LOS ANGELES
MEET THE ISSUU PUBLISHERS
It takes an amazing storyteller to catch your attention.
In Los Angeles, Hollywood’s home and mecca for creatives, we talked to four issuu publishers you might recognize: Local Wolves, L.A. Record, Nude Magazine and L.A. Downtown News. How did these publishers get started? How does living in L.A. influence their publications? We visited the City of Angels to learn their stories firsthand.
Cover Publisher: Local Wolves
Publication: Issue 40
Photographer: Dylan Robbins
Local Wolves
Founder and editor in chief, Cathrine Khom, launched Local Wolves when she was still in high school. Four years and nearly 40 issues later, you’ll probably recognize some big names on the covers of this popular music and lifestyle magazine. Despite great success, Local Wolves hasn’t lost the scrappy spirit and close connections within the community that helped build it.
Q&A with Cathrine Khom
founder and editor in chief of LocalWolves
Q: How does L.A. inspire what you do?
I find inspiration from hanging out with my friends. I’m in Long Beach, but we go into L.A. a lot, and they take me to a lot of different places.
I get inspiration from all around L.A., because I see a lot of creatives walking around and they’re obviously doing something fun and cool. It’s really easy to strike up conversations with these people at places like coffee shops. I don’t have a set-in-stone place where I find inspiration, it’s just bits and pieces here and there.
Local Wolves, August 2016
Q: How did you get started?
I was working at a few publications in high school as a concert photographer. I conducted interviews and wrote live reviews of shows that I got access for in the Orange County and Los Angeles areas.
After a few months of experience, I decided to create a music blog dedicated to the local shows that my staff and I were covering. We began to incorporate band interviews, then moved into food and lookbooks as well. After I graduated from high school in 2012, I decided to take a break from Local Wolves to focus on my college courses.
A few months later I stumbled upon a YouTube video of Jc Caylen and Connor Franta. And then came across Our2ndLife (O2L). It sparked my attention to reach out to these content creators to be featured in the publication. Luckily, we found what Local Wolves was all about. We’ve been doing the issues for four years and have learned so much along the way!
Local Wolves, April 2016
Q: Any advice for your readers?
Even if you’re still in school, it doesn’t mean you’re limited in creating things. Growing up, I felt constricted and felt like I wanted to create things. Don’t feel restricted. Just stay motivated, stay grounded and have a good group of friends around you.
Local Wolves, August 2016
L.A. Record
L.A. Record is Los Angeles’ biggest music magazine, which is deeply rooted in one of the largest music-loving communities around. DIY to the core, Chris Ziegler, Kristina Benson and their friends distribute their printed publications around the city by hand, and rely on their community and surroundings to make their magazine great. With some exceptions, L.A. Record’s content is all 100% Los Angeles — from its people to its photo shoot locations — and is truly a for-the-people-by-the-people publication.
(Left) Kristina Benson, Publisher and Chris Ziegler, Editor
Q&A with Chris Ziegler
& Kristina Benson editor and publisher of L.A. Record
Q: How did you get started?
Chris: I saw too much music around me that wasn’t getting acknowledged. In 2005, a photographer friend took a really cool photo and I was inspired by it. I wanted to do a poster and then have a band interview on the back. People were super into it and were hitting me up when they found out I had been the one to make it. We started L.A. Record shortly after.
L.A. Record, Issue 124
Fun Facts about L.A. Record
They covered Anderson .Paak right before he became famous.
They were the first U.S. press to interview Flying Lotus.
They interviewed Kendrick Lamar around the time his first record came out.
Each issue of L.A. Record has full page artwork, designed to be torn out and posted up on a wall
L.A. Record, Issue 124
Q: What goes into making each publication?
Chris: We try to keep it really diverse in age, race, type of music and so on, because we want everyone to feel like they can be in it. We mostly react to what [artists] are doing. For example, we’ll see who is putting out records, who is coming to town, and we want to promote people with full length albums coming out. People send in demos and stuff all the time that we try to give attention to too, and there’s a lot of people contributing.
Kristina: There are all these people helping, but we still do all the editing, layout, proofing, and we handle giving out assignments, putting all the pieces together and stuff like that. L.A. Record is still basically a volunteer publication so we let our people do the cool things. And we’re constantly working!
L.A. Record, Issue 124
Nude Magazine
Nude Magazine is an issuu newcomer, but their beautifully-styled content makes them a publisher to watch. Twenty-two-year-old Raylene Pereyra, Nude’s founder and editor in chief, wanted her magazine to be by the people and for the people — specifically creatives living in Los Angeles. Her motto of “Real, raw, and true.” is evident in each issue, and she makes a point to handpick every person featured to keep that message alive.
Fun Facts about Nude
Raylene can complete one issue in 2 weeks.
We featured Nude in a blog post about The Devil Wears Prada.
(Right) Raylene PereyraQ&A with Raylene Pereyra
founder and editor in chief of Nude Magazine
Q: How did you get started?
Coming out of high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I went to college, but I wasn’t into it and after a year and a half I left. After creative directing for a jean company called Foxy Lux, I found that I loved that, so eventually I stopped working for them and started doing my own thing. Seeing all the creative people around me in L.A. inspired me to start Nude because I really wanted to give them some exposure. It’s also called Nude because I want it to be real and raw. Anything you say goes.
Q: What goes into making each publication?
I put it all together in the end. There are photographers that submit content. I have photographers I knew because I modeled before, so I had that core group I liked, which has now expanded. When a new photographer contacts me, I set up a shoot with them that I can creative direct. I pick the model and the theme, and then work with the photographer throughout the shoot.
Q: Any advice for your readers?
Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something because you’re too young. You can accomplish so much nowadays through different connections you have. Do what you love and everything will work out. Also, never take anything for granted. Being young, sometimes we take things for granted, but just take a step back and realize how blessed you are.
Nude, Issue 007
Los Angeles Downtown News
Los Angeles Downtown News is a free weekly newspaper focused on — as you might have guessed — Downtown Los Angeles. This veteran newspaper has had a finger on the pulse of downtown L.A. since 1972. For the past six years, their award-winning content has been uploaded on issuu. We recently sat down with Brian Allison, Los Angeles Downtown News’ Art Director, about the paper’s history.
Q&A with Brian Allison
art director for Los Angeles Downtown News
Q: How does L.A. inspire what you do?
I mean, we are hyperlocal, and we live and die with the Downtown community. We’re the news source for what goes on in Downtown L.A. Smaller, local newspapers like us get along because they provide information to people in the neighborhood that want intense close coverage of the area where they live in.
There are so many blogs on the internet now, it’s hard for people to discern between professional journalism and regurgitated information. These blogs are re-reporting professional journalism, which is great for spreading the word, but it should always trickle back to a source and the source is what makes journalism and newspapers important professional sources.
We’re a free weekly newspaper with a few magazines per year, and, as a newspaper that’s been around 40+ years, Los Angeles Downtown is a professional news source with journalists providing something to the community that is important.
Q: How did you get started?
I’ve been in the printing and publishing business for over 30 years — since the late 80s — and joined this paper in 1996. Los Angeles Downtown News was created to provide information to the Downtown community that they weren’t getting before. I worked through the transition from print to desktop, and these transitions to the internet also had a massive impact on printing and publishing. issuu helps our paper cover our bases, so to this day we have print, our website and our stuff on issuu.
Q: Any advice for your readers?
Brian: If you’re going into journalism or starting a paper, you need some talented people to put together your copy, and a person, or persons, capable of composing that information on a page that is both easy and elegant to read and is enjoyable for the reader to absorb. You need to have the right tools to do that: Photoshop, InDesign, etc. Then it’s just creating those files and publishing in any form you see fit. It’s just a matter of having those two elements in place first.
Los Angeles Downtown News, Issue 007
Connecting content to people.