November 27 was Black Friday and an appropriate nickname to acknowledge it’s been a year since OC Weekly folded after a 24 year run. If you hit www.ocweekly.com, there’s still a website where you can scroll through some past issues.
Former editor-in-chief Gustavo Arellano seems to be doing pretty well as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. But his columns aren’t what they were at the Weekly.
Writer Matt Coker landed on his feet too and is a Communications Specialist, St. Jude Medical Center.
Gabriel San Roman’s “other Anaheim blog” appears to be dead with no new posts since 2016. He was a producer at KPFK radio and now publishes a weekly Slingshot! newsletter. His byline does pop up around OC from time to time.
Does anyone know what happened to R. Scott Moxley? His last written Tweet is from July and he retweeted something in August, but since then crickets. Moxley, where are you?
The demise of OC Weekly wasn’t a surprise. Alternative weeklies have been dropping like flies for years. The Village Voice, the Boston Phoenix and LA Weekly couldn’t make it either. For a paper that routinely published a column on the “OC Register Deathwatch,” I know more than a few Register reporters and editors who aren’t sorry the Weekly bought the farm a year ago.
Does anyone miss the paper? If it hadn’t died last year, COVID19 restrictions on restaurants, nightclubs, and entertainment venues who supported the paper via advertising certainly would have dried up revenue resources.
Do you miss the paper? Leave a comment.
I knew several of the original OC Weekly folks and admired their in-depth reporting.
When I switched over to news reporting from sports in 2007, I got the opportunity to meet several of the Weekly folks because we worked on the same stories.
The competition drove me to be a better reporter and I was always pleased to beat the Weekly on coverage.
I lost a lot of respect during the OC Register Deathwatch.
I was long gone, but to see them share insider info, share names (a lot of times sarcastically) and “report” with glee on the failings of the Register made me angry. I lost respect for the Weekly and for whomever felt the need to leak the info.
I took no pleasure in seeing the Weekly fold and/or to see people lose their jobs.
As the Times and OC Register either stopped hyperlocal coverage or halfheartedly covered cities, the Weekly (and Voice of OC) could have filled that void.
While VoC has several solid reporters, there aren’t enough resources.
Residents who care about what’s going on and need the 4th Estate to – in the words of Gustavo, “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted” lost.
Gustavo isn’t the first to say that; Chicago humorist Finley Peter Dunne wrote a popular syndicated column featuring the distinctive voice of Mr. Dooley in the early 1900s. It’s a varient on a religious quote. And it still applies.
Jealous of the Weekly whose writers:
1. Could write
2. Stood for honesty instead of hackery.
What a sad loser you are.
You fail #2 and are #3. But I think you forgot to turn your VPN on and your IP address popped up. I finally know who you are. Pathetic loser.
Hah. No VPN here. Dummy.
and no residency in 4th district either dummy
So Coker, Gustavo and San Ramon have found jobs, meanwhile at the Juiced Up Blog, Diamond, Nelson an Zener still remain unemployed!
No big surprise there.
Any further update on R. Scott Moxley? i do not want to engage in any sh** talk or call outs with you all, just wondering if he’s still writing.
I haven’t seen his byline in more than a year; his Twitter feed is pretty dead