Profiling the new pubs

Jay Levin's forthcoming RealTalk LA (and RealTalkLA.com) will try to "reinvent the concept of a city magazine and create the next evolution of the local online community," the founder of LA Weekly tells the L.A. Business Journal. The monthly print magazine and website "will target what he calls the 'non-European demographic' of Hispanic, Asian, African-American and Middle Eastern people."

Specifically, Levin plans to deliver advertisers a diverse segment of affluent, college-educated minorities in the 25- to 49-year-old age category. According to RealTalk research, the non-European demographic has about 700,000 households with incomes above $75,000 in Los Angeles.

Levin faces a challenge in appealing to such varied ethnic groups. Planned stories he mentioned include a profile of business leaders working to improve the economic status of their employees or involved in community development, and a series on the relationship between minority youth in poverty and the criminal justice system.

That’s a far cry from the edgy fare that filled the LA Weekly during Levin’s tenure, which included investigative pieces on Scientology and the onset of the AIDS crisis.

“The overt, politically declarative agenda of the Weekly is not part of our agenda,” Levin said. “We are not trying to be the alternative newsweekly.”

The RealTalk website will be organized geographically and will let visitors blog, chat or share video. The LABJ story also looks at The District, the weekly being launched by OC Weekly refugees and led by that paper's founder, Will Swaim. "This won’t be a knee-jerk lefty paper. I’m just looking for great stories and Long Beach has them in abundance," he says.

Previously:
Jay Levin's magazine
New paper for Long Beach