"LA Weekly is being sold to Semanal Media, a mysterious new company," reported the L.A. Times; other news outlets offered much the same, noting that none of the newly-created Semanal's investment partners would make their names known.
As LA Weekly's more than three million online readers—the largest of any alternative weekly in the country—read about renters being summarily evicted simply for asking about increased rents, Semanal's new operations manager, Brian Calle, fired nine of the magazine's 13 staff, including all of its editors and its publisher.
"We were expecting there to be some pain with the sale of @LAWeekly," wrote editor-in-chief Mara Shalhoup online. "But we weren't expecting the Red Wedding."
[...] Two days later, in his first official message to readers, Mr. Calle spun the move as indicative of the news media's broader struggles in the digital age. LA Weekly, he said, had been on a "declining trajectory" and the new owners wanted to help make the publication "relevant" again.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2017, @09:08AM
In October, Gustavo Arellano, editor of the alternative-media OC Weekly, was told he had to fire the majority of the staff.
He quit instead.
Gustavo (author of "Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America") did reviews of restaurants & food trucks and wrote the syndicated column "Ask A Mexican" (now the intellectual property of the publication).
Earlier in the decade, he was also a presenter of an eponymous program at KPFK [archive.org] (Pacifica Radio).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]