LA Weekly - History

History

According to their website, "LA Weekly has been the premier source for award-winning coverage of Los Angeles music, arts, film, theater, culture, concerts, events." The LA Weekly also recognizes outstanding small theatre productions (99 seats or less) in Los Angeles, with their annual LA Weekly Theater Awards, established in 1979. Starting in 2006, LA Weekly has hosted the LA Weekly Detour Music Festival every October. The entire block surrounding Los Angeles City Hall is closed off to accommodate the festival's three stages.

Some of its most famous writers are Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold, who left in early 2012. Nikki Finke, who blogged about the film industry through the Weekly's Website, left in June 2009 after signing a business deal with an online firm.

The paper was founded in 1978 by Jay Levin, who was the paper's editor from 1978 to 1991 and its president from 1978 to 1992. The majority of its core of initial staff members came from the Austin Sun, a similar-natured bi-weekly, which had recently ceased publication.

Although some former employees have complained about personnel moves since the Weekly's parent company's acquisition by New Times Media in 1996 (which assumed the Village Voice Media name in 2005), the paper has won a Pulitzer Prize, and broke the story of the "Grim Sleeper" serial killer. Some of those disgruntled ex-employees complained when New Times replaced news editor Alan Mittelstaedt with veteran New Times editor Jill Stewart. But in the 2009 LA Press Club Awards, the Weekly won six first-place awards, including three by staff writer Christine Pelisek, who was honored as the city's best reporter in investigative reporting, hard news, and news feature.

Harold Meyerson, once the Weekly's political editor, charged in a departing email to Weekly staffers in 2006 that the new owners had grafted a cookie-cutter template for editorial content onto the publication.

Writers once closely associated with the Weekly but let go by the paper's current management include Meyerson, classical music critic Alan Rich, theater critic Steven Leigh Morris, film critic Ella Taylor, and columnist Marc Cooper. Internal cut backs have resulted in the paper eliminating the position of managing editor, letting go several staff writers and other editorial department positions, as well as cutting the entire fact checking department. On June 1, 2009, the paper announced that Editor-in-Chief Laurie Ochoa, who began helming the paper in 2001 (before the New Times acquisition), was "parting ways" with the Weekly. On that same day, ads for her replacement appeared on Craig's List and Journalismjobs.com. Though some speculated that Stewart was a shoo-in for the position, the job quickly went to Drex Heikes, formerly of the Los Angeles Times. When Heikes left in 2011, he was replaced by Sarah Fenske.

Weekly management have said staff cuts are necessary due to poor economic conditions. However, some of the cuts are likely attributable to philosophical differences with the paper's current owners. Former staff writer Matthew Fleischer says that "as part of the company’s 'plug-and-play' management strategy, editors, writers and ad directors were moved from city to city within the chain, without regard for local knowledge. Any old-school Village Voice Media manager who resisted the metamorphosis was denounced as a 'lefty,' a 'throwback,' and worse. They were fired or simply fled."

In the Los Angeles market, LA Weekly competes against Brand X (a weekly newspaper published by the daily newspaper the Los Angeles Times and is produced by a crew that includes former LA Weekly staffers) and formerly LA CityBeat, a smaller alternative weekly newspaper owned by Southland Publishing, which ceased publication in March 2009, and also owns the Pasadena Weekly (helmed by veteran LA-area newsman Kevin Uhrich).