Who Owns the Media in Long Beach
By Kevin Flores
Familiarity with media ownership and funding equips you with a tool to critically evaluate the sources of information you consume. Understanding who pulls the strings can help you identify potential biases, hidden agendas, and vested interests that might impact the news you encounter and consume.
As you delve deeper into the subject, it becomes apparent that media ownership transcends business; it encompasses power and influence as well. Local media doesn’t just report events; it wields the ability to mold public opinion and craft the narrative of the entire city.
And those who control the purse strings of a media outlet have great influence over what stories are told, how they are told, and who tells the m. Simply by allocating resources for one type of coverage over another—say prioritizing stories from the police blotter like property crimes rather than investigating landlord abuses—a media outlet can shape our perception about what is and isn’t a public safety concern. And that can have major repercussions, including where city leaders invest public funds.
In this context, knowing who owns Long Beach’s media takes on a profound significance. Yet, until now, information about Long Beach media ownership has not been gathered and published in one place.
Our hope is that this explainer will improve your ability to scrutinize the narratives pushed—sometimes subtly and sometimes not so much—by local news outlets, catch blind spots in coverage, and demand a more independently owned media.
The Southlander
The Southlander is the only dedicated investigative news cooperative serving Greater Los Angeles. We are a worker-led nonprofit newsroom focused on bringing a critical eye to the region’s slumlords, polluters, politicians, cops, and corporate crooks. Our powerhouse collective of reporters, editors, photographers, and data experts is based in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Orange County.
The Southlander soft launched in the Spring of 2025 and is a result of a merger between FORTHE, Long Beach’s first worker-owned media outlet, and former Knock LA journalists, who were locked out of their newsroom for demanding editorial independence.
The organization is fiscally sponsored by Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project, a nonprofit journalism organization. The fiscal sponsorship agreement extends GroundTruth’s nonprofit status to The Southlander but does not confer ownership or funding.
The Southlander is funded solely by reader subscriptions.
The Long Beach Post
The Post is Long Beach’s biggest newsroom and covers a range of local topics from breaking news to City Hall to high school sports.
The digital publication has gone through various iterations. It was co-founded by former Mayor Robert Garcia and was previously owned by Councilmember Cindy Allen before being sold to local real estate developer John Molina.
In December 2023, the Post reorganized as a nonprofit newsroom under the Long Beach Journalism Initiative, which is its current form today.
The publication is funded by reader donations and grants, as well as sponsorship and advertisement deals with corporations and public agencies.
Among the Post’s major donors and advertisers, which it lists on its website, are the Port of Long Beach, the City of Long Beach, the Downtown Long Beach Alliance, and the California Resources Corporation, which operates hundreds of city-owned oil and gas extraction sites in Long Beach, including the THUMS islands offshore drilling facilities.
The Long Beach Business Journal
The historically pro-business publication was founded in 1987 by George Economides, a former president and CEO of the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce.
John Molina’s Pacific6 via Pacific Community Media, the parent company of the Long Beach Post at the time, purchased the Business Journal from Economides in 2020. The decision to sell the family-run business came after Economides suffered a stroke.
In 2023, ownership of the Business Journal was transferred to the Long Beach Journalism Initiative, the nonprofit that also runs the Long Beach Post.
The Signal Tribune
The Signal Tribune covers news in Long Beach and neighboring Signal Hill, where it’s based.
Millionaire businessman James “Jimmy” Eleopoulos bought the publication in 2018. Eleopoulos, an investor, hotel developer, and restaurant owner, is also the vice president of the Signal Hill Police Foundation, according to the organization’s website. His two restaurants, Big E Pizza and Jimmy E’s Bar + Grill, are also listed as donors of the police foundation.
Eleopoulos has made dozens of donations to Long Beach politicians over the years. Since 2024, Eleopoulos has donated to the City Council campaigns of Vivian Malauulu ($500), Mary Zendejas ($250), and Herlinda Chico ($500), as well to a ballot measure committee controlled by Mayor Rex Richardson ($2,500).
The Long Beach Press-Telegram
The Press-Telegram is owned by vulture hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Based in Manhattan, Alden Global was founded in 2007 by Randall Smith, a former partner at Bear Stearns, the investment bank whose collapse the following year was the first domino to fall in the global financial crisis. This shadowy group of investors has quietly taken over hundreds of local papers in recent years, and, in the process, become the nation’s second largest newspaper operator.
The Atlantic described Alden’s strategy like this: “The model is simple: gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices, and wring out as much cash as possible.”
This is precisely what they’ve done to the Press-Telegram since taking over in 2018.
The city’s oldest continuously operating newspaper, the Press-Telegram is part of the Southern California News Group, which in turn is owned by Alden subsidiary MediaNews Group. The same investors also own the Orange County Register and in July purchased the San Diego Union-Tribune, and, to no one’s surprise, immediately announced layoffs.
Soon after Alden Global took over the Press-Telegram, much of its staff jumped ship to the Long Beach Post, leaving it with a skeleton crew and an ever-shrinking local section. Today, sadly, half of all daily newspapers in the U.S. are controlled by financial firms.
Long Beach Local News
Long Beach Local News (LBLN) primarily publishes videos on breaking news, random aerial shots of the city, copaganda, and advertisements for local businesses.
Alex Chaunt is listed as a managing partner of Long Beach Local News LLC on state business filings. He is also one of the outlet’s executive producers, according to its website. Chaunt, a helicopter pilot, is the co-owner of Anthelion Helicopters, a helicopter-touring-gender-revealing-flight-training business that operates out of the Long Beach Airport.
As a side hustle, Chaunt and LBLN have produced video news releases for the Long Beach Police Department on use-of-force incidents and police shootings, according to city contracts we obtained.
In one instance, the contracts show that Chaunt and LBLN were paid $1,950 by the LBPD to produce a public relations video in which police justified shooting high-velocity, less-lethal munitions at George Floyd protesters in downtown in May 2020. The video was also used to publicly exonerate the department of the injuries inflicted on KPCC reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, who was shot in the neck by one of those munitions. The narrator of the video claims that Guzman-Lopez was hit by “what evidence showed may have been a ricochet round from a less lethal launcher. He was not the intended target.”
And the police narratives produced by Chaunt and his team for the LBPD are sometimes posted straight to LBLN’s social media channels, which have tens of thousands of followers, without an ounce of scrutiny.
Beachcomber News
The Beachcomber Newspaper publishes every other Friday and its unique distribution delivers print editions to East Long Beach. The newspaper’s circulation area encompasses well-off neighborhoods like Naples, Belmont Shore, Los Altos, Park Estates, and El Dorado Park Estates.
Beachcomber operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of Beeler & Associates, a marketing and advertising firm founded by Jay Beeler in 1978. Over the years, Beeler & Associates’ clients have included banks, mortuaries, property management companies, and local politicians.
Beeler, the Beachcomber’s publisher, is a former public relations lecturer at Cal State Long Beach.
The Long Beach Watchdog
The Watchdog was started in 2024 by former staff of the Long Beach Post who left the news outlet after a series of layoffs and labor disputes, including accusations of union busting and wage theft.
The Watchdog is a cooperative corporation and is owned collectively by its worker-owners. The publication is funded through reader donations and advertisements.
The Los Angeles Time
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a biotechnology billionaire, purchased The LA Times from Tronc in 2018 for $500 million.
In the purchase, Soon-Shiong also pocketed the San Diego Union-Tribune and a smattering of small community newspapers. Since then, he's shuttered many of those community newspapers and sold the Union-Tribune to Digital First Media, the subsidiary of Alden Global Capital that also owns the Press-Telegram.
Soon-Shiong, who has met with President Donald Trump on at least three separate occasions since 2016, has pushed the LA Times in a rightward direction. In October 2024, Soon-Shiong squashed a planned presidential endorsement of Kamala Harris by the editorial board. Soon after, he spoke of instituting an AI bias meter and installed MAGA operative Scott Jennings onto the LA Times editorial board.
Soon-Shiong announced that he plans to take the LA Times public during an appearance on The Daily Show on July 21.
The Daily Forty-Niner
The Daily Forty-Niner, the student newspaper at Cal State Long Beach (CSULB), is independently run by students with the help of faculty advisors from the school’s journalism department.
The paper has a business side, which sells ad space in the publication. Funds generated from these sales go directly back into the operation of the paper.
Over time, the paper’s staff, including the editor-in-chief, undergo regular turnover as students graduate or move on to something else. This can impact the newspaper’s editorial stance and coverage priorities from school year to school year.
Random Length News
Random Lengths News, an alternative community newspaper serving the Los Angeles and Long Beach Harbor Area established to fulfill the role of reporting the rights of workers, consumers, and citizens.
RLN is owned by Beacon Light Press LLC, whose owners, according to business filings, are longtime publisher James Preston Allen, Managing Editor Terelle Jerricks, and Graphic Designer Suzanne Matsumiya.
Allen has held the mantle of publisher for more than 40 years.
A San Pedro resident, he describes himself as a “guiding progressive political force in the greater Los Angeles Harbor community.” He has served as both president and vice president of the San Pedro Downtown Business Association and has held the positions of vice-chairman and board member on the Community Redevelopment Agency-LA Community Advisory Committee.
Allen owns a graphic design shop in San Pedro.
Q Voice News
Q Voice News (QVN) covers LGBTQ+ issues in the greater Los Angeles area and is based in Long Beach. The digital publication was co-founded by reporter Phillip Zonkel and marketing professional Treacy Seeley. Zonkel, who was formerly with the Press-Telegram, is the outlet’s publisher and is listed in state business filings as the managing partner of Q Voice Media LLC. Seeley, who’s worked for several tech companies, such as Grindr and MySpace, is QVN’s vice-president of marketing. Both owners, Zonkel and Seeley, are part of the LGBTQ+ community and neither have any other real estate or business interests in Long Beach.
This article is based on a previously published article by Abel Reyes and Kevin Flores and has been updated with new information.