Jay Levin
| Jay Levin | |
|---|---|
| Born | New York |
| Occupation | Newspaper editor, writer, entrepreneur |
Jay Levin is an American journalist who was founder, editor and CEO of the LA Weekly, one of the seminal newspapers of the weekly alternative press in the United States, until 1992. Currently he is founding President of The Big EQ Campaign, a non-profit organization that has undertaken a mass marketing campaign to mobilize the public to mandate that social and emotional learning skills be included in every schools curricum.
Jay Levin was born in New York, the son of a tool-and-die maker.
Jay Levin is best known as the founder of the LA Weekly, of which he was editor-in-chief and president for many years before selling what he had grown to be the largest and most successful city weekly in the country. Levin put together an investment group that included actor Michael Douglas, Burt Kleiner, Joe Benadon and Pete Kameron. The publication's first issue featured a group of female comedians, including the then-little known Sandra Bernhard, on its cover. Subsequent issues featured exposés on the Los Angeles basin's air quality and U.S. interventionism in Central America. The LA Weekly was also notable for its coverage of independent cinema and the Los Angeles music scene.
Levin retained many of the writers he had brought to the Free Press and hired Joie Davidow to edit the arts and entertainment section. Davidow produced a comprehensive calendar section and explored undiscovered fashion districts, discovering new designers.
In 1985, the LA Weekly launched a glossy magazine, L.A. Style, which Davidow edited. L.A. Style was sold to American Express Publishing Co. in 1988 and merged with Buzz magazine in 1993.
By 1990, the LA Weekly achieved a circulation of 165,000, making it the largest urban weekly in the US.
Levin stepped down as president of the LA Weekly in 1992 in order to found a progressive cable TV network and was succeeded by Michael Sigman as publisher and Kit Rachlis as editor. The newspaper was sold to Stern Publishing, owner of the Village Voice, in 1994; in October 2005, it was sold to the Phoenix, Arizona-based Village Voice Media. In September 2012, it was transferred to the Denver-based Voice Media Group in a management buyout.
Levin founded the start-up progressive channel, Planet Central TV, and a website and magazine called Real Talk L.A.
For the last 15 years Levin has split his time between starting, growing or turning around media properties such as TheFix.com; and on life coaching focused on teaching life mastery; helping people reorient their lives, careers and relationships without spending years in therapy. Most recently he has been working with 15 to 20 CEOs on becoming socially conscious and effective managers while helping them elevate the bottom-line performance of their businesses and grow their companies.
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