OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW : A COMPANY KNOWN FOR AGGRESSIVENESS TAKES OVER TWO LOS ANGELES WEEKLIES.

Byline: Reed Johnson Daily News Staff Writer

New Times Inc., the aggressive Phoenix-based chain of alternative weeklies, rode into Los Angeles earlier this summer loaded for bear.

Within days, they'd bagged two trophies, Los Angeles View and the Reader, home-grown publications whose unlucky editorial staffs barely knew what hit them.

It was an ugly scene. Heads rolled. Angry words flew in print.

When the dust had settled, it was clear that a purge had occurred on a scale seldom seen outside Hollywood boardrooms or old Soviet commissariats. Apart from their venerable mastheads, soon to disappear, the View and the Reader are all but extinct.

Soon to be in their place is New Times, self-styled enfant terrible and ardent foe of McJournalism, despised by rivals for its corporate raider tactics, legendary for its butt-kicking editors and spit-on-the-floor, take-no-prisoners brand of investigative journalism.

Does New Times, which is already publishing under the Los Angeles View logo, live up to its reputation? Should the rival L.A. Weekly staff be trembling down to the soles of their blue suede Doc Martens?

The easy answer is: It's too early to tell.

It didn't take long for New Times to impose its hipper, cleaner design blueprint on its latest acquisitions. Over the years, the New Times brain trust - executive editor Michael Lacey and financial overseer Jim Larkin - have perfected a visual formula of heavy typefaces, artfully manipulated cover portraits of the week's guest scoundrels, and high-contrast black-and-white reproduction.

Rivals rightly accuse New Times of binding its seven papers, in cities as diverse as Houston, San Francisco and Miami, with a single graphic straitjacket.

But compared to its immediate predecessors, New Times is visually far less noisy and far more coherent.

Trouble is, the lack of clutter is partly attributable to a shortage, thus far, of editorial product.

Staffing shouldn't be the problem. Two former Los Angeles Times men, editor Rick Barrs and managing editor Jack Cheevers, are helming the show. New Times also cherry-picked two veteran movie critics, Peter Rainer (late of the L.A. Times and Los Angeles magazine) and Michael Sragow (the New Yorker, et al.). Also aboard are columnists Jill Stewart and Steve Lowery.

That takes care of L.A.'s leading industry and whatever subject the eloquently omnivorous Lowery decides to chew over (this week it's celebrity wineries).

But finding movie critics and celebrity gossip in L.A. is like finding sand in the Mojave.

The rest of the editorial content has been soft-focused. This week's cover story is an insightful if insiderish profile of holy roller-turned-alt-rocker Sam Phillips. The previous week's, headlined ``Dr. Dick,'' was a lengthy piece on alleged malpractice by Culver City penile enlargement specialist Dr. Melvyn Rosenstein.

In other cities, New Times has made a name for itself by putting various sacred cows through an industrial mulcher. The City of Angels' powers that be aren't likely to lose sleep over exposes of men with ``Frankenstein'' genitals.

This week, New Times is running an in-house ad, a witty B-movie parody, depicting the paper as a rampaging Hercules, busting his chains and flogging L.A. into submission. But, aside from its arts coverage, the paper so far is more like the 98-pound guy who should be bulking up instead of looking at himself in the mirror.

For now, the L.A. Weekly - run by the company that owns the Village Voice - has the bigger biceps. That's not surprising. Its writers have been on the scene longer. They have more sources. They know the players.

But New Times has made a promising start. Given their enviable record in other towns of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted, they're a good bet to give the Weekly a run for its money.

The times, indeed, are a-changin'.

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Photo: no caption (Los Angeles weeklies)

John McCoy/Daily N ews