This piece first appeared at Newsmakers with JR on February 25, 2022.
The “Friday news dump” is a time-honored method in the world of politics and media for entities to put out and lowball negative news about themselves, on the theory that reporters already are out the door by that time of the week, and few people pay heed to the news over the weekend.
Late Friday, February 25, the publishers of LA Magazine did such a dump, informing local media outlets that they were removing from their website a 4,000-word investigative piece about Santa Barbara that came out nearly a year ago, sending shock waves through City Hall with a purported exposé of how the city’s retail recreational marijuana licenses were awarded.
