Kit Rachlis Leaves As LA Magazine Editor

COMMENTS (4)

• Rachils’ assertion – “we created a community of work where writers and editors, photographers and illustrators felt free to take chances, where they were engaged and heard” – would come as a surprise to the many photographers and writers who received one of Sir Rachlis’ ‘Thanks but no thanks’ form letter summarily dispatched by Kari Mozena, resident party attendee queen/factotum.

  The fact is, LA Mag all but stopped taking pitches several years ago, succumbing to what Kit said he’s never do: packaged, service pieces: roadtrips, best of’s galore, etc.

  Kid leaves with a slight to nonexistant feature well and one of the most popular features, the Guide, gone (see ya’ on the web!)

  The economy’s impact is on view for all to see in the latest, “Failure” issue: it’s as slim an issue as when Michael Caruso took over in the late 90′s. Perhaps Ratchlis sees the handwriting on the wall and decided to leave on a high note.

  New York Magazine actually does the city magazine the best (and they haven’t eviscerated their listings, something Mary might reconsider just as Emmis might reconsider the never-realized TimeOut weekly proposition vs. the scoleric monthly format.)

  LA Mag has befuddled a string of editors and will continue to until it actually does open itself up to the 500+ or so locals who could really give a total perspective on our mosaic city. Till then, it’s Dave Gardetta & Margot Dougherty et al, bringing you more of the same

  Comment by paul — Monday May 18, 2009 @ 10:39am PDT  Reply to this post

• When I sent a letter to Kit Rachlis pitching an article in 2007, I had no reason in the world to expect a reply. I did not know Mr. Rachlis, nor did I have any connection to him. A friend politely suggested I might be better off not starting with the editor-in-chief of a magazine. I had no publishing credits since the 1980s, and those were fiction credits in literary journals. I had no doubt he was inundated with such requests. And yet, within a day of his receiving my letter he called me to express interest. He invited me in to talk. We agreed to the article, and it was published in the fall of that year. The entire experience was a pleasure. So…I have to take exception to the criticism of LA Magazine as not being open to the outside community. My experience was quite the opposite.

  Comment by Lucas — Monday May 18, 2009 @ 3:41pm PDT  Reply to this post

• thus, a perfect example of the exception proving the rule.

  Since everything’s out there as a matter of record – nine years worth of issues filled with road trips and shopping tips – maybe an industrious soul will go, and do the research, flip through and add up the bylines.

  If you’d been working for them or knew their history, Lucas, the book went “in-house” several years ago. Maybe, here and there, Kit might have deigned to pick up an outside piece but, overall, LA Mag stopped being a place that people pitched, several years ago with Glynnis Costin’s departure to InStyle (where she’s kept mixing it up: the time period of her with Spencer Beck under the aegis of Fairchild was probably the most open and, thus, the most interesting version of the ten thousand versions of LA Magazine in the last fifteen years.)

  Anyway, whoever went to BHPublic library and purused the stacks would probably find are column’s filled w/Gardetta (one of three overpaid “Senior” editors who is paid a shitload of money, at the expense of what was a freelance) and Margot Dougherty, still hanging on after all these years. (And, oh, yeah, Karen Wada: people would like to know, WTF does she actually DO at LA Mag?)

  What’s often left out of the supposed LA Mag “renaissance” under Sir Kit are two factors: Joe Kimberling’s art direction (which is what won all those awards) and Emmis’ profiligate pimping out of the back of the book resulting in issues jammed with ads for … law firms!

  True that, journalism is not what sells, advertising is, something the powers that be at the venerable NYTimes still haven’t figured out.

  And though you, “Lucas,” may have had a (singular) good experience, many years ago, LA Mag ceased invested in cultivating contacts with a community of photographers/writers that bears even a remote resemblance to our hodgepodge city.

  The “city” Los Angeles purports to cover is a gated (read: walled in, patrolled by security guards i.e., K.Mozena), community a.k.a. as, “The Westside.” It’s a magazine that’s largely white, straight (married or single, who cares, there’s ads in the back for both) and rich- the wealthy 4% of the population that’s screaming about a tax increase.

  Fact is, Sir Kit stuck to what he knew: the Anne Fleming’s, the Ariel Swartley’s (his ex; keep it in the family, right?), & the Michael Ventura (who doesn’t even fucking LIVE in L.A. anymore but founding LA Weekly 20+ years ago makes him a lifer, right?) … it’s a closed book, run out of Minneapolis, and distinterested in anything remotely complex or compelling and, as a result, boring as shit.

  Truly, Lucas, when was the last time you actually read LA Magazine? Or than your article, a veritable miracle of publishing? Seriously, when did anyone, except the business owners’ who post their Best Of LA tear sheets in the window?

  Comment by Paul — Monday May 18, 2009 @ 4:32pm PDT  Reply to this post

• I’ve had my complaints about the Kit regime too, including unacknowledged queries, unreturned SASEs. Yet what strikes me about the Paul and Lucas postings is that Lucas, whose query was accepted, took time here to write a briefer and clearer comment.

  Comment by Keith — Monday October 19, 2009 @ 2:47pm PDT  Reply to this post