The paper covers music, arts, film, theater, culture, and other local news in the Los Angeles area.

Jay Levin put together an investment group that included actor Michael Douglas, Burt Kleiner, Joe Benadon, and Pete Kameron.

The majority of the LA Weekly's initial staff members[a] came from the Austin Sun,[b] a similar-natured bi-weekly, which had recently ceased publication.

[5] Levin also retained many of the writers he had earlier brought to the Los Angeles Free Press, and installed Davidow as editor of the arts and entertainment section.

LA Weekly'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.

[21][22] The paper won journalism awards before and after this transition, with two of its news writers, Patrick Range McDonald and Gene Maddaus, winning the Los Angeles Press Club's nod for "Journalist of the Year".

In December 2017, it was revealed that the new owners of Semanal Media LLC included "David Welch, a Los Angeles-based attorney with ties to the cannabis industry; philanthropist Kevin Xu, an investor with biotech firm Mebo International; attorney Steve Mehr; boutique hotelier Paul Makarechian; real estate developer Mike Mugel; and Southern California investor Andy Bequer", all residents of Orange County, California.

[29] In December 2014, LA Weekly announced that it was discontinuing the awards, citing the publication's desire to focus on events that would promote its profitability.

Some of the publication's recent notable writers are Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold, who left in early 2012; and Nikki Finke, who blogged about the film industry through the Weekly's website and published a print column in the paper each week, leaving in June 2009 after the blog she founded, Deadline Hollywood Daily, was acquired by an online firm.

[34] Though some speculated that Jill Stewart was guaranteed for the position,[35] the job quickly went to Drex Heikes, formerly of the Los Angeles Times.

In June 2022, the Los Angeles Press Club named news reporter Isai Rocha as its "Journalist of the Year" for print publications under 50,000 in circulation at the 64th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards.