. (“A parting gift” from his wife, he said, after a stay in New York to prepare for the Post’s launch.)

The newsroom is something of a coastal mash-up, melding the paper’s brash legacy in New York and its aspirations in the West. There’s a cartoony rendering of New York Post founder and former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton overlooking Los Angeles, the Santa Monica Pier reflected in his sunglasses. A sign nearby counts down the days until the paper’s Jan. 26 launch, as neatly dressed reporters hammer out stories for the New York Post’s website until the California edition launches. Newspaper racks hold dummy copies of the forthcoming paper’s print edition.

While the California Post newsroom may have the feel of a quirky start-up, it’s the latest extension of billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire and a test of whether a sibling to the New York Post, the pugnacious tabloid known for pillorying the city’s liberal elite, will find an audience in Democratic-led L.A. There’s no shortage of characters — or villains, depending on your politics – for the California Post to zero in on, including embattled L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Newsom, a vocal Trump antagonist and likely 2028 Democratic contender. An adversarial, populist approach may appeal to disaffected liberals and conservatives alike. 

To Papps, the California Post will provide “the voice of common sense” in the local media market. “By that I mean, ‘What is the everyday person in California [thinking] of this issue?’ And we’ll be talking to them,” he continued. “So it’s not going to be something for a very small sector. It’s clearly a mass market play in everything we’re doing.”

Still, launching a print newspaper, of all things, in 2026, is a risky undertaking. But Rupert and son Lachlan Murdoch, who serves as CEO of Fox Corp and Chairman of Post-owner News Corp, clearly see an opening in L.A.’s dwindling media market. Even as some local media initiatives make headway in the city — and outlets such as this one closely cover Hollywood — the Los Angeles Times, long the dominant force in daily coverage, has faced years of financial strain and staff departures, giving the Post an opportunity to both stock up on local journalistic talent and compete for readers in print and online. Timing is also on the Murdochs’ side, with an L.A. mayoral race, California gubernatorial race and FIFA World Cup playing out in 2026. The L.A. Olympics are also just two years away.

“Los Angeles, in particular, is becoming the center of the universe,” Fred Cook, a professor and the director of the Center for Public Relations at the University of Southern California, told TheWrap. “All eyes are on California. I think that’s an important factor. I’m not sure that the Post is the right media outlet, but there certainly are gaps in the media in this market, it could be filled by someone.”

Building a new newsroom  

Like the elder Murdoch, Papps was born in Australia. But his son, now 19, was born at Cedars-Sinai, and Papps shares fond memories of strolling down Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade with his wife Karen. That’s because Papps served as News Corp. Australia’s L.A. correspondent from 2004-2006. 

“The news cycle has changed,” Papps told me. “What hasn’t changed is, it’s still a great state.”

Of course, there are challenges, as Papps pointed to crime and homelessness as pressing topics for the paper to tackle. The opinion section will be manned by former Breitbart editor Joel Pollak, as TheWrap previously reported, and the paper is close to its goal of hiring 80 to 100 staffers across all its divisions.

Hollywood and sports are the areas where the Post has invested most significantly in growing its teams, luring the New York Post’s Page Six editor Ian Mohr — “a complete legend,” Papps said — out west to launch “Page Six Hollywood.” “ Since then, the gossip column has added star Variety entertainment reporter Tatiana Siegel, Hollywood Reporter veteran Peter Kiefer and former Axios and TheWrap reporter Tim Baysinger.

“They are the best connected, trusted — that’s really important,” Papps said. “They’re people that, over decades, have built up great relationships. So that’s why we’ve got them on board.”

Its sports desk, manned by former Minnesota Star Tribune sports editor Ryan Kostecka, has been especially active in recruiting from the Times. It hired away sports writers Dylan Hernandez and Dodgers beat writer Jack Harris, the hosts of the Times’ only sports podcast “Dodgers Debate,” and last week, veteran sportswriter Ben Bolch said he would join the paper as a senior college sports writer.

The moves have left the Times, which once maintained one of the deepest benches of sports journalists in the nation, with reportedly nine full-time sports staff writers. (A Times spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.)

Papps said he doesn’t “necessarily look at [the Times] as rivals” and spends little time stressed about Penske outlets, such as Variety or the Hollywood Reporter. He noted that the Times and other L.A. media projects have had financial challenges, speculating whether they’ve done enough to connect with their local audiences. “Do I lay awake at night worrying about [the] L.A. Times or other media outlets? No,” he said.

“I’m interested in talent, and if I see the people with talent, then obviously we’re going to be interested in them,” Papps said. “What I worry about is making sure that what we put out digitally and in print is the best journalism that the state’s ever seen. It’s as simple as that.” 

Can the Post make it work?

The California Post is launching on a stronger financial footing than most other startups could dream of, courtesy of News Corp. 

The New York Post has been profitable for the last four years, a spokesperson told me, and News Corp. chief executive Robert Thomson has spoken to the upstart’s ambitions. “Los Angeles and California surely need a daily dose of The Post as an antidote to the jaundiced, jaded journalism that has sadly proliferated,” Thomson said alongside the August announcement. It’s brought its case directly to the city’s residents, posting flyers throughout L.A. that urge people to “live in two states: California and reality” in what a spokesperson said is one of the biggest marketing investments in the Post’s history.

The California Post has a long-term business plan, according to Papps, but he doesn’t have to fixate on profitability as the paper gets off the ground. Papps said he speaks to Poole multiple times a day, but declined to say whether he regularly speaks to Rupert or Lachlan Murdoch, only saying the pair were “the great champions of the media and free speech.” 

“I can’t begin to tell you how fortunate we have been, having the support of News Corp. from the highest levels of the company,” he added.

The New York Post has said its second-largest media market is L.A., and it plans to be in 678 stores for $3.75 an issue throughout L.A. and San Diego at launch before gradually rolling out throughout the state. (A spokesperson said it was too early to tell what its precise annual circulation numbers will be.)

But while New York has roughly 300 newsstands, L.A. has a paltry seven, making newsstands unlikely to be a huge revenue driver. And while both states share a similar composition of Democrats and Republicans (roughly 45% to 23%), Trump lost California by 20 points compared to his 12-point margin in New York, indicating the Post has a robust challenge of trying to find an audience of conservatives eager for its acerbic tone.

“The media contributes enormously to the polarization, along with politicians, and the media are the primary cause of the polarization, and I think the Post thrives on that,” said Cook, the USC director, suggesting the launch will create “more discord in the market than we need right now.”

The California Post will rely on national coverage from its East Coast sibling’s reporters and editors in New York and Washington, leaving its local newsroom to focus on local political figures, such as Bass and Newsom. “Those people, they’re important figures, both those people in our state, and I’m very keen to sit down to interview with them,” Papps said. (Another person on the list is Trump, an avid New York Post fan, though he said he hasn’t spoken to the president.)

One could trace the core of the Post’s political DNA back to 1801, when Hamilton founded the New York Evening Post as a broadsheet meant to counter the rise of the Democratic-Republican Party. Nearly 225 years and various tonal and political shifts in the paper later, I asked Papps how he thinks Hamilton would feel about the Post’s expansion westward.

“Well, I think he’d put on the wayfarers,” Papps said of cartoon Hamilton’s oversized sunglasses.

Papps thinks Hamilton would be proud to see his New York creation go national, bridging the Founding Father’s desire to create a contrarian newspaper in New York to Thomson’s declaration to investors last year that “soon, all will not be quiet on the western front.”

“That is really important to me and to our team,” Papps told me. “We want to be disruptors. We want to challenge status quos. We want to shake things up. We want to put our readers first in digital and print, at all we do, and that, I think, is a pretty important motto — to make some noise.”

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