Uh, it hasn’t? They basically have a writing staff of five or six. They still list Marc Cooper as a writer on their website, despite the fact that he was laid off as a contributing editor, and as his widely read post on the Weekly makes clear, he wants nothing to do with them anymore.

http://marccooper.com/la-weekly-the-autopsy-report/

“The paper has fired, pushed out or let go its top deputy editor who managed most of its cover stories over the last five years. It fired its managing editor — and with no intention to replace her ( this is a first in newspaper history I think). It fired its dazzling News Editor — and my friend Alan Mittelstaedt– and has shrunk and twisted its news gathering operation which took more than a decade to build into a competitive and credible local watchdog. The paper’s two prize-winning investigative reporters quickly bailed to other papers. Other long-time staff writers have been fired. Others have chosen exile. The Weekly’s fact-checking department has been abolished. Its copy editing department has been decapitated. It design staff decimated. Its free-lance rates — once competitive with any other publication in town — have been chopped and the overall free-lance budget has been almost obliterated. Writers’ rates that once topped a dollar a word have been cut by half or more (for the few writers who can still squeeze out an assignment).”

We still pick up the Weekly every week, mostly to peruse the concert listings. I miss “Life In Hell” and some of the other comics they used to include. If nothing else, it provides good, free lining for my guinea pigs’ cages.

The LA Weekly brand is strong enough that they could do something much more ambitious to celebrate their 30th. Perhaps originally they had bigger ideas, but the economy struck… but $20 a ticket?