Biography & Early Wealth Journey

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Dr. Soon-Shiong branched out from the biotech business in 2018, buying The Los Angeles Times for $500 million. Like Bezos, he's since gotten a firsthand lesson in the harsh realities of the journalism business, with estimated losses last year falling somewhere between $30 million and $40 million. As with the Post, jobs have been cut as well, and a one-day strike was called by the Los Angeles Times Guild in response. A spokesperson for Dr. Soon-Shiong admitted to "a significant gap between revenue and expenses" in an email to the press and cited "tens of millions of dollars" every year invested by the Soon-Shiong family.

Finally, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff has had a similar experience since buying Time magazine for $190 million in 2018. The magazine lost a reported $20 million over the course of 2023, and is said to be weighing cost-cutting measures of its own. But Benioff painted a sunnier picture in his press statement, alluding to the magazine's new CEO and its recent decision to name Taylor Swift its Person of the Year:

Primary Income Streams & Multi-Million Contracts

"We are fortunate to have an amazing new C.E.O., Jessica Sibley, and she has done an incredible job restructuring the company over the last year. We have never had a bigger year, including Taylor Swift, driven by Jessica's vision for the company."

Billionaire owners of news organizations aren't always doomed to perpetual losses, though. Red Sox owner John W. Henry has owned The Boston Globe since 2013, when he bought it off The New York Times Company for $70 million, and it's reported to have been profitable for the last several years. But there are clearly better ways than newspapers and magazines to make money if that's the primary goal.

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