After playing the Village Voice's Siren Music Festival with his band, Jazz Beard Jr., R. James Bagget says he was shocked at Amy Phillips' "sarcastic tone and lack of genuine enthusiasm" in her preview of the event that was published in the Voice. "(I)t is profoundly ironic that one of the Voice's main competitors (Time Out) ran a much larger and more laudatory preview," he writes in his letter-to-the-editor.

Continue ReadingFestival Participant Asks: “Where’s the Teamwork From Editorial?”

In a New Times LA exclusive, Susan Goldsmith obtains chilling court-sealed FBI documents that have never seen the light of day until this week’s edition of the alternative newsweekly. Using internal FBI reports and transcribed recordings made by FBI informants and agents in meetings with members of the Mexican Mafia, Goldsmith’s 6500-word story of mob violence questions why the FBI failed to make arrests with such ample evidence of conspiracy to commit murder.

Continue ReadingNew Times LA Breaks Mafia Informant Murder Story