Where Are They Now?

Gloria Ohland. Started at the Weekly in 1980, going from copy editor to news editor to senior editor, writing the style column as well as features. She also started the Local Heroes column. Left the Weekly in 1996 to work for nonprofit Surface Transportation Policy Project, the nation’s leading transportation-policy reform organization. In 2000, she became senior editor at Reconnecting America, an urban-policy think tank. She co-edited the book The New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit-Oriented Development, which is coming out this month. She’s married to Weekly art director John Curry, who himself returned to the Weekly after a long absence. And yes, Curry, like so many others is also noted for his local band, the Fly Boys.

Tony Palazzo. Started as an intern in late ’80s; became staff proofreader and writer until about 1991, covering immigrant issues, including a trip to Nicaragua to cover elections there. Went to Columbia School of Journalism. Later reported for The Record in New Jersey, and freelanced for The Village Voiceand spent seven years at Dow Jones, among other stops. He is currently the assistant managing editor at the Los Angeles Business Journal. Met his wife at the Weekly. She also worked in proofreading. Carolyn Reuben. Health columnist, 1981 to 1991. Columns included a two-parter on the birth of her daughter. That same child was just voted Homecoming Queen at Mira Loma High School in Sacramento and is student-body V.P. "I am proud of the fact so many articles were published ahead of the subjects’ exposure in the ‘other’ press," she said, "subjects like indoor pollution, the nutritional connection to back pain and to postpartum depression — which has actually not been revealed in the conventional press." Reuben, an acupuncturist, is president of Community Addiction Recovery Center and also owns the Allergy Elimination Clinic. Books include Essential Supplements for Women (1987) and Cleansing the Body, Mind and Spirit (1998). She’s currently developing a drug-treatment program that uses animo acids, nutrition education, food, acupuncture, "Emotional Freedom Technique," yoga, qi gong and "prioritizing training." She says, "The best high is seeing people turn their lives around and feel well in the process." Ralph Rugoff. Wrote a column focusing on art and cultural criticism and freelance articles from about 1986 to 2001. His art- and culture-related books include Circus Americanus (1997), a collection of essays, and At the Threshold of the Visible: Minuscule and Small-Scale Art 1964–1996, co-authored with Susan Stewart. He directs the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco. RJ Smith. Weekly writer and editor, 1990 to 1996. Takes most pride in the paper’s ensemble coverage of the 1992 riots after a jury acquitted the officers who beat Rodney King. After leaving the paper, he became a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute. He is writing a book on African-American Los Angeles in the 1940s, and is also senior editor and media critic at Los Angeles magazine.

Anne Thompson. Wrote Weeklycolumn, largely on the business of Hollywood, for seven years, ending in 1993. A native New Yorker, she’d been mostly on the PR end of the industry until starting her column. "It was a business approach to writing behind the scenes," said Thompson. "I had fun going to Cuba and covering the Havana Film Festival in 1987. I saw Fidel Castro hobnobbing with the Hollywood lefties. I also chronicled the rise of Sundance as a powerful source in independent film." At the paper, "my editor was Ron Stringer. I adored him. I was previously edited by John Powers, Ella Taylor, Tom Carson — who were all happy to pass me back to Ron Stringer. He was the only one who could handle me . . . It was a wonderful time because I was able to choose what I wrote about. It was possible to go out and explore things without having to worry about whether they were entertaining or celebrity-oriented or consumer-friendly. It was a question of exploring what was going on and sharing it with my readership." After the Weekly she was a writer and/or editor for Entertainment Weekly and Premiere. She’s been a contributing editor for New Yorkmagazine for the last year and a half.

Ginger Varney. Part of a group of talented unknowns that Jay Levin imported from Texas to start the paper. Stayed until late 1980s. Did movie reviews for four years, then went to Honduras on the cheap for nine months, filing stories every other week on the Reagan administration’s Central American shenanigans. At one point, she "crossed seven rivers without bridges trying to get to a military installation," while also smoking two packs a day. Later covered the contras in Washington, D.C., and the 1988 presidential election. Post-Weekly, she returned to Central America in an unsuccessful attempt to write the great American novel. Then tried the import-and-export trade — "folk-art crap," she says. Also taught English as a Second Language in L.A. and went to Vietnam in the ’90s, trying to open a Mexican restaurant in Hanoi: "It was an adventure." Fell into current work as private investigator by accident: "A former colleague started working as a P.I. and got me to do a case. It was a fluke." She now runs Varney Investigations, which takes environmental cases, trademark-infringement matters and does background research. As far as writing goes: "I haven’t written anything except a check since 1990."