Where Are They Now?

Michael Ventura. A Brooklyn kid who still misses the Brooklyn Bridge, Ventura started writing seriously at 13 but got nothing published till 29. Was working in Texas when Weekly founder Jay Levin brought in him and a handful of Texans to Los Angeles. Ventura stayed aboard for some 15 years, notably as a film reviewer, before starting his trademark Letters at 3 A.M. column, which he described as "about culture, America, the world — any old thing." He adds: "I liked L.A. It is formless and unpredictable. No one fits in L.A." Ventura wrote screenplays for Roadie (with James "Big Boy" Medlin, 1980) and Echo Park(1985)and several books, including three novels, The Zoo Where You’re Fed To God, Night Time Losing Time and The Death of Frank Sinatra. "I never had an office nor a desk while at the Weekly," Ventura says. "I did all my work from home." Now writes his Letters column every other week for the Austin Chronicle in Texas, and teaches literature at a private high school in the San Fernando Valley. "I ruminate about things," Ventura says, "and manage to get paid for it."

 

Former Interns

So how do you get that journalism career started anyway? The following folk became L.A. Weekly interns. And then . . .

Ben Adair. Acting producer, editor for The Savvy Traveler, produced in Los Angeles by Minnesota Public Radio.

Maggie Bandur. Supervising producer-writer for TV series Malcolm in the Middle.

Maki Becker. Reporter, New York Daily News.Arion Berger. Arts and entertainment editor at Express, published by the Washington Post.Was also L.A. Weeklywriter and editor (read more in Writers and Editors section).

David Bloom. Technician at CNN, freelance writer and now serving with Army reserve in Camp Shelby, Mississippi, scheduled to deploy to Iraq.

Greg Brown. Attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in L.A.

Jade Chang. Taught English in Japan, did a dot.com for a year, now freelancing.

Sandy Cohen. Features writer, Daily Breezein Torrance.

Yoji Cole. Los Angeles bureau chief, Diversitymagazine.

Sara Clinehens. Became regional youth adviser for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles; currently in transition.

Sara Dunn. Reporter, most recently for Bay Area Argus. Relocated to East, looking for job.

Aaron Fontana. Music editor, Entertainment Todayin Los Angeles. Attending law school at night.

Lynell George. Staff writer at Los Angeles Times; was also L.A. Weekly staff writer (read more in Writers and Editors section).

Michael Gutierrez. Doctoral student in cultural history at Boston University.

Kristin Hohenadel. Paris-based writer on film; recent pieces in Los Angeles Timesand The New York Times.

Millay Hyatt. Writing USC dissertation in Berlin, titled "No-where and Now-here: The Utopian and the Political From Hegel to Deleuze."

Alex Katz. Reporter, Oakland Tribune.

Queena Kim. Reporter, covering home building and toys in L.A. bureau of The Wall Street Journal.

Pamela Klein. Writing novel; living in Virgin Islands. Was research editor at L.A. Weekly(read more in Writers and Editors section).

Timothy Kudo. Became editor in chief of UCLA’s Daily Bruin. Now teaching fifth-grade math in the Bronx.

Christie Lafranchi. Finishing law school at Georgetown.

Mary Melton. Managing editor, Los Angeles magazine.

Eric Mercado. Research editor, Los Angelesmagazine.

Amelia Neufeld. USC senior with double major in print journalism and French, features editor, USC’s Daily Trojan.Laurie Ochoa. Editor in chief, L.A. Weekly. (Memo to all: The intern you abuse today could someday be your boss.)

Antonio Olivo. Labor and transportation writer, Bloomberg Newsin New York.

Tony Palazzo. Assistant managing editor at the Los Angeles Business Journal;was also L.A. Weekly proofreader and writer (read more in Writers and Editors section).

Dave Perera. Graduating from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Just landed job with Inside the Pentagon, a weekly dedicated to military procurement and defense policy.

Marcela Rojas. Staff writer, The Journal Newsin New York.

Jennifer Smith. Town reporter in Long Island for Newsday.

Amy Waldman. New Delhi bureau chief, The New York Times.

 

Really Gone Ron Curran, 1960–2003.

Curran once told a friend that he expected to retire broke and wind up in a trailer park — and the thought of it made Curran smile. "And yet, for all that," wrote San Francisco Bay Guardian editor Tim Redmond in a tribute, "he was endlessly optimistic and entrepreneurial." Curran made neither the trailer park nor the poor house because he passed away in November from symptoms related to alcoholism. Friends say he never devoted half a thought to his own health. Instead, he threw his whole being into chasing down thieving bureaucrats and other bad guys in suits. He also made time for skewering hypocritical politicians and the corporate media. And then there was his devotion to developing young journalistic talent. He helped give the Weekly a reputation for meaningful and biting coverage of local news from about 1983 to 1993. Then he took his fast living and steely writing to the Bay Guardian. In recent years, he ran a wire service that developed writers and marketed their stories to alternative publications.

 

Eddie Little, 1954–2003.

There was just no saving Eddie Little, though so many tried, starting with a devoted mother who nurtured him and his writing, even as his abusive schoolteacher father cranked Little’s arms tighter behind his back for stumbling on his multiplication tables. A hustler-addict, the native Angeleno spent most of his adult life in prison or on probation, but rose above it all with a golden period as a writer, before succumbing to declining health and addiction. At the Weekly, Outlaw L.A. chronicled the city’s omnipresent illegal underworld in a column alternately submitted by Little and writer Johnny Angel. Little also penned two rough-hewn, true-crime books based on his life, one of which became a movie. Inside Little’s writing and outside it, separating fact and fiction was perpetually difficult. He wasn’t really a fifth-grade dropout, as he sometimes claimed. Nor was he always clean when he said he was. He was ever more storyteller than journalist. "I hated it when he labeled himself a ‘thug,’ or a ‘punk,’ because I never believed it," said his mother Gay Lumsden. "I would have agreed to ‘con man’ and ‘junkie’ and ‘outlaw.’" Aspiring writers at a local rehab center would add "mentor" to these labels. A charmer and a good sport, Little decided to help out with the fact-checking of his stories by bringing profile subjects into the paper — just for verification purposes. One tattoo-embossed thug couldn’t have been more polite, and he also seemed very much the hit man that Little had written about.

Jac Zinder, 1961–1994.