That's the first thing he'd say to them, Ted Kissell tells Fishbowl LA. "I was impressed in general with the paper," he says. "I know a lot of people who have respect for Will Swaim and what he accomplished there ... I'm happy to be going there and picking up where he left off." Kissell takes the helm as editor April 2.
Ted B. Kissell will take over as editor-in-chief of the Santa Ana alt-weekly on April 2, Village Voice Media announced today. Kissell, previously a staff writer at Miami New Times and an associate editor at New Times Broward-Palm Beach, was most recently senior editor at the daily Ventura County Star. Kissell won't be the only new face in the OC Weekly office: VVM says Jose Santos will start his tenure as art director on April 2, Dave Segal's first day as music editor is March 26, and Luke Y. Thompson, the paper's "newest staff writer," started last week.
Will Swaim tells the Los Angeles Times that Republican lawyers are bankrolling the new Long Beach weekly. They provided enough seed money to allow the paper to operate for nine months without turning a profit. The District, which is set to launch in April, will have an initial press run of 30,000, with a "television version" of the paper planned for this summer. Swaim, who says he "stopped taking antidepressants and decided to leave" OC Weekly this winter, has plenty of former Weekly staffers in place at The District. He tells the Times they'll all be working from home so the paper can cut the cost of office space.
Will Swaim, who resigned in January over "philosophical differences" with the alt-weekly's new owners, is starting The District, a weekly paper covering Long Beach, Orange County Business Journal reports. Swaim has heavily recruited ex-OC Weekly staffers to work at The District, including the Weekly's former art director, sales director and sales manager. Former staff writers Steve Lowery, Dave Wielenga and Theo Douglas have also migrated to The District, which launches April 11, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram. Meanwhile, LA Observed reports ex-staff writer Ellen Griley is also on board. For Swaim, the new location was a no-brainer. "Long Beach is the largest North American city without an independent newsweekly," he says.
Steve Lowery, who was acting as interim editor in the wake of Will Swaim's departure, announced today that he is leaving the paper effective immediately, according to a farewell e-mail obtained by LA Observed. Effective March 23, OC Weekly will also be without Features Editor Theo Douglas, who gave his two weeks' notice today. In addition, OC Blog reports that two production staffers are leaving.
The Stranger reports that Dave Segal, who has been with the Seattle alt-weekly since 2004, was hired yesterday as music editor of OC Weekly. Segal replaces Chris Ziegler, who left the Village Voice Media paper last month. The Southland alt-weekly also hired freelance film reviewer Luke Y. Thompson as a staff writer, according to Thompson's own blog. And OC Weekly's former feature editor and "Commie Girl" columnist Rebecca Schoenkopf writes that the paper recently lost managing editor Ellen Griley and staff writer Dave Wielenga. She broke the news in the comments section of the Boston Phoenix's recent story on VVM.
The latest to leave are OC Weekly feature editor Rebecca Schoenkopf, whose Commie Girl column won last year's big-paper AltWeekly Award for best political column, and City Pages music critic Jim Walsh, who served two stints at the Minneapolis alt-weekly, the latest beginning in 2003. OC Register columnist Frank Mickadeit reports that Schoenkopf has "been ready to leave the Weekly for some time, simply because she needed a change" and that "her dream job would be editor-in-chief of an alternative weekly somewhere." In her farewell column, Schoenkopf puts the paper's recent ownership change into context: "It could have been worse: Dean Singleton could have bought our newspaper. At least this way, we still get to call people twats." (OC Weekly music editor Chris Ziegler also left the paper, Schoenkopf notes in her column.)
Late last year, Richard Diefenbach was suspended from his job in Newport, Ore., for five days without pay, and accused of racial discrimination and sexual harassment for sharing a copy of Gustavo Arellano's politically incorrect syndicated column with a co-worker. Diefenbach tells The Oregonian that the incident had a deleterious impact. "I have to weigh everything twice before I say it now," he says. "I felt like my organization branded me as something I am not, a racist and a sexist -- a horrible person." Arellano says "Ask a Mexican!" is now syndicated in 21 weeklies with a combined readership of 1.3 million. CORRECTION: Arellano tells us his column is syndicated in papers with a combined circulation (i.e., not readership) of 1.3 million.
Will Swaim is the second Village Voice Media editor to resign this week over "philosophical differences" with the company's new owners. OC Weekly employees tell the Los Angeles Times that they were expecting the resignation, "because it was apparent that (Swaim's) autonomy to run Orange County's only alternative newspaper had eroded since it was purchased last year by the New Times publishing chain." Swaim tells the Times that his differences with the new owners were on "the business side," and did not pertain to editorial content. "They run a very complicated organization and want to have standardization across all 18 markets," he says. "I don't argue whether it's dumb or wrong. It's just not my way." CORRECTION: VVM has papers in 17 markets.
Richard Diefenbach read Gustavo Arellano's syndicated column for the first time in the Weekly Alibi, while on vacation in Albuquerque. He was so enthused with the column -- which that week addressed readers' questions about "the Mexican love affair with chicken and similarities between Mexicans and the Irish," according to Arellano -- that when he returned to work in his hometown of Newport, Ore., he printed a copy and gave it to a Mexican-American co-worker. The following day Diefenbach was suspended from work for five days without pay, accused of racial discrimination and sexual harassment.
