• Jill Stewart. Back? Oh that is truly pathetic. Not to personalize my plaint too much, but she once wrote in a column that I had called every lobbyist in Sacramento to smear an opposition candidate with the details of an old arrest record. She never bothered to call me first, and never spoke to any lobbyist. She finally admitted to me months later that the story had come solely from the opposition campaign. And she printed it, "because it sounded plausible!"

She also named me "Best Hachet (sic) Man" in Los Angeles. Orthography aside, that's pretty funny coming from her.

Parke Skelton
Political consultant

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• As a former New Times staff writer and Jill Stewart colleague, I must say that Lacey siccing Stewart on the LA Weekly spells the death of that fine magazine. She is a fact-free "reporter," and was the running dog of Schwarzenegger's education czar, former LA mayor Dick Riordan, blatantly promoting his political agendas in her badly-written Capital Punishment column. Her coverage of Schwarzenegger for Wired was sycophantic and untrue, as I showed in my expose of the governor in Salon.com shortly thereafter.

The metastasizing monopoly of Lacey & Co. are proving to be an ongoing disaster for journalism. We need to create journalistic alternatives to this MSM octopus disguised as "alternative."

Peter Byrne

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• Jill Stewart new news editor at the L.A. Weekly? Is this a joke where someone forgot the punch line? I couldn't care less about Stewart's politics. But it is her journalistic judgment based on her work at Buzz and New Times L.A. that I think leaves a lot to be desired. Her past championing of undeserving types like Richard Riordan, Richard Alatorre and Tom Hayden often left me dumbfounded. And then we have the bizarre comment she made in an article for New Times L.A. on the 2001 election for L.A. Mayor opining Cathleen Connell was the best candidate among those running (Connell had a dismal 6th place showing.) I bet the folks at CityBeat are thrilled at this news.

Dana Gabbard