FishbowlLA

Gustavo Arellano takes the OC Weekly editor-in-chief job — November 2011

By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer on FishbowlLA, November 2011

In late November 2011, Gustavo Arellano — the Ask A Mexican columnist who had been OC Weekly’s managing editor for the previous 18 months — was named the paper’s editor-in-chief. He took over from Ted Kissell, who had announced his resignation that same day. Kissell had been with the paper since 2007. The original FishbowlLA framing tracked the transition as one of the more substantive OC alt-weekly editorial moves of the year.

Then

Gustavo Arellano had been OC Weekly’s most visible byline for years prior to taking the EIC role. His ¡Ask A Mexican! column had been a Voice Media Group-wide syndicated franchise; his subsequent books Orange County: A Personal History (2008) and Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America (2012) had been building his broader literary-and-cultural profile. The 2010-2011 managing-editor tenure had been the formal preparation step for the EIC handover.

Ted Kissell had been the paper’s editor across a substantial 2007-2011 period. His tenure had spanned the broader VMG ownership-and-strategy transitions of the era — including the 2012 separation of Backpage from VMG (covered in batch 6’s Ashton Kutcher piece) and the broader VMG editorial-investment cycle that had defined the paper across the late 2000s.

The original FishbowlLA framing — by then-FBLA editor Matthew Fleischer — treated the handover as straightforwardly important. OC Weekly was, in 2011, still one of the more substantive American alt-weeklies; the EIC role was a substantial editorial appointment in the broader VMG system.

Now

Gustavo Arellano ran OC Weekly as editor-in-chief through 2017, when he resigned in protest over staff layoffs and editorial cuts imposed by the paper’s new ownership. His exit was one of the most-publicly-discussed alt-weekly editor departures of the late 2010s; the OC Weekly under subsequent leadership continued for a short period before the November 2019 shutdown that ended the paper’s print-and-digital operation.

Arellano moved to the LA Times shortly after his OC Weekly exit, where he has continued as one of the paper’s most-cited columnists — particularly on Southern California Latino politics, culture, and immigration. His !Ask A Mexican! column franchise ended with the OC Weekly’s broader VMG affiliation, but his broader byline portfolio has continued to expand across the post-2017 period.

Ted Kissell continued in editorial work after his OC Weekly exit, including subsequent magazine-and-editorial positions across the years. His broader career has continued in journalism and editorial work.

OC Weekly itself shut down in November 2019 under the broader VMG-successor ownership pressure (the paper had been spun off from VMG along with other alt-weekly properties in the 2012 Backpage separation). The shutdown was one of the more substantial American alt-weekly closures of the late 2010s contraction cycle; the void in Orange County alt-press coverage has been partially filled by the Voice of OC nonprofit news operation and various subsequent independent ventures.

The 2011 piece reads now as a documented moment when the OC Weekly was still operating in its post-Backpage-but-pre-2019-shutdown high-functioning editorial era. Arellano’s six-year EIC tenure that the 2011 piece initiated was the paper’s last substantial stable-leadership period before the ownership-and-strategy turbulence that produced the 2017 exit and the 2019 closure.

Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.

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