By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Kate Coe on FishbowlLA, May 2009
In mid-May 2009, Kit Rachlis resigned as editor-in-chief of Los Angeles magazine. Executive editor Mary Melton was elevated to the top job. Folio reported that Rachlis’ exit had nothing to do with the controversial June cover story the magazine was about to ship. The hand-over installed an editor who would run the title for the rest of the decade.
Then
Rachlis had been one of LA’s most-bylined long-form editors before taking the LA Magazine post — earlier in his career at LA Weekly and the Village Voice, with substantial influence on what the broader U.S. alt-weekly and city-magazine landscape looked like in the 1990s and 2000s. His LA Magazine tenure had produced substantive feature-journalism even as the broader city-magazine category was contracting nationally.
Mary Melton, the longtime executive editor under Rachlis, was the obvious internal successor. The Folio framing was that her elevation was a continuity move rather than a strategic reset.
Now
Mary Melton ran Los Angeles magazine as editor-in-chief from 2009 through approximately 2018 — a substantial nine-year tenure that defined the magazine’s voice across the entire decade. Her tenure produced multiple ASME finalist nominations, including a 2012 General Excellence finalist nod. Melton’s broader influence on city-magazine journalism extended to her president-of-the-City-and-Regional-Magazine-Association term in the mid-2010s.
Kit Rachlis continued in editorial roles after his 2009 LA Magazine exit, including senior positions at The American Prospect and various other long-form journalism platforms. The career arc — alt-weekly to city-magazine to national-political-magazine editorial leadership — has been one of the recognizable post-2009 trajectories for senior LA-magazine editors.
Los Angeles magazine itself has continued through multiple subsequent editorial regimes after Melton. The print product has shifted to a less-frequent publication cadence; the digital operation has expanded; the broader city-magazine category nationally has continued to contract, with sister publications in other cities facing similar structural pressures.
The 2009 resignation reads now as one of the small documented hand-overs that turned out to be more consequential than it appeared — Melton’s subsequent nine-year run produced more of the magazine’s defining identity than Rachlis’ had.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.