One of the writers leaving the L.A. Times emailed the contact address for the free newspaper supposedly starting up in Los Angeles with a staff of 75-100 and a Sunday circulation ("available nationally") of 500,000. She asked "who are you?" and got back this reply:

Who are you?

TFD Management team.

right now we are the asking the questions - you are the 1500th respondent...

The website has posted a new blurb: "Thank you to the more than 1500 journalists, artists and media people who have expressed an interest in this project. We look forward to working with many of you! We plan to reach out to interested parties before the Labor Day holiday. Bookmark this page, check often for updates." It started here Tuesday morning.

Digging around: An LA Observed reader looked into the website and came up wqith this intelligence.

You’ll see that the holding site is hosted (for free) by Maddog.net. Maddog.net is part of Murphy Publications out of Laughlin. They run something called the Tri-State News Network. California being one of the three states, I assume. http://www.maddog.net/index.php

Tri-State News Network, providing in depth local news on Murphy Broadcasting Radio Stations, and e-Press, a free, local news publication emailed daily to thousands of readers, provided by www.justsaynews.com. Staff page here: http://www.maddog.net/html/staff.php It looks like they have a pretty solid business staff in the sales and marketing area. They publish an online news for the Lake Havasu area: http://www.justsaynews.com/ But it sounds like they’re mostly about radio. Video tour of their broadcast group here: http://www.justsaynews.com/murphypromo/murphypromo.htm Example of one of their older (2005) ePress newspapers comes up in a Google search here: http://www.laughlinranch.com/pressreleases/epress1-27-05.pdf I don’t see any LA ex-pats in any of the people involved. Sounds like they are all Arizona-based media and news people. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Roger+Galloway%22+editor+arizona http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Paul+LaVoie%22+editor+arizona There’s nothing I see that says that this group is behind the LA news invasion. So it would take more follow through to prove the connection.