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For The Record: Setting Things Straight Regarding Neon Tommy Report On LA Weekly
By Dennis Romero, Friday, Nov. 20 2009 @ 6:00AM
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Let's get this out of the way first. As the Tommy admits, it got a few things wrong: It stated that the Weekly's editorial staff consists of six people -- three editors and three staff writers. It left out music editor Randall Roberts, web editor Erin Broadley, food blog editor Amy Scattergood, and copy editors Karre Jacobs and Mel Yiasemide. Editorial creative director Darrick Rainey, assistant art director Jason Jones and designer Mitch Handsone were also left out of the editorial head count. There are seven full-time print and web staff writers: Gendy Alimurung, Patrick Range McDonald, Libby Molyneaux, Christine Pelisek, Scott Foundas and Liz Ohanesian, who is also the online editorial assistant. On the part-time/regular-freelance tip there's critic at large Steven Leigh Morris, assistant listings editors Siran Babayan, Falling James and Derek Thomas, as well as columnists Nikki Finke, Jonathan Gold and Lina Lecaro. Neon Tommy also said the news blogger is an editor. We can assure you, he is not.
Tommy gives some ink to the notion espoused by the Weekly's critics -- mostly former employees -- that the paper has seen better days and is need of rescuing or, in the parlance of the Neon ones, that it needs saving -- a "Herculean task."
We'll let you decide. We'd argue that the truth is that the Weekly, like pretty much every other paper on the planet, has seen the same challenging transition from print to web and the dismal economy's effect on advertising.
But there's also been a change in culture since Village Voice Media took over the paper in 2006, and what's seen as a reduction of the editorial department is also a changing of the guard. While some liberals and the ex-Weekly writers who catered to them lament the loss of the paper's crusty, bell-bottom voice, we'd argue that the future here is bright -- and digital.
The paper is in the midst of an online expansion that focuses on hyper local, street-level news, music, food and culture reporting. And you'll see it become a bigger and bigger destination for daily online readers who seek the bottom line on what's going on in L.A.
While the Weekly of yesteryear was a place for old white guys to pontificate -- in 10,000 words or less -- about the state of the nation, the new Weekly is, ironically, more like a daily newspaper, where reporters and journalists are employed to report, dig and do research before putting it on paper in fewer, tighter, fact-driven words.
We would admit that it's a different place indeed, but we'd argue that it's a place for real journalism. There are too many outlets today where anyone with a laptop can bloviate about the ills of the right. It's clear from the inside that the Weekly wants to break news, investigate and inform in a city that is arguably the greatest news town in America -- one that the Tommy states correctly is "increasingly underreported."
Herculean is not the word. Once we dust off the notepads that were rarely used by some of the Weekly's columnists of yesterday, it'll be like shooting fish in a barrel.
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