Press clips to date from most of the rest of the world’s newspapers about The District Weekly, featuring sparkling statements from editor and publisher Will Swaim–described gobbling antidepressants in at least one account and quoted cursing like Dick Cheney in another. Best boss you’ll ever have!

APRIL 5: Mass (Media) Hysteria

What the District folk have accomplished is pretty amazing, actually. They took all of the experience gained from years of running a successful weekly, abandoned it completely and in a few short months built the foundation to relaunch in a whole new city. That takes some chutzpah.

MARCH 18: Ex-OC Weekly chief will stir it up in Long Beach

Swaim wanted to call his paper the Scorpion, after a Russian attack submarine parked next to the Queen Mary. But his advertising staff vetoed the idea. “We’re trying to sell ad space to Macy’s,” they told him.

MARCH 12: Pounding the Beat

There has been, even if you haven’t noticed, an exit stampede of panicky journalists and people who hang out with journalists (ad sellers, distributors, drummers) from the alternative newspaper the OC Weekly in recent weeks, growing stronger in recent days. Conditions there had, reportedly, grown unworkable. Take the comic Dilbert and mix it up with Bad Lieutenant and Reservoir Dogs (two films we happened to view in one evening. We still don’t feel so hot), and that’s about what life had become there.

FEBRUARY 28: Culture War at Village Voice - Guess Who Won?

“I took them at their word when they said they really like what I do,” says Will Swaim, the ex-publisher and editor of OC Weekly. “And my sense is, if you like what I do, leave me the fuck alone.”

FEBRUARY 5: 4 days and 3 goodbyes to O.C. notables

Mike brought Swaim a sampler of fine Churchills that must have set him back $200, and that, combined with the bottle of Maker’s Mark that Squeeze OC editor Iris Yokoi brought him, made for one pleasant evening as far as I was concerned. Thanks for sharing, Will.

JANUARY 26: Founding editor of OC Weekly resigns

“It was one of those things bubbling there for a while, and you get clarity one day,” Swaim said. “It was a Zen moment. It sounds naive, but I imagined myself retiring at the Weekly one day. I felt I was building an institution that was going to outlast me.”

JANUARY 25: O.C. Weekly editor Swaim resigns

“I hate to sound vague, but it just really is, broadly speaking, philosophical differences about how the papers should be run,” he said. “They know how to run their papers and I’m sure they’ll be wildly successful with ours, but I’m just not the right guy for the job.”

Tags: From The District