THE CITY STOPS BEATING

LA CityBeat shut down last weekend. Its demise was hardly unexpected, but no one likes to see a magazine or newspaper go under. The explanation will doubtless be the economic chaos, but I fear the decline had started long before the housing bubble burst. Like many other alternative weeklies (and many other print entities, for that matter) LACB was mismanaged from the get-go. The suits firmly believed what someone on the Big Money website recently noted – “the magazine business is the advertiser audience delivery business.” To that end, content was treated with distain. The idea that writers might need to be paid a living wage was mocked, although the suits worn by the suits indicated they were hardly doing it for the revolution. A mythic young-consumer demographic was constantly pursued as though print could somehow woo the youth away from Twitter and My Space. Promotion was dismissed as not cost effective, and the idea that print might become the domain of people who actually like to read was dismissed out of hand. I’m pissed because I am left with no place to air even my most conventional theories. I have a killer original essay on the total ramifications of marijuana legalization, but currently it has no home. Indeed, right now the writing on the wall for the essayist and mid-list fiction author of gothic fantasy seems to be “fuck off and die.” Maybe, after 34 books and god knows how many magazine stories, I should take the advice all of those who think it’s sooo smart not to reply to my emails and do exactly that. Unless, of course, someone comes up with a cunning plan.

The secret word is Obsolete