L.A. Weekly’s New Owners Fired its Staff in Favor of Unpaid Contributors, So I Contributed

Things have been going pretty badly at L.A. Weekly ! In October, Voice Media Group sold the paper to a shadowy corporation known as the Semanal Media Group , whose ownership was kept secret. Then, the new owners—still anonymous at the time—appointed Orange County Register opinion editor Brian Calle, a man who described his mission at his last position as “ advancing the cause of free markets and free minds ,” to run their new, historically left-wing, outlet. Last Wednesday, when the deal closed, Semanal and Calle abruptly fired the vast majority of the paper’s editorial staff ; in the aftermath, contributor Keith Plocek published an article headlined “ Who Owns L.A. Weekly ? ,” which was a...