Mack Reed giving up LAVoice.org

After a four-year run, the creator of LA Voice says he has too much going on in his professional and personal life to keep going. He announces in an open letter to the L.A. blogosphere that he's signing off exactly two weeks from today, but first he wants to give the whole shebang to someone who will build it up as a community voice that retains his ethic that anyone can post.

I want to give LAVoice.org - the platform, the assets, the ongoing (if small) ad revenue and its dedicated, savvy and passionate audience - to the right blogger who can carry on what we've built.
Maybe that's you.

If you're interested in taking on a virtually non-paying, 12- to 15-hour-a-week job - for the chance to re-shape, grow and drive a well-respected, L.A.-centric community blog toward being something brilliant, edgy and cool, then maybe this gig is for you.

Here's who I'm looking for:

Candidate:
* A strong, clever writer with solid content-development skills in Photoshop, HTML, Unix and a willingness to get your hands dirty with a little code. I'll train you on our crazy-quilt platform and provide tech support where necessary.
* A die-hard Angeleno - someone who has a long history (7+ years in greater L.A.) and a healthy love/hate (or love/love) relationship with all of Los Angeles
* A serious blogger with an overwhelming desire to write two to six times a day. (Very important)
* An open-minded citizen of the world, with strong opinions but complete respect for all points of view - even the ones you disagree with violently.

Time Commitment:
You must be willing to put at least six months into helping LAVoice remain vibrant and alive.

Site Voice (and here's where the fun comes in):
My only editorial requirement for the candidate is that you agree to keep the blog regularly updated, factual, focused on L.A. and completely open (within the hugely sloppy confines of our Terms of Use) to public submissions.

In other words, the new editor of LAVoice.org will have utter carte blanche from me to re-imagine the core site.

Right now, LAVoice is sort of heavy on public-affairs, culture and, well, bikes. Maybe you'll remake it as an arts blog, a community-news hub, or even a jaundiced tats-n-pierced snarkblog on the sins of upper-crust Los Angeles. It can be A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G - so long as you encourage (even recruit!) Angelenos from all walks of life to post news and opinion here, too.

While the L.A. blogosphere has grown since we launched, and blossomed into a rich jungle of wild ideas, creativity and valuable street-level information and opinion, LAVoice.org is still the only blog in town that lets anyone in Los Angeles post.

I think that's something worth supporting. I hope you do, too.

Mack has always run a quality site and been a strong supporter of LA Observed (and as a result has taken classless and dishonest shots from the village idiot of L.A. bloggers.) I wish him fame and fortune in his new endeavors.