L.A. Weekly Postpones Launch of O.C. Edition : Media: The tabloid’s president says a major staff shake-up has nothing to do with the delay.

L.A. Weekly, an acerbic, artsy tabloid, confirmed Monday that it is postponing plans to start an Orange County edition.

That news comes just days after L.A. Weekly fired its editor-in-chief, Kit Rachlis. Five writers quit in protest. Weekly President Gary Horowitz said Monday that the staff shake-up is unrelated to the delay of the Orange County edition.

The Weekly, which reports a circulation of 170,000, is moving its offices from Silver Lake to Hollywood--into the old Hollywood Reporter building at Sunset and Vine. The move, Horowitz said, is the reason for the delay.

“We’re still hiring” for the Orange County edition, he said.

Steve Buel, who was hired last month to be editor of the Orange County edition, is serving as interim editor of L.A. Weekly, Horowitz said. Buel was formerly editor and part-owner of an alternative publication, The Spectrum, based in Little Rock, Ark.

The Weekly’s general manager, Paulette Taix, said in a report published last week that the Orange County edition will begin in April.

But Horowitz said Monday, “It may be far earlier than that. We just don’t know.”

The Weekly’s editor-in-chief, Rachlis, was fired over editorial and managerial differences with the newspaper’s upper management, The Times reported Friday. Rachlis said in an interview that the publisher, Michael Sigman, felt the Weekly had become “too intellectual, too serious.”

Rachlis joined the Weekly four years ago after serving as executive editor of New York’s Village Voice.