By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, August 2012
In early August 2012, FishbowlLA covered the LA Times’s promotion of Joy Press to Books and Culture editor, succeeding Jon Thurber. The original framing noted the LA-journalism-couple angle: Press and her husband Simon Reynolds were “still going strong” as a critic couple.
Then
Joy Press had been a longtime Village Voice critic and editor before moving to the LA Times. The Books and Culture editor role placed her in charge of a substantial portion of the paper’s arts-and-ideas coverage at a moment when newspaper books coverage was under significant economic pressure.
Simon Reynolds — Press’s husband — was, and is, one of the most-cited music critics writing in English, author of Rip It Up and Start Again, Energy Flash, and Retromania.
Now
Joy Press moved into television-and-culture criticism and authored Stealing the Show: How Women Are Revolutionizing Television (2018). Simon Reynolds has continued as one of the most-prolific music critics writing in English.
The 2012 piece reads now as a small documented moment of the LA Times’s arts-coverage editorial structure — captured before the further contraction of newspaper books-and-culture coverage.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.