Where Are They Now?

This selection is anecdotal rather than comprehensive. No conclusions should be drawn by who is or isn’t included. The list will be updated as the paper gets reliable information from or about expatriates.

The Bosses

Jay Levin, publisher 1978 to 1983; editor in chief 1978 to 1988. The paper’s founding editor and publisher created the Weekly out of moxie, journalistic ambition and cultural ferment — helping establish what alternative journalism meant in Los Angeles. In his era, that meant dogging Reagan and Bush Sr. from the left, exposing slumlords, reporting on wrongdoings in Central America, and documenting and spurring a hot local music and club scene, among other things. Levin gradually separated from the paper, giving up in succession his roles as publisher, editor and board member and part owner. His plan to inaugurate alternative television programming, a post-Weekly project that may have been ahead of its time, never fully materialized. His other endeavors have included media consulting, running spirituality and psychology programs, and starting Share With the Other L.A., an organization to educate the public about poverty in L.A.

Kit Rachlis, editor in chief 1988 to 1993. Rachlis left his job as executive editor with the Village Voice to head the Weekly. He continued the process of professionalizing the maturing paper, and he brought in well-known cultural and political voices, including Harold Meyerson, Tom Carson, Steve Erickson, Judith Lewis, RJ Smith and Sue Cummings. His era, which ended with him getting fired, was marked by the rise of locally based columnists who became the paper’s must-read voices. "On the surface, my firing was about publisher Mike Sigman having a different vision of the Weekly than I did," said Rachlis. "In Mike’s words, I had made the Weekly ‘too serious and too intellectual.’ But my firing was actually about something more basic and more mundane: power. Who would shape the direction of the Weekly? Mike or me? Who would have the authority to hire and fire the editorial staff? Mike or me? And like most struggles of power, this one was both principled and petty. I suspect both of us, in retrospect, would like to have handled the situation better. But I also think the firing was inevitable — a question of when, not if." Several writers resigned in protest: Carson, Erickson, Michael Ventura, Ruben Martinez (who was leaving anyway), John Powers and Ella Taylor. Powers and Taylor have since returned. Rachlis went on to become a top editor at the Los Angeles Times before accepting his current job as editor in chief of Los Angelesmagazine.

Sue Horton, editor in chief 1994 to 2000. Before she came to the Weekly, Horton wrote a book about the murderous Billionaire Boys Club and taught investigative reporting at USC. She brought these writing and news instincts to the paper, where she bumped up breaking-news coverage, local news analysis and pursued investigative pieces. She hired experienced reporters who came to the Weekly to do more things and better things than they could at the dailies. In this regime, a job at the paper was no longer a starter job, but a destination post for writers she groomed or stole away. Some holdovers complained that the paper was becoming too mature, too professional, too linked to the traditional Democratic Party left wing, not edgy or young enough. Sports coverage was phased out; some columnists were supplanted by reporters. The editorial endorsements became more interesting and more necessary, a good read as well as the best prognosis on which politicians were most likely to make the world a more progressive place. With political editor Harold Meyerson, she brashly turned the paper into a daily during the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. She left to pursue a fellowship and a slower pace, and later accepted the position of Sunday Opinion editor at the L.A. Times, where she is today.

Michael Sigman, publisher then CEO 1984 to 2002 (with one-year hiatus). Helped organize the business side of the paper, ever a steadying influence. Regards his contribution as "changing the culture of the paper, person by person, from a horribly dysfunctional one into one where employees by and large felt appreciated and inspired to do their best work, while still maintaining the atmosphere of an alternative paper." Sigman was not well-loved when he fired editor Kit Rachlis in 1993. Sigman said he felt the paper had become too intellectualized and humorless, and also said he wished he’d better handled the tiff between him and Rachlis. By the time Sigman himself got tossed overboard, some nine years after, a later generation of staffers appreciated how Sigman insulated them from advertising pressures and protected editorial independence. He ran a shop that trusted his intent to create a place where people would want to spend their entire careers. To the paper’s investors, such sentiments probably sounded like a recipe for editorial moldiness, entrepreneurial complacency and lower profit potential. Sigman now runs what he describes as a "small but mighty" music-publishing company called Major Songs, which features standards by his famous songwriter father, Carl Sigman, and new works by up-and-comers.

 

Writers and Editors

Donnell Alexander, staff writer, 1994 to 1998. Wrote a compelling 1997 cover story about his deadbeat, drug-dealing dad. He later expanded the story into the book Ghetto Celebrity, which also documents his own journey through journalism, drugs, sex and infidelity. Reviewers have called the book both painfully revealing and slyly concealing. Stylistically it’s a mix of the traditional prose and rap-speak that used to drive some of his Weekly editors bananas. He felt that his writing voice was getting unfairly trampled and left the paper. Alexander later worked as a staff writer at ESPN’s magazine and as a senior producer at MediaChannel.org. "Village Voice Media has pointedly ignored [Ghetto Celebrity] because GC calls bullshit on their product, specifically L.A. Weekly," Alexander wrote in a recent Web posting. "I can’t prove collusion, but it does seem odd to me that a young, left-leaning writer of color — someone who would ordinarily score top-notch reviews presenting even mediocre product — can’t get a review in any of the company’s 300 or so ‘alternative’ newspapers. Village Voice. . . has provided an object lesson in why mediocre leftism is dead as fuck. Blame them for Bush being president and [Green Party candidate] Peter Camejo languishing in October’s California polls." Ann Louise Bardach. Listed on the masthead in 1984 as the Weekly’s crime reporter, Bardach was formerly a contributing writer for Vanity Fair and is widely regarded as the foremost journalist writing about Cuba and U.S. policy toward Cuba. Just out is the paperback version of Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana. Christopher Hitchens commented: "If our political establishment knew a tenth as much about Cuba, or cared half as much about it, as does Ann Louise Bardach, both the United States and Cuba would be more open societies." She currently writes for Newsweek International and is a commentator for Public Radio's Marketplace.
Arion Berger. A Weekly stalwart from 1987 (beginning as an intern) through 1996, who periodically reinvented her role: proofreader, special issues editor, acting music editor, film critic, music critic, TV critic and restaurant critic. Also wrote about fashion, dance and did book reviews. Later moved to D.C. and took her versatility to the Washington City Paper and to other publications as a freelancer. Also an adjunct English professor at Georgetown University (1997 to 2003). In June 2003, she became arts and entertainment editor at Express, a commuter paper published by the Washington Post. "I was there during the dirty years," she said of the Weekly. "You want to hear cute stories about meeting at the heroin cooler, and how the nice couple who now has three kids met during a three-way at the infamous Guns N’ Roses Halloween party? I had actually met [future husband] Tom [Carson] about nine months before he started working at the Weekly, and we didn’t much like each other. But when I was a proofreader I used to save his pieces for last because they were my treat of the day. I loved his writing so much. We met on Halloween night 1988, and married five weeks later in Vegas, December 3 . . . We celebrated our 15th anniversary last week." Four cats, no kids.