Jill Stewart won't be part of new CityBeat

Political opinion-monger Jill Stewart confirms by email that her bi-weekly Sacramento column won't run in CityBeat, the new L.A. free paper launching on Thursday. She does appear in Pasadena Weekly, which also is by Southland Publishing. The chain issued a press release crowing when she first signed there, but Stewart apparently couldn't reach a satisfactory deal with the new L.A. paper. Editor Steve Appleford, meanwhile, tells L.A. Observed that our earlier post about CityBeat's rumored skimpy writing budget was off, though he did not offer an accurate figure.

Appleford writes: "It's true we are a new enterprise with fewer resources than the LA Weekly. With their ad revenues, you'd think they could get Dave Eggers, Norman Mailer and Tom Cruise to write their cover stories. Even so, I expect to have a fine stable of contributors (and staffers) happy and anxious to be part of a new paper in L.A." Appleford also corrects that he was news editor of the old L.A. Reader, not the editor.