The Newsroom
June Maravich
Opinion Editor · With the Times since 2001
June Maravich edits the editorial and letters pages, a job she describes as “refereeing a hundred-year argument the neighborhood is having with itself.” She joined the Times in 2001 and still reads every letter, including yours.
Recent work
- The Night Mayor Had Two Hundred Thousand Followers. He Needed One Witness.
For four weeks a sick man walked this neighborhood at night, narrating his illness to an audience that mostly cheered. Then a counter server did the one thing no one was filming.
August 25, 2026
- The Only Cool Room on My Block Is the One We All Own
For four days in July, the reading room the county nearly let go was doing a job no private business in the neighborhood will do: letting people stay without buying anything.
July 27, 2026
- The Farmers' Market Lot Is the Closest Thing We Have to a Town Square
Six days a week it is asphalt for parking. On Sunday it does the civic work a plaza is supposed to do, and almost never does.
July 6, 2026
- In Defense of the Impossible Left Turn
Hollywood's traffic is not a problem to be solved. It is a civic character we have been living with for a hundred years, and it has taught us more than we admit.
June 23, 2026
- Preservation and New Housing Can Share a Block. Hollywood Has Already Proved It.
We keep staging the fight between saving old buildings and building new homes as if the two cannot occupy the same street. The neighborhood's own history says otherwise.
June 16, 2026
- A Night Market Arrives, and Asks the Neighborhood a Question
The new evening market on Cahuenga is a welcome thing. Whether it becomes part of the neighborhood or merely happens to it will depend on the parts nobody photographs.
April 24, 2026
- They May Take the Blue Box off My Corner, and I Will Miss the Ceremony of It
The Postal Service is thinning out its low-volume collection boxes. Our columnist makes the case for the small daily rite of mailing a letter by hand.
February 10, 2026
- The Week the City Admits It Has Weather
Los Angeles spends most of the year pretending the sky is a fixed backdrop. Then it rains, everyone drives like it's the first time, and the town becomes briefly honest about itself.
January 16, 2026
- Between Seasons on a Street That Won't Sit Still
Late November finds the Boulevard in the lull before the holidays and the awards rush — swept, fenced, half-open, and quietly waiting for the town to go back to work.
November 26, 2025
- The Man Who Stops Traffic for Eight-Year-Olds Is the Calmest Person I Know
Every school morning a crossing guard turns a dangerous corner into an orderly one and asks nothing back. Our columnist has been scheduling her mornings around watching him work.
September 16, 2025
- On a Rainy Tuesday, the Best Seat in the City Is an Almost-Empty Movie Palace
There is a particular pleasure in an afternoon show at an old revival house, half a dozen strangers scattered in a thousand seats, watching something that was never meant for a phone.
February 9, 2025
- A Year and a Half Without the One Quiet Room We All Share
The library's reading room closed this month for a retrofit it genuinely needs. That doesn't make the coming fifteen months, without the only free quiet room in the neighborhood, any shorter.
December 19, 2024
- The Jacarandas Are Early This Year, and I Am Not Ready
For two weeks in late spring the neighborhood drops purple all over its own sidewalks and stays light past eight. Our columnist would like it to slow down.
May 30, 2024
- The City of Things That Exist on Paper
A park over the freeway. A skate park under it. We are very good at drawing the future here, and less practiced at pouring it.
May 22, 2024
- The Newsstand Is Down to One Full Rack, and I Still Make the Trip
The corner kiosk has been shrinking for a decade, one rack at a time. Our columnist keeps buying from it anyway, for reasons that have little to do with the magazines.
March 14, 2024