It’s a party and these journalists have plenty to celebrate. After many months work, they’re almost to the finish line so it’s gin rickeys in honor of F. Scott Fitzgerald. No, not the writer, but the unfortunate passing of one of their cats.

They’re all ex-writers from the LA Weekly and they’re starting a new venture together, an alternative magazine called The LAnd. But the work isn’t over yet, so this party is a proof party. Jennifer Swann is Editor-In-Chief.

“It’s a Friday night, this is the LAnd crew,” says Swann. “We printed a bunch of our layouts. We’re doing basically a final read of all our stories, basically looking to catch you know, any last mistakes before we go to print.” 

This all started shortly after the LA Weekly was purchased by Semanal Media and its editorial staff was fired. It was soon revealed the investors who'd taken over the publication had ties to Orange County, not Los Angeles. 

Recognizing a national trend of local newspapers shutting down, music critic Jeff Weiss gathered the former staff and led a boycott. He started #BoycottLAWeekly and tweeted every misstep by the new management. Advertisers started dropping like flies.

Now, the former staff members are working together to beat their former employers at their own game.

“So we had it called The LAnd because the land is the whole idea that it’s about the city itself,” says Weiss. “The LAnd is the idea of kind of staying low to the ground, keeping close to the soil, making sure we kind of cover the streets, the blocks, the people, every region, every swath of the city that we can.” 

So they enlisted known writers including April Wolfe and Henry Rollins. And since the goal is to go to print, they raised money through fundraisers and advertisers. 

“So much of our media is controlled by corporations and when they decide that you know it's time to pull the plug, everything kind of disappears, so it’s important to have this like visual, physical record of what we’re doing with these stories that you can access five to 10 years from now, stories that will be semi-permanent. I think it’s really important to have a print product,” says Swann.

From proof party to launch party, The LAnd is now officially out and the team faces new challenges like distribution. But they say the effort was all worth it. 

“It’s so important to have an alternative media, an independent media, so you get a sense of what’s happening in your community, what’s happening in your neighborhood, and you’re getting stories from people who live in Los Angeles and are covering stories that you’re not seeing in your daily newspapers,” says Swann.

Plans for a second issue are still up in the air, so pick up a copy while you can.