This month Soon-Shiong announced his daily newspaper would provide readers with a “bias meter” next to each news report. If readers do not like the point of view of a story, they “can press a button and get both sides of that exact same story based on that story, and then give comments.”

Newspapers have a long history of idiosyncrasies. In line with Christian Scientists’ preference for spiritual healing, their newspaper the Christian Science Monitor did a poor job of covering medical news during much of its otherwise illustrious history. Col. Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune in the mid-20th century, used his paper to promote alternative spellings such as “thru” for “through” and “iland” for “island.” His “sane spelling” crusade fizzled.

Soon-Shiong’s innovation at the Los Angeles Times, however, is in a class by itself. It is an advertisement not to buy his newspaper. People who subscribe to the Times, the largest newspaper west of the Mississippi River, do so presumably because its reporters make sense of current events. If people don’t believe reporters do that, then why should they buy the newspaper? It is easy to see why many of the newspaper’s accomplished journalists are jumping ship.