Who Owns the Media in Long Beach

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Did you know the two largest media outlets in Long Beach are owned by investment firms? Or that some of our local media owners have financial ties to the police?

Familiarity with media ownership equips you with a tool to critically evaluate the sources of information you consume, facilitating the identification of 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 and how they are told. Simply by allocating resources for one type of coverage over another—say privileging 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 blindspots in coverage, and demand a more independently owned media.

The Long Beach Post 

(UPDATE: On Dec. 7, the Post announced that they were reorganizing as a nonprofit newsroom and cutting ties with John Molina and Pacific6.)

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 publication’s primary investor is John C. Molina, a local real estate developer and venture capitalist worth a quarter billion dollars (at least according to a 2018 divorce filing). Molina is the CEO of Pacific Community Media LLC, the company that legally owns the publication, which is a subsidiary of Pacific6 Enterprises, Molina’s investment firm.

Pacific6 owns two historic multi-million dollar high rises in downtown Long Beach: the Breakers Hotel, which is still undergoing renovations, and the Ocean Center Apartments, where studios rent for $3,150 a month, according to an advertisement in the Post.

The Post maintains that “though Pacific6 helps to guide financial sustainability and strategic vision for Pacific Community Media, the company does not have a say in news and editorial decisions or coverage.”

Molina also has a stake in Community Hospital, a public property until last year when he and several business partners obtained it from the city at a massively discounted price as a result of a controversial lease-to-own agreement approved by the City Council. Molina also has his hands in the single-family home business: Davmar Homes LLC, another of his companies, flips residential properties in and around Long Beach.

Molina, a former chief financial officer and board member of Molina Healthcare, is still a shareholder of the company that bears his family’s name. The health insurance firm is headquartered in downtown Long Beach.

A Long Beach resident, Molina has used his fortune to donate tens of thousands of dollars to support local ballot measures and political candidates, typically incumbents. One of those political donations was a $2,500 contribution to the Committee for a Safe and Strong Long Beach in 2021. The independent expenditure committee had heavy backing from the police union and sent out mailers crudely equating defund protestors to arsonists as a weird attack on then-mayoral candidate Rex Richardson.

To their credit, the Long Beach Post reported on the political committee and disclosed Molina’s donation.

“As a local business owner, philanthropist and community investor, John Molina has financial, political and personal investments that intersect with the Long Beach Post’s work covering the city,” the Post states on their website, adding that their “ethical framework provides the necessary separation to maintain the public’s trust.”

The Long Beach Business Journal

In 2020, Molina’s Pacific6 via Pacific Community Media, the parent company of the Long Beach Post, purchased the Business Journal from its founder George Economides.

The historically pro-business publication had been under the ownership of Economides, a former president and CEO of the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, since its founding in 1987. The decision to sell the family-run business came after Economides suffered a stroke in March 2019. 

On Feb. 4, 2020, ownership of the Business Journal was officially assumed by Pacific6.

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 nonprofit’s most recent tax disclosures (though the cops misspelled his last name). His two restaurants, Big E Pizza and Jimmy E’s Bar + Grill, are listed as donors on the police foundation’s website.

Eleopoulos’ is the CEO of Jenna Development, which recently completed the construction of a $10 million Hilton-branded hotel complex on the Carlsbad-Oceanside border. The 426-room Inns at Buena Vista Creek is currently owned and operated by companies controlled by Eleopoulos, according to state business filings.

Eleopoulos has also been in business with fellow media owner and hotel developer John Molina. Both were major investors in Advanced Environmental Group (AEG), a company that promised to deploy special technology into the Port of Long Beach to clean up air pollution, but which ended up defaulting on $70 million of debt, according to bankruptcy filings. The financial fiasco was reported in the Molina-owned Long Beach Post, though Eleopoulos was not identified as the Tribune’s owner in the article. In an attempt to recoup some of their investments, Eleopoulos’ Golo, LLC and Molina’s Pacific6 Environmental, LLC picked the bones of AEG in a court-ordered liquidation of the fallen company’s assets.

Eleopoulos has also made dozens of donations to Long Beach politicians over the years. Recently, Eleopoulos, and three members of his family, combined to donate a total of $6,300 to Suzie Price’s failed 2022 mayoral campaign.

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. 

VoiceWaves

VoiceWaves is a youth-led journalism initiative in Long Beach overseen by the nonprofit Youth Leadership Institute (YLI). The program enables youth aged 15 to 25 to develop proficiency in reporting, writing, and crafting digital journalism content.

The project’s origins trace back to its launch by New America Media in 2011, which subsequently became a pivotal component of an expanding network of youth media centers across the state, collectively recognized as YouthWire. VoiceWaves has been sustained by funding from The California Endowment, which initially funded the program through its Building Healthy Communities initiative, as well as through individual donations.

FORTHE

FORTHE is a not-for-profit digital media platform that serves Long Beach. The organization was founded in 2018 and is collectively owned and operated by its volunteer editors: Erin Foley, Kevin Flores, Shay Sharan, Jas Navarro, and Andrew Carroll, none of whom have any other business interests in Long Beach. And they certainly don’t sit on any police charity boards.

The organization is fiscally sponsored by the nonprofit Independent Arts & Media (IAM), which provides fundraising, accounting, and professional development services for a range of artists, journalists, and media producers. The fiscal sponsorship agreement extends IAM’s nonprofit status to FORTHE but does not confer ownership.

FORTHE is solely funded through reader donations and grants. The media organization does not run advertisements nor is it backed by wealthy investors. FORTHE discloses all donors who give a total of $1,000 or more per year on its website and does not accept anonymous donations or donations from politically affiliated groups.

The purpose of the project is to fill gaps in the local media ecosystem by providing a platform for investigative journalism, arts coverage, and perspectives from communities historically underrepresented by the press.

Decisions about the operation of the organization are made by its volunteer editors through a democratic process. It is the only local media outlet in the city wholly owned and controlled by an independent editorial collective.

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 was updated on Dec. 11 to reflect the Long Beach Post’s announcement that it was reorganizing as a nonprofit organization and to add a section on Q Voice News.

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