Big news today in the alt-weekly world as LA Weekly editor-in-chief Drex Heikes announced he was moving on from the paper. His last day is this Friday. LA Observed has the memo. We spoke with with Weekly publisher Beth Sestanovich about who might be taking over for Heikes. Sestanovich says she found out about Heikes impending departure about a week and a half ago, and that a replacement has yet to be found. “I suspect we’ll have an announcement on a replacement in the next couple of weeks.”

Given that LA Weekly parent company Village Voice Media/New Times has a history of promoting from within its network of papers, we asked Sestanovich if an LA candidate is likely to take over the paper. “There are no internal candidates in the building,” was all she would tell us.

Which means that deputy editor Jill Stewart will not be taking over the paper. It remains to be seen, however, whether VVM will ship someone in from St. Louis or Texas or one of their other outposts, or hire from LA’s abundant local talent pool.

Incidentally, Heikes isn’t the only one out at the LA Weekly. Calendar writers Siran Babayan and Liz Ohanesian were both laid off last week. This confirms what we reported last month in the wake of layoffs at the OC Weekly.