LABJ calls for new web-only L.A. paper

In its 25th anniversary edition, the Los Angeles Business Journal proposes an agenda of 25 reforms and steps to improve the city. One of those ideas is an online newspaper to compete with the Times.

Los Angeles, home to significant wealth, has no shortage of potential investors who might be interested in such a venture. The costs would run well under $5 million. The key for the new publication would be gaining widespread visibility and providing news and information before the Times and other papers get it in print...

While world and national news are widely available on countless Web sites and portals, there is limited, if any, information about a council vote or a big fire that same day. In addition, a locally oriented Web newspaper could become a clearinghouse – and honest broker – for opinions on community issues. It could also be a repository for studies, speeches and other pieces of information not easily transferred onto limited amounts of newsprint.

None of which will lessen the Times’ dominance, of course. With a circulation of around one million and a visibility that extends around the globe, no new local newspaper, electronic or otherwise, is likely to challenge the paper. But more voices need to be heard in L.A. And there may be some money to be made in the process.

Other items on the LABJ agenda include changing to a borough system of city government, increasing the county Board of Supervisors to nine members, putting an NFL team in the Coliseum and building more parks, freeways, transit routes and the downtown Grand Avenue project.

Also in this week's Business Journal:

• Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison has spent nearly $100 million in eight months buying up Malibu coastline at Carbon Beach. "Monopoly-wise, he bought the equivalent of Park Place and Boardwalk," said Robert J. Morris, founder of Gladstone’s 4 Fish and owner of Paradise Cove Beach Café. "I am in awe." (This story free with registration)

• Bill Clinton is expected to make as few as two L.A. book-signing appearances for his new memoir My Life, and one will be at Eso Won Books on South La Brea on June 26. Esowon was the one store in Los Angeles that hosted disgraced ex-New York Times reporter Jayson Blair in April.

• Modern Luxury Publishing, the publisher of Angeleno, Front Desk L.A., Bel-Air Hotel magazine and Riviera (in Orange County), is expanding with news magazines in Palm Springs, San Diego and Dallas. Next year the company plans to launch a city magazine to compete with New York.