The news business faces a reckoning in 2024

A new report saying billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong has sunk hundreds of millions of his own money into an unprofitable Los Angeles Times underscores how desperate the news industry is to chart a plan for survival in the digital era. If billionaire owners can't make the L.A. Times or the Washington Post profitable, then the news industry has to ask itself: What can? Every news company is trying to dig out of this hole — even ones that are still minting money. That includes CNN, where new CEO Mark Thompson unveiled his strategy in a memo that carried the rallying cry: "We need to organize around the future not the past. We need to recapture some of the swagger and innovation of the early CNN." Thompson acknowledged that CNN is now a tenured incumbent, saying "Like so many other news players with a broadcast heritage, CNN's linear services and even its website can sometimes have an old-fashioned and unadventurous feel as if the world has changed and they haven't."