Riordan's weekly on indefinite hold as he goes North.

FORMER Mayor Richard Riordan's effort establish a weekly newspaper has been shelved with his appointment as education secretary in the nascent Schwarzenegger administration.

Riordan did not return calls seeking comment, but Eric Almendral, the LA. Examiner's creative director and a Riordan aide, confirmed the indefinite hiatus.

"The project is going to be on the back burner as he adjusts to his new position and makes the transition," Almendral said.

After coming out with a prototype in January, the paper was supposed to launch in June. The on-sale date was then pushed back to September and further delayed as Riordan became embroiled in the recall of Gov. Gray Davis. Meantime, some of the paper's key personnel started drifting away.

Ken Layne and Matt Welch, who operated the L.A. Examiner Web site and were brought on by Riordan as editor and associate editor, respectively, have moved on. Layne has relocated to Reno, Nev., and Welch has taken a fill-in position at Reason magazine.

In an e-mail, Welch said it had been "five months since I had even the faintest glimmer of hope that Richard Riordan would be involved in publishing a newspaper called the L.A. Examiner."

"For nearly every one of the managers on the prototype, the corpse has been cold for a long time," he wrote.