Final Wrap-Up on L.A. Weekly
I intended the "autopsy" on the L.A. Weekly I published last week to be a modest cathartic and insider report of interest to a small circle of friends. Instead, it sort of went viral, garnering tens of thousands page views and numerous inbound links ranging from Romenesko to the site of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. It seems to have struck a nerve; it's dawning on folks that so-called alt-weekly papers are going down the same drain as the MSM.
The story continues to develop quickly and the comment thread on the piece has gotten so big, that I have decided to publish this sort of wrap-up and reader's companion to help you sort through the muddle.
But first, a call-out. I originally said I didn't want to single anybody out over at the L.A. Times for NOT covering the demolition of the largest and once most-important metro weeklies in America. But the silence is too much.
So with no prejudice, hostility, or rancor, might I now publicly and politely ask Times media reporter James Rainey and/or sometimes media columnist Tim Rutten to please take the time to do this story? Let's get it done before the Weekly furniture shows up in a garage sale? Okay, guys?
Now the promised wrap-up of updates, response and reactions:
Between the time I wrote the original draft of my posting (around Xmas) , posted it (last week) and the current moment:
Legendary Village Voice writer and author of 19 books, Nat Hentoff was fired.
The position of well-respected L.A. Weekly Theater Editor Stephen Leigh Morris was eliminated.
Within the comments thread on my original posting we find -- by blogosphere standards-- a rather civil and rather deep dialog on what all this means.
Bay-area investigative reporter Peter Byrne, who had the pleasure of suing Mike Lacey's VVM, still harbors plenty of ill will. And shows no hesitation in bluntly stating it. A former New Times chain staffer, Steven T. Jones, now with the S.F. Bay Guardian has a similar jones still lingering for Lacey.
Former Weekly contributor and now Variety's editor-blogger, Anne Thompson, laments the "sad tale" of L.A. Weekly.
Former City Beat editor and OC Weekly columnist "Commie Girl" does some seething and teeth-gnashing.
Accomplished Paris-based writer/author/blogger Michael Balter remembers how he got his start at L.A. Weekly.
I heard from about ten current L.A. Weekly staffers and contributors who congratulated me on saying what they fear they cannot. I can't quote their emails. But we also heard from a number of former Weekly people.
Former Deputy Editor and big-time surfer Joe Donnelly chimes in here and here provoking this pungent shout-out from former Weekly News Editor (and former City Beat News Editor and former Daily Journal associate editor) Alan Mittelstaedt. Former staff writer Judith Lewis pipes up to recall the vitality of rough and tumble editorial meetings of pre-New Times L.A. Weekly editorial meetings. And yet another former staff writer, Laureen Lazarovici evokes a great memory on how election nights there would be a line of cars in front of the Weekly offices, a rush to get the ballot endorsements which have been nixed by the New Times geniuses. One more former Weekly'er remembers vividly the day the acquisition by the New Times was announced.
Long-time dirt-diggin' journo Don Ray fondly remembers the Good Old Days when the Weekly kicked butt.
A one-time manager of the Weekly's HR Department recalls when the paper was managed by humans and not zombies. Former Research Director Pam Klein is still in mourning after all these years...deep mourning.
Tricia Romano, former Village Voice writer and current editor of Pop + Politics offers up a razoring of the dopes who trashed the paper founded in 1955 by, um, Norman Mailer. Her thoughts are echoed by another former Voicer.
Current O.C. Weekly (owned by the same New Times crew) columnist, and a damn good one, Gustavo Arrellano steps in to defend the ongoing work of his paper's tiny news department. The author of "Ask A Mexican" --in turn-- gets asked some tough questions by Shawnee who wonders about Gustavo's possible lack of solidarity, something I re-phrase in a more polite mode. Gustavo offers a dignified defense here and here and reminds us he still is on the payroll of these jokers.
Last and certainly least, we hear directly from inside the kennels of talent currently maintained by the New Times/VVM group. The editor of the miserably failed and now-shuttered New Times Los Angeles, Rick Barrs, who forgets to identify himself as the current editor of the Phoenix-based flagship New Times paper, contributes a snarling, slanderous series of ripostes.
The mess left on the rug by this company chihuahua left me no option other than to administer some sharp blows, a couple of them, to his nose with a rolled up New Times. Down, boy! Down! (and let me highly recommend any New Times paper for this handy home application).
As several commenters pointed out, including this one, Barr's unbecoming, totally un-professional and public display of distemper (completely devoid of any defense of company editorial policy) only served to underline the adolescent, thug-culture that stinks up the entirety of New Times management. You don't seem to be able to really make it inside the company unless you successfully mimic the bullying swagger of Big Dog Mike Lacey. Ask anyone who works around Village Voice caudillo Tony Ortega for confirmation. In case there was any doubt about this, we were treated to a couple of UPPER-CASED intrusions from re-invented Weekly part-time star reporter and full-time gadlfy/crank Mr. Zuma Dogg (Hey, that's the name he chose -- not me).
Thanks to the dozens of Weekly readers, current and former, who emailed me your private notes. They were great to read.
We owe some real recognition also to the ongoing work of Kevin Roderick of L.A. Observed who has stayed right on top of this story, and many others, while the L.A. Times has been sawing wood and slapping around their own monkeys.
Thanks to former Weekly columnist Dave Shulman for the wonderul graphic...and just for being Dave Shulman.
I also want to acknowledge that there are still (a dwindling few) of some very hard-working (like REALLY hard-working) folks and friends still left at L.A. Weekly. It's harder than ever to put out a paper with no managing editor, no research or fact-checking department, no photo editor, no theater editor, no senior art designer, no senior copy editor, no dedicated cover features editor, with a news department managed by someone who believes Los Angeles is a People's Republic and in constant fear of being summarily slashed from the payroll... etc. etc. etc.
The reason I have not mentioned their names or given them their due props ought to be obvious. An atmosphere of gloom and fear has permeated the Weekly ever since the absorption by the New Times was announced. It's a company that doesn't hesitate to show a petty, vengeful streak and it serves no good for current employees to be praised in name by outside brick-throwers.
See you folks next Saturday. I'll be the guy wearing the big smile.
January 11th, 2009 at 1:44 am
One misconception apologists for these vandals labor under is that the sole purpose of these companies is to make money, and any strategy that makes money is justified. The true purpose of these companies is to publish a good newspaper, and making money is the means and the end result. What the Tribune Company is doing, in the best possible construction, is eating its own legs to stay alive, as much a result of the unserviceable debt that was taken on in acquiring them as the decline of the newspaper business. Even if they survive in this manner, the surviving entity will be crippled, and as the product is degraded further it will fail more and more. What Mike Lacey has done is take a publication that was far better and more profitable than anything he ever did and remake it in his own degraded image.
Let’s see if this one can be reworked for the occasion.
One day Dante is walking by the Lake of Hell and he sees Mike Lacey in molten lava up to his neck and Sam Zell in up to his waist. Dante turns to Virgil and says, “How can this be? Surely Zell’s sins are at least as great as Lacey’s.” Virgil replies, “Oh yes, assuredly, but you see, Zell is standing on Lee Abrams’ shoulders.”
January 11th, 2009 at 5:31 am
What gets lost in all of this is that many changes at newspapers have had less to do with the economy than they have with greedy and incompetent publishers and editors. When the economy was going well, newspapers were cutting back. In the 1970s, Abe Rosenthal, as right-wing and kooky as his columns were, did a great thing as executive editor of The New York Times with the business side. As he put it, they put more tomatoes in the soup. Instead, these guys throw out not just the tomatoes, but the soup.
January 11th, 2009 at 9:16 am
At least you finally made Joe Donnelly happy by mentioning his name:)
January 11th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Well, for someone who wasn’t sure they wanted to post their “autopsy” in the first place, I imagine the response to your piece has been gratifying – or, maybe not. I wonder, Marc, did you think this thing would take off like it did?
At any rate, it’s been wild to sit here on the sidelines and watch. Thanks to all the participants for the entertainment, as well as the education.
If, in the not so distant future, someone writes a final obit for the entire print media industry before the last one out turns out the lights, this series of posts on the L A Weekly wouldn’t be a bad place to begin.
And, what Robert Fiore said.
January 11th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Marc,
Is there any way you can run your career without having to include me in it?
January 11th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Geez, Zuma, I think that would be his preference . . .
January 11th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Marc: My reticence to speak about LA Weekly or OC Weekly isn’t based on who writes my paychecks but truly on personal matters I can’t quite discuss. My bosses very well know that if I have something to say, I’ll say it, damn the consequences.
Just one minor correction, though: it’s “Arellano,” not “Arrellano.” I know, I know: us Mexicans and that wacky double r!
January 11th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I checked out Zuma Dog’s website. He may in fact be the most irritating human being on the face of the earth.
January 11th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Zuma and New Times deserve each other.
January 11th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Mr. Fiore:
Whatever Lacey is or is not, at least before he gobbled up the Village Voice papers like Augustus Gloop toppling into the chocolate river, he was rather good at making money in secondary markets. He assembles a skeleton staff, he pays them slightly better than the pay scale at the local daily (this part is changing), and he works them into the ground filling highly formatted slots, keeping excruciatingly careful track of production. He doesn’t much like editors, so there tend not to be so many of them. The ad staffs are minimal. The papers are thin. He knows how to make money on a 112-page paper perfectly well – it’s the 224-page papers he has problems with. His virtues, if you can call them that, are strict enforcement of the line between advertising and editorial, and a sort of old-fashioned doggedness that as Marc suggests was probably useful in the crony-ridden precincts of Phoenix 30 years ago.
It is not an accident, though, that not one writer or editor has ever become a national figure of the magnitude that dozens and dozens of Voice and Weekly writers have achieved – no Wolcott, no Christgau, no Carson, no Hentoff, no Goldstein, no Ventura, no Dargis, no Coll, no Gilmore, no Malan, no Giddens, no Cooper. (Even the hapless L.A. Reader launched the careers of Matt Groening, Robbie Baitz and Steve Erickson among many others.)
January 11th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Marc can answer Gustavo Arellano on his own. But I, for one, remain suspicious of Gustavo’s relative quiet as he tiptoes around the bodies of his former colleagues on the way into work. Back last year Jon Wiener wrote a critical piece on The New Times for The Nation.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070716/wiener
Gustavo sent in a letter that sure reads to me like he’s DEFENDING those who do, in fact, sign his paychecks. A reasonable position, but one that should be clearly stated. Here’s what Gustavo wrote at the time. You read it and decide: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070827/letter
Here’s the text:
“Gracias to Jon Wiener for the kind words he said about my column. That said, many of the conclusions he reached about Village Voice Media and its subsequent meaning for my employer, OC Weekly, are ludicrous.
Wiener begins by claiming that the new owners of VVM–the barbarians from Phoenix previously known as the New Times–strip papers of a commitment to their communities and care only about profits. His proof? That LA Weekly and OC Weekly no longer print endorsements. I am personally for newspaper endorsements, but refusing to print them doesn’t translate into a dereliction of duty. Many lively independent papers and blogs don’t offer endorsements; does this mean they’re captains of avarice?
Wiener’s thesis clashes with his own description of VVM’s owners as focusing on hyper-local stories targeting the elite. How is hyper-local coverage not a civic service, especially at a time when dailies are more interested in layoffs, consolidations and the shaved cooters of movie vixens?
Wiener’s analysis implicitly dings OC Weekly, so let’s go to the tape: In June alone, it trashed anti-immigrant wack job Tom Tancredo, cast a critical eye on media accounts of imprisoned Vietnam War relic Vang Pao, exposed white supremacists and other criminals who prey on Orange County’s defenseless, profiled a man who breaks up international slave rings, praised Vietnam’s Communist president and called for legalizing our illegal immigrants. Hardly the stuff of neocons, ¿qué no?
Finally, I’m curious as to why Wiener didn’t talk to the half-dozen staffers who remained at OC Weekly instead of joining Will Swaim at his new paper–especially to the news staff Wiener praised, all of whom stayed. Wiener would’ve found folks who believe that the ideals that made the OC Weekly such an important part of Orange County for the better part of a decade remain safely in place. We old-timers from the ancien régime know a mediocre newspaper chain when we see it, and the new Village Voice Media frankly isn’t one.
GUSTAVO ARELLANO
Staff writer, OC Weekly”
This much is for sure, hardly anyone left standing would call The New Times chain mediocre– that’s far too kind of a description.
January 11th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
I fully endorse what Ask Another Gringo says. Gustavo’s explanation’s that he reserves public comment on the direction of his own newspaper chain “for personal reasons” rather than for practical ones just doesn’t pass the smell test.
No one is going to give him a bad time if he were to say something like: I work there so I’m staying out of it. Case closed.
On the other hand, courageous journalism is all about taking risks. Hearing a statement of solidarity with all those who have been shaved from the New Times staff in the last few months from someone with the stature of Gustavo would be extremely important. Beating his chest about how great the coverage is of his own paper while the rest of the chain’s writers are marched off the cliff isn’t very convincing either.
By the way, I saw this week’s L.A. Weekly yesterday. Perused it in about 5 seconds and noticed the page count was down 104. Isn’t that like a recent record for the paper? Someone inside, do tell. It’s almost as small nowadays as Gustavo’s beloved OC Weekly, I think.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Shawnee: January page counts at alt-weeklies are always down right after the holidays. OC Weekly’s latest ish ran at 56 pages, I think.
January 12th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Adam – “I checked out Zuma Dog’s website. He may in fact be the most irritating human being on the face of the earth.”
I had the “pleasure” of riding in an elevator at City Hall with Zuma Dogg the morning after the primary last year. He felt the need to say to us in the car that “you probably saw me on KCAL’s political coverage last night…” and boasted about the ratings they got. Clearly desperate for attention.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:27 am
“His virtues, if you can call them that, are strict enforcement of the line between advertising and editorial, and a sort of old-fashioned doggedness that as Marc suggests was probably useful in the crony-ridden precincts of Phoenix 30 years ago.”
I will actually agree with you there. Lacey went to bat for me when our publisher was trying to get me to meet with advertisers from nightclubs and online record companies, gently suggesting I should do stories on them. This was less than a week after the takeover, and I mentioned it to him, and he was infuriated. I have respect for Lacey in that area at the very least.
January 14th, 2009 at 10:22 am
OC Weekly stinks. LA Weekly stinks. It’s not a tough conclusion to draw. I realized it in the beginning of ‘06, and was sad to see it happen, for all the reasons Marc covers so well in this and the previous posts. Thankfully it’s not, say, 1990, and we have the Internet for alternate sources of good copy (if you hunt hard enough). R.I.P., Weeklies–natural selection has weeded you out.
January 14th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
A PhD and 20 years of no one caring about a thing she writes.
January 16th, 2009 at 7:02 am
[...] All of this is more important than righting a few wrongs. But really, it should have said that L.A. Weekly’s star investigative reporter Jeff Anderson left the paper voluntarily in 2007. And if CityBeat wants to blast the L.A. Weekly [...]
January 17th, 2009 at 1:17 am
[...] chattering set off by my autopsy and post-mortems (plural) on L.A. Weekly continued to click away this past [...]
February 12th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
…although the whole discussion is very inside baseball, and I haven’t been a part of MSM print for over 15 years, I would say that the Weekly still beats the Times to hell, and the Times, for a major city daily, is a truly embarrassing, right-wing, low-hanging fruit, institutional-coverage paper. The Times couldn’t get out in front of an issue, if someone dragged a reporter to the right place, and forced her to stay there. You can’t say those things about the Weekly, last year or now. I’m grateful someone rides City Hall’s ass, however gently, because the Times has failed to do so for years. The state and DC coverage is awful, TV-imitative and ghastly, but it’s what i would expect from a straight, white-guy, type-place.
Journalism (or perhaps just ‘the media business’ – remains toxic – left, right or center – which is why I’ve left. I hope someone is left to cover all this stuff, meantime, inside baseball – and out.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
The papers are thin. He knows how to make money on a 112-page paper perfectly well – it’s the 224-page papers he has problems with. His virtues, if you can call them that, are strict enforcement of the line between advertising and editorial, and a sort of old-fashioned doggedness that as Marc suggests was probably useful in the crony-ridden precincts of Phoenix 30 years ago.