A dull article for a dull magazine. Snore.

Jon Friedman can hector about writing articles that offend your subject? He couldn't have gotten any safer with this piece.

The easiest criticism, and the easiest one to fix is, after all these years and for all the technical competence, it still covers food as though it's culture, and culture as though it's food. That gives it a cosmopolitan content of minus-2 overall.

Other fixes require much more derring-do. It's still too parochial in a city that is ever less so. People in LA don't just live in LA, they live in the world, all parts of it. I'd gladly scrap a "New Downtown" issue for a "New Europe" or "New Central America" issue any day.

I couldn't really translate Joseph's first paragraph (which probably reflects poorly on me), but I agree with his second. Though there's plenty to talk about within the city limits, the magazine probably could do well with a broader view. Instead of being only "About Los Angeles," it would be "A Los Angeles Look at the World."

Whatever the articles are, Los Angeles Magazine seems to make no impact on the national scene, like The New Yorker. Once it makes that impact, then (however ironic) its hometown audience will probably take it more seriously.

"I'd gladly scrap a "New Downtown" issue for a "New Europe" or "New Central America" issue any day."

A "New Central America" cover probably would appeal mainly to locals who don't speak much English and wouldn't be likely to buy the mag in the first place. A "New Europe" cover probably would appeal mainly to locals who'd just as soon reach for Travel & Leisure mag. Or if it seemed like serious sociopolitical type of coverage, it would mainly attract those who'd just as soon pick up Time or the Economist (same would be true of the "new Central America" topic, too). As for the cover about "Downtown," it really was only about Tom Gilmore and therefore struck me as being too narrowly focused.

I hate the lowercase logo of the mag----looks like the editors either didn't learn the rules of good puncutation or are trying to be cute in a sloppy sort of way.

By comparison, New York Magazine, to which I've been subscribing since before Adam Moss took over, is really a fantastic magazine now -- mostly great writing, truly compelling articles, and does a good job on the fun consumer stuff and on culture. I only wish LA Mag were a cookie-cutter version of it, but focused on LA topics. Then I'd subscribe to both.

Yeah, they could call it "New West"!

For decades, every once in a while I'd see an interesting issue of Los Angeles and then be sucker enough to subscribe. Within months, the editor of that issue would get fired and the publisher would bring in someone to make it more of a West Side style magazine. Not realizing, of course, that we have The Times for that.

I do no more than flip through it occasionally, although I subscribed for a year when I moved here. It spends way too much time telling insecure people where they should be eating and buying, and making lists of what's hot, and not enough time on anything really transforming, or open-ended.

As Joseph points out, there's plenty of hooks in this town for serious or thoughtful stories. Indeed, there is even a plausible "LA attitude" -- young, immigrant, impatient, entreprenurial, backyard revolutionary, dispersed, automotive -- to contrast with the "New Yorker" perspective, symbolized in the line drawing of the urbane man contemplating the passing scene at the business end of his long nose. Perhaps the corresponding metonymy would be a suicide girl in Juicy Couture sweat pants, late for yoga class?

No telling, of course, if that would sell magazines.

The New Yorker makes no impact on the national scene? Is that why more Californians subscribe to it than New Yorkers?

Los Angeles is squarely aimed at wealthy Westside/Hollywood readers that advertisers covet. But L.A is a city of awesome, relentless diversity. If the magazine went after perspectives than transcend the West-L.A. milieu, it would be far more compelling and far more Angeleno. It's too bad that Luke feels the need to engage in some oh-so-iconoclastic blog posturing here, because he's the exactly the kind of voice that kind of magazine needs.

I realize that I misread the Jon's comment about the New Yorker. Sorry!

Tom -- I think it's worse than you say. It's not just that LA mag is aimed at wealthy westsiders, which is bad enough.

It's that it talks down to these wealthy westside readers, and the other 28 readers too, with so much emphasis on style and lists of what's hot now.

We don't need another magazine analyzing the war in Iraq. It should stay local but the mag is way too concentrated with west side shopping and entertainment. I'd like to see the magazine seriously take on Los Angeles politics. How about writing about the controversy over the handling of the Grand Avenue competition? What's going on with the MTA, urban developments? For not so serious stuff, maybe profile an upcoming local architect or writer, new companies headquartering in LA, Richard Neutra.

Sorry, but it's an awful magazine, irrelevant to all but the rich west siders that the editor wants to court. The headlines and design are 1970's cute; (Is Dick Cavett editing this thing); the only "hard hitting" articles are about show business personalities. (Wow! You're going to take down Peter Bart! How relevant - and important - to the city at large.) The Music Issue? The Hollywood Issue? How inspired!! How relevant!! What cutting edge thinking!!!

There's a reason why LA Magazine has a circulation of only 160,000 (and who knows how many are given away free,) in a metroplitan area of 13 million.

It's pathetic.

I have to wonder about Friedman's observations if he located a magazine stand on Main Street in VENICE. The magazine stand happens to be in Santa Monica. Main Street in Venice (Los Angeles, to be accurate) does not sport a magazine store, or much of anything other than an elementary school and a dog park.

Thanks, Ed, for mentioning that. I was wondering if I'd missed some tiny newsstand on Windward between all the used tee-shirt shops.

Oh, and it seems (if the New Yorker responses were in response to my previous comment) that people misread New York magazine as New Yorker. I specifically used New York as an example, because it's terrific city magazine, while the New Yorker is of a different genre, despite being named for the city.

I had great hopes reading the first issue published in the Rachlis era: the cover story on Bernard Parks's granddaughter was very good and the guy seemed to have a fresh approach. There was a lot of excitment about L.A. mag, within the media crowd at least. But it didn't last very long. The magazine seems oblivious to the disappointment and acts like it's still very pleased with itself.

I just wish LA Mag would pay me the expenses they've owed me for over a year that I've invoiced twice for and called many other times. Great way to show their appreciation for writers.