On Tuesday, March 19, the Los Angeleno staff held a soft launch event at the Ace Hotel in Downtown L.A. Attendees included friends and contributors who as a community, have helped usher Los Angeleno into being.
We are unendingly grateful for the support of everyone who has helped us to create meaningful, fun and irreverent stories about life in Los Angeles. We aim to support the creative community in this city with events and opportunities to network, in addition to being a platform to share those stories in a multitude of ways.
Los Angeleno exists for you.
Why Los Angeleno, Why Now?
After a devastating year in the Los Angeles media landscape, we worked hard over the past eight months to develop the premier digital-first publication for Los Angeles created by locals — not satellites of New York media or conglomerate-owned.
We strongly believe that local media is important (probably the biggest understatement of our time) and that Los Angeles has been largely underserved despite being a major world city.
So we created Los Angeleno with a few things top-of-mind:
- Los Angeleno needed to be not just easy to read, but beautiful. We aimed to translate the magazine experience to mobile and desktop.
- Los Angeleno needed to make use of digital distribution channels to grow, but not rely on those channels to continue to distribute or do whatever the platforms du jour would tell us to do. We would create our own community.
- Los Angeleno needed to prioritize local contributors whose content would reflect local points of view. Points being plural.
- That we needed to serve the many pockets of the Greater Los Angeles area that have disproportionately been paid less attention to by other outlets.
- That we needed to radically pioneer a new business model for us to continue to exist. To diversify our lines of revenue and scale sustainably, while doing our part to elevate local media as a viable media placement.
- We wanted to grate at the global perception that Los Angeles is a one-industry town with no locals or history, with residents who are image-focused and don’t read. This is patently untrue and we’re tired of it.
We are still a work in progress and we’re working tirelessly to accomplish the pretty big goals we set out to do. We are also really excited to be part of what feels like a journalist-led renaissance/resistance in L.A. media. We plan to do our best to serve the Los Angeles community and beyond.
Let us know your thoughts, comments and concerns as we grow. #WeAreLosAngeleno