By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer on FishbowlLA, February 2012
In late February 2012, the impending departure of Jonathan Gold from LA Weekly back to the LA Times started to substantially affect the alt-weekly’s staff mood. Amy Scattergood, the editor of LA Weekly’s Squid Ink food blog, posted her 5 Stages of Grief piece working through the loss.
Then
Jonathan Gold had been at LA Weekly since 2008 — the second of his two LA Times exits and re-entrances across his career. His Counter Intelligence column at the Weekly had been one of the post-Pulitzer foundations of the paper’s substantially-rebuilt food-coverage infrastructure across the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Gold’s 2012 return to the LA Times was the second of his three major newspaper transitions. The 2012 return — which would continue until his death in July 2018 — was structurally a return to a substantially larger institutional platform.
Amy Scattergood’s 5 Stages of Grief framing was characteristically witty alt-weekly editorial.
Matthew Fleischer’s FishbowlLA framing was warmly observational.
Now
Jonathan Gold’s LA Times tenure continued from 2012 through his July 2018 death from pancreatic cancer at 57. The post-2018 Gold cycle has produced substantial subsequent retrospective coverage; the 2015 City of Gold documentary remains the central documentary about his career.
Amy Scattergood continued at LA Weekly through the 2017 ownership-and-staff-cut cycle. She has continued in food writing across multiple subsequent outlets.
LA Weekly itself has continued in substantially reduced form under post-2017 ownership.
The 2012 piece reads now as a documented moment of LA-alt-press transition — captured in the window between Gold’s LA Times departure and his eventual death six years later.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.