Readers and media-watchers here in LA have followed the dismantling of the LA Weekly as editors like Joe Donnelly (who i once worked for) and film critic Ella Taylor were shown the door… here’s a long, provocative “autopsy” by longtime lefty journalism Marc Cooper that is a kind of mini-history of the alt press, perhaps the bookend to the elegantly written but somewhat puzzling louis menand piece on the village voice in the recent new yorker…
scroll down for comments by donnelly, former new times LA editor rich barrs, and others.
and i will maintain my policy of not taking sides in the endless new times vs. LA Weekly battles — having worked for the former (and been weirdly both fired and rehired) and later marrying a former freelancer associated with the latter it’s just full of too many weird contradictions for me… but here is a first-person column i wrote in 02 when new times LA suddenly shut down. i think parts of this are still pertinent today…
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scott, this post, accompanying links (marc cooper) and, esp., comments, provided an evening of engrossed reading and occasional howls of laughter. as a former of the NT, Weekly and the LA Times (all amazing places, warts and all), i have to say it read like a novel. at times, a pretty whacked out one, written by 12-year-old boys, but all the same, a great documentation. thank you! and keep blogging.
anyone who survived employment at the LA weekly, new times, and the LA times deserves either a warm bath or a padded room — perhaps both.
i marvel too at the fact that this particular correspondent, i think, walked away from all three troubled publications by choice, whereas yours truly was fired by one and laid off by another…. with a decade almost to the month between them…