Flood of New L.A.-Centric Magazines Hitting Town.

PERHAPS it's all the dot-corn companies pouring money into advertising these days, or maybe it's the death of Buzz magazine last year, but suddenly L.A. has become ground zero in an explosion of new geographic-based lifestyle and technology magazines.

To name a few of the new titles: Angeleno, a giant glossy city magazine that launched in September; Channel Los Angeles, another city mag whose first issue hit local newsstands two weeks ago; Museums Los Angeles, a digest-sized primer on the local art scene that will appear in late November; Digital Coast Reporter, a trade magazine for the local new-media industry that popped up in May; and The Zone News, another publication focusing on the local new-media business that launches this week.

The two new-media magazines have found a growing niche, one that is bursting with potential for ad revenues from hungry Internet firms looking to build a brand name. It's harder to understand the rationale for the two new city magazines, given such costly failures as Buzz, New West, California and LA Style -- and the fact that the only survivor of the city-magazine battle, Los Angeles magazine, has been losing money for years.

At 10.5 inches by 13 inches, Angeleno is almost more a coffee-table book than a magazine. The new bimonthly glossy is published by Michael Kong, who launched a similar magazine in Chicago six years ago called Chicago Social. Kong recognizes that L.A. has been unforgiving to city magazines in the past, but thinks his format will make it.

"What we're trying to do is demonstrate to advertisers that for their dollar, they will get more of the readers who will spend money with them than they can get at other magazines," Kong said.

The inaugural issue came out in September with a press run of 60,000 copies, which are distributed at newsstands and mailed to a select group of highly wealthy individuals in the 19 most affluent neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

In format, Angeleno isn't much different from Los Angeles magazine and a host of failed imitators, with a focus on fashion, fine dining, celebrity interviews and luxury lifestyle. It is dramatically bigger, though, and more photo-intensive, with exhaustive spreads on fashion and pictures of L.A.'s rich and famous at social events.

Like Angeleno, Channel Los Angeles was started by a magazine publisher in another city (in this case, Miami) who figures he can import the winning formula to L.A. Richard Bronson, a former securities dealer and current nightclub owner, says advertisers have been enthusiastic about the new publication.

"Why the other (city magazines) didn't make it, I don't know," said Bronson, who notes that he was a fan of Buzz. "We've been gratified by the response from readers and advertisers so far."

Channel Los Angeles is sent to about 100,000 affluent readers in the area. It is, again, a glossy focusing on luxury lifestyles, fashion, the L.A. social scene and celebrity interviews.

Museums Los Angeles is the latest entry in a chain of museum guides in major cities around the country. The digest contains discount tickets good at local museums, exhibit listings and articles about art. All 150,000 copies will be distributed free to museum members, hotels, boutiques, newsstands and airlines.

"My goal is to increase museum membership and museum attendance," said Larry Warsh, publisher and founder of New York-based Museums Magazines, which has similar publications in New York, Washington and Boston, and is soon to launch in Chicago and Miami.

Digital Coast Reporter is the Left Coast incarnation of Silicon Alley Reporter, a trade magazine covering New York's new-media industry. It actually started a year and a half ago as a 16-page supplement to the latter publication; it became a standalone in May.

L.A.'s new-media industry might be small in comparison to the Silicon Valley's, but it's attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and now apparently has enough clout to justify at least two trade publications.

"If (Los Angeles) is a real market for new media, there will be multiple magazines covering the industry. I encourage people to start new magazines there, because there should be multiple news sources," said Digital Coast Reporter Editor and CEO Jason McCabe-Calacanis, who is based in New York.

The competition for Digital Coast Reporter comes in the form of The Zone News, which gets its name from local venture capital outfit Zone Ventures (which provided 100 percent of the funding for the new publication).

Publisher Richard Geist and Editor Elizabeth Biley Andrion seek to create a Southern California version of Upside, a magazine that initially focused on Silicon Valley technology entrepreneurs but is now more of a national publication. Upside was also funded by Zone Ventures Managing Director Tim Draper.

Assistant Managing Editor Dan Turner writes a weekly column on marketing for the Los Angeles Business Journal.