I GOT HOME YESTERDAY and there was a fat manila envelope in the mail. Sadly, it wasn’t stuffed with small, unmarked bills — but it did contain something almost as nice: the prototype issue of the Los Angeles Examiner newspaper that Matt Welch and Ken Layne are starting with a little help from some guy named Riordan.

It looks very good, and it has a different feel from most alt-weeklies: no pretending that it’s put out by a bunch of 23-year-old hipsters in a basement, a pose that has grown increasingly lame as the actual readership, and staff age, of most alt-weeklies climbs toward the mid-40s. Instead, it’s a paper for actual adults. I like it. Not as much as an envelope stuffed with cash, but . . . .