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Canalis: Weekend to become TimesOC on April 9

By John CanalisAssistant Managing Editor 
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Weekend launched two years ago with the promise of delivering countywide arts, entertainment, food, cultural and lifestyle stories.

Our storytellers have sipped Sri Lankan jackfruit curry in Anaheim, chatted with Lily Tomlin about her childhood before her show in Costa Mesa, visited a Ghanaian immigration detainee in Irvine, met with a teacher trying to save an ancient Indian language and visited butcher shops in Stanton.

These and hundreds of other stories have shown the rich cultural life within our county lines. And we want to cover a greater variety of topics in this weekly supplement. That’s going to mean some changes.

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Weekend will be rebranded TimesOC on April 9. This isn’t just a title change. We’re expanding into newsier stories, but Weekend staples like Sarah Bennett’s food reviews, Tom Titus’ theater criticism and robust coverage of the visual and performing arts will continue.

But we want to include more news- and issue-driven stories, so we decided to change the name to reflect the broadened focus. Times Community News, which publishes Weekend, the Daily Pilot and three other titles, will produce TimesOC. We’ll get some help from Voice of OC, a nonprofit news agency known for watchdog reporting. The Voice is widely read online, and our new partnership will take some of their stories into print.

There is, of course, a robust digital component: You can sign up to receive the TimesOC email newsletter at latimes.com/newsletters and read more stories at latimes.com/OC or voiceofoc.org.

And there’s still plenty of opportunity to smudge your fingers and thumbs with paper and ink. TimesOC will publish 104,000 copies a week and, just like Weekend, be inserted into every Sunday edition of The Times delivered and sold in Orange County.

Enjoy the first issue two weeks from today.

JOHN CANALIS is executive editor of Times Community News.

John Canalis

John Canalis works with editorial and finance to execute the editorial budget and serves as a liaison with the business side to develop and fine-tune initiatives that generate new revenue. He coordinates with senior management, Human Resources and the L.A. Times Guild on labor-related and personnel issues. He is a member of the management bargaining team and has oversight over implementation of the collective bargaining agreement. Canalis previously served as executive editor of Times Community News. He came to The Times in 2010 from the Long Beach Press-Telegram, where he worked in multiple roles, including as business/city editor, assistant city editor, assistant editorial pages editor, columnist and county government reporter. A lifelong Southern California resident, Canalis has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Cal State Long Beach and an MBA from Pepperdine University.

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