A stain on alternative journalism has been removed: Rebecca Schoenkopf (who once charmingly told a reader who wrote a complaining letter "f--- you") is no longer editor of LA CITY BEAT, the alternaweekly which underwent an in-your-face-with-slick-magazine-cover makeover last summer.
Schoenkopf (formerly COMMIE GIRL columnist for OC WEEKLY) started her tenure at the paper with a loud fart of an article about how the Los Angeles County Museum of Art should be destroyed because the then-current Chicano art exhibit wasn't sufficiently with-it. And the smirkiness kept coming.....
To Schoenkopf's credit, she brought some talented ex-OC WEEKLY writers (notably Steve Lowery and Jim Washburn) to CITY BEAT. But the general "we're SO better than you right-wing boneheads" bratty 'tude of the pre-Mike Lacey era OC WEEKLY {excepting then-writers such as Victor Infante and Jaimes Palacio) apparently didn't play too well in Los Angeles. And when Schoenkopf's ex-boss Will Swaim was tapped to run CITY BEAT....the results are summarized by Kevin Roderick of LA OBSERVED: http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2008/11/schoenkopf_out_as_citybea.php
Now CITY BEAT looks like it will mutate into what Kit Rachlis' (who runs the old-folks home for former LA WEEKLY writers called LOS ANGELES magazine) version of the LA WEEKLY between the late 80s/early 90s minus the occasional spasms of quirkiness (not-so-fondly remembering John Powers writing about a truffle and an attempted seduction and Helen Knode rhapsodizing about being in a bathtub with a Frenchman)--essentially MOR liberalism.
Which is more than can be expected from the current LA WEEKLY (which ran off Marc Cooper recently), which tilts center/right now (and has Jill "I Still Heart Richard Riordan" Stewart as an editor).
One nervously awaits Mike Lacey bringing Rick "The Finger" Barrs back to L.A. Then the humiliation of the WEEKLY (currently celebrating its 30th anniversary with an issue that brings back and/or namechecks most of its former writers) will be complete.
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