It’s hard to argue with the selection of Janice Min for this week’s LA Weekly issue celebrating “the most interesting people” in Los Angeles. The name-brand editorial director has completely re-invigorated a moribund Hollywood trade, showed Jay Penske the way with her weekly glossy print edition and essentially steered clear of Nikki Finke‘s core beat.

So much so that a New York Post story today about the contract renewal status of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter mentions Min as a logical successor. Here’s a taste from Gendy Alimurung‘s LA Weekly profile of the “tiny, friendly” 43-year-old:

The new Hollywood Reporter launched in November 2010, a scant four months after Min took charge. The compressed schedule forced her to think clearly, she believes. Sometimes too much time muddles your thinking. The proof is in the numbers: Online traffic is up 800 percent. More importantly, revenue is up 50 percent.

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Before Tessa Stuart joined BuzzFeed, she worked at LA Weekly. Today, that publication’s editor-in-chief Sarah Fenske has done what very few elsewhere in the media have dared to up to this point: firmly take Stuart’s side.

The crux of Fenske’s argument is that she feels there’s no way, under any circumstances (logged by the CPB or not logged), that Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat could have been detained for the amount of time Michael Moore first claimed (1.5 hours). From her op ed:

The Atlantic revealed that Burnat’s plane arrived at LAX at 4:59 p.m. , fourteen minutes behind schedule. Even if the plane was blessed with a relatively quick deboarding, it’s hard to imagine that Burnat could have possibly first encountered federal agents any earlier than 5:20 p.m.

Weirdly, The Atlantic lets Moore suggest otherwise: “In the half-hour between Burnat’s arrival and the first log entry cited in BuzzFeed’s post, Moore says Burnat and his family had already been taken to two other holding areas.” Oh really? So the plane landed at 4:59, and somehow magically everyone was ushered into various holding areas within just a few minutes, only to be detained and shuffled to room after room in just 29 minutes?

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Nothing against Modern Farmer, a print quarterly and companion website launching in the spring. But when west coast media folks like LA Weekly Web editor Jake Swearingen make the sideways career jump, it’s typically to an enterprise with a Twitter handle like @ModernFam, not @ModFarm.

Equally strange, at least to us, is the fact that Modern Farmer is headquartered not in Nebraska but rather New York City Hudson, NY. Swearingen is making the cross-country journey now with his girlfriend. He has been replaced at LA Weekly by Ali Trachta.

“Jake has been the architect of the Weekly‘s Web strategy – and a damn good one,” editor-in-chief Sarah Fenske tells FishbowlLA. “In 2012, we saw a 22% increase in unique visitors and 55% increase in page views from the prior year. That was all Jake.”

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LA Weekly editor-in-chief Sarah Fenske does the profile honors in this week’s issue for Javier Guillen, a 31-year-old East LA native who now has some rather unusual new bragging rights. He can tell his pals when photographing and uploading pictures of them that they are being showcased by an award winner.

Guillen (@goEastLos) was judged as part of this year’s LA Weekly Web Awards to be the owner of the best Instagram account. Here’s why:

He has posted more than 1,500 photos to date and earned almost as many followers. Our judges give him marks for both his artistic eye and the depth of his coverage. In the words of one, “Murals, street scenes, people, details and even Jack White’s recent pop-up show at Mariachi Plaza? Javier has it covered, con sabor.”

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Last month, we reported about a massively popular LA Weekly freelance contribution from Jonathan Maseng. In the article, Maseng wrote about how the owner and some members of the downtown branch of the CrossFit gym chain had posed for a photo with a homeless person passed out in the streets and then gloried by sharing the resulting picture (and other related snaps) on the business’s official Facebook page.

This past Monday, July 30, aforementioned CrossFit Mean Streets owner Ronnie Teasdale sent out to members a long email/Facebook message about the resulting controversy. While he admitted that the photos (since removed) were in poor taste, he tried to deflect some of the controversy by noting that the passed out individuals shown were not homeless but rather habitually drunk customers of nearby bars. People that he claims he and his staff know well:

Many of the pictures in the article are over two years old. Let me be clear about who the people in the pictures are: they are not homeless people. They are alcoholics who are regulars at the bars nearby the gym. We know their names and have interacted with them over the time the gym has been open, including getting them help when needed. I don’t condone the photos, but the implication of the article, which is that the gym was abusing homeless people or refusing to come to the aid of people in need, is false.

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Here’s an item that has the scandalous, photo-driven hallmarks of a classic LA Weekly “The Informer” dispatch. The only anomaly is that it comes not from Dennis Romero or Simone Wilson but rather first-time freelance contributor Jonathan Maseng.

Just ahead of the 2012 Reebok CrossFit Games this weekend at the Home Depot Center, LA Weekly has published some absolutely disgusting Facebook photos shared by the the owner of the LA downtown end of the CrossFit operation. The pictures, which you’ll have to click through to see, feature in one case GymFit personnel gleefully standing above a homeless man passed out on a sidewalk.

LA Weekly editor-in-chief Sarah Fenske tells FishbowlLA that Maseng’s story started blowing up this morning around 9 a.m. PT, three hours after it was posted. “Right now we’re getting three times the normal traffic on laweekly.com, entirely thanks to that story.”

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For the latest installment of Mediabistro’s weekly series “So What Do You Do…?”, I had the pleasure of conversing with LA Weekly editor-in-chief Sarah Fenske.

The Q&A delves into such topics as the LA Times paywall, the current state of her alt weekly and arguably Fenske’s biggest challenge so far – replacing Pulitzer Prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold. Here’s part of what she told me about that:

“Jonathan was – and is – an incredibly beautiful writer, but he never writes negative reviews. That worked for him, wonderfully, and it still works now that he’s over at the Times. But what is the Weekly if not the alternative: the smart, edgy voice that calls bullshit? We needed someone who could be critical when it was called for, and who had no loyalties, and who was not interested in befriending the city’s chefs… We needed someone fearless.”

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The National Society of Newspaper Columnists appears to be operating on old newspaper print-days time. Even though the winners of their 2012 column competition were officially determined May 5, they have only just got around to officially posting the details on their website.

As a result, The Daily Beast is this evening congratulating John Avlon for his second consecutive win in the category of online, 100,000-plus monthly uniques. Meanwhile, LA Weekly editor-in-chief Sarah Fenske early this afternoon tweeted out her heartiest congrats to Gendy Alimurung, victorious in the 50,000-plus print, general interest bracket. From the judges’ comments:

“To begin with, Gendy is a wonderful writer and storyteller. She also is a smart reporter with an eye for detail and empathy for her subjects. All of those talents come through in her pieces. For a columnist, she is also modest. She lets her subjects come to the fore and presents them with flair. Excellent pieces through and through.”

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The journalistic place setting of Jonathan Gold is a big one to fill. So it makes sense that several new hires have been tasked at LA Weekly with taking over the Pulitzer Prize winner’s culinary beat.

Editor-in-chief Sarah Fenske announced today that Amy Scattergood, the editor of Squid Ink, has been promoted to the position of LA Weekly food editor. Under her command will be new three employees, including food blogger Garrett Snyder. Per Fenske:

You may remember Snyder’s byline from that awesomely knowledgeable list of LA’s Best Sushi Places – or his thrilling description of an underground dinner thrown by the Vagrancy Project. Garret graduated from Loyola Marymount University just two years ago, but he’s already one of this city’s best food bloggers, and we’re thrilled to have him on staff.

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The single most juicy question on the minds of media watchers in LA right now is undoubtedly whether Jonathan Gold is really heading to the LA Times. Over the weekend LA Observed reported that even though Gold had a signed deal with the LA Times, Village Voice Media owner Mike Lacey was pulling out all the stops to keep Gold at the LA Weekly--and a bidding war with the Times for Gold’s services was in full swing. This morning, however, a post on the food blog of the LA Weekly‘s sister paper The Village Voice seemed to confirm that Gold was indeed leaving for the LA Times.

The post’s title was unambiguous. “Jonathan Gold Leaving L.A. Weekly for L.A. Times,” screamed the headline. The author of the post then wished Gold “the greatest success in his new job.”

Well, that must be that then, no? The Village Voice is the biggest property in VVM’s chain. Lacey must have given them the scoop, figuring if he was going to lose Gold, he might as well hand his paper a big story.

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