My Offbeat Career with the Long Beach Post

My first encounter with the Long Beach Post was during a summer 2008 lunch at the downtown Fish Grill with Verizon VP Mike Murray and former USC and College Football Hall of Fame running back Sam “Bam” Cunningham.

I was unprepared as to why I’d been invited to this get-together, but Murray explained it. He’d been a fan of my Sunday morning KLON R&B show and brought up a movie pitch he and Cunningham were preparing based on the USC football team’s “all-black” backfield, which beat the all-white University of Alabama 42–21 in Birmingham on Sept. 12, 1970.

This result and Cunningham’s performance reportedly helped convince the University of Alabama and its fans to let Coach Bear Bryant integrate Southern football. As a Bryant assistant said, “Sam Cunningham did more to integrate Alabama in 60 minutes than Martin Luther King Jr. did in 20 years.” Cunningham died on Sept. 7, 2021.

Murray asked me to suggest some music popular in the late 60s, early 70s that might fit into the premise of the movie pitch. During this phase of our lunch, Shaun Lumachi showed up. I recall suggesting “Show Me,” an energetic soul romp by Joe Tex for the team’s trip to the South, and similar recordings for their movie soundtrack. Murray and the company were impressed with the recommendation.

Toward the end of lunch, Lumachi asked if I’d be willing to contribute a music column to the Long Beach Post, which he had co-founded with CSULB friend Robert Garcia on Feb. 13, 2007, two months prior to the April 11, 2007, first edition of the District Weekly by former OC Weekly writers. The earliest columns in the Post were largely reprints from other local news websites, a practice which LBReport’s Bill Pearl loudly protested.

I told Lumachi of my paid reporting gig for the Beachcomber and he didn’t see the conflict of interest. At about the same time, Garcia announced for City Council, and after that and his role as mayor, he apparently dropped his involvement with the paper.

Beginning in August 2009, I wrote about three dozen or so columns for the Post under their editor, Ryan ZumMallen, who expected contributors to increase their production. Since I was unpaid, and writing for the Beachcomber, I simply dropped my column, which has since been scrubbed from the Post internet site in late 2010.

During my year-or-so writing for the paper, my spouse and I attended several staff parties at law offices on Ocean Boulevard and one at Ristorante, a now shuttered restaurant near the Long Beach Airport. I recall Garcia and Lumachi attended these events, with Mayor Bob Foster at the law office get-together.

On April Fool’s Day, 2011, the Post rolled out its debut print issue, much like the Grunion Gazette and the Beachcomber, a short-lived experiment as their print issues tended to languish in their newsstands.

On Dec. 3, 2011, Shaun Lumachi was killed in an automobile accident at the Florida Keys. His stake in the Post passed to his widow, Deziré Lumachi, who was named interim publisher.

Also, in 2013, former Long Beach police officer Cindy Allen became a partner in the Long Beach Post, Inc. and was named publisher.  Finally, in 2013, a print edition of the Long Beach Register was begun by the Orange County Register, but shuttered after a few months.

Though they maintained their ownership stake in the Post for a short time, when Robert Garcia announced for mayor, which he won in 2014, Deziré Lumachi and Garcia sold their remaining stake in the Post to Allen and her ETA Advertising agency.

In June 2018, local businessman John Molina and the Pacific6 community investment partnership purchased the Post under Pacific Community Media. With these deep pockets, the Post commenced a series of hirings, the most notable of which was Tim Grobaty from the Press-Telegram in May 2018.

On July 8, 2018, I went to an East Long Beach church meeting room to hear about the current status of the Post. The speaker representing the Post spoke about his news site, but then launched into a rather pointed critique of the Beachcomber, falsely claiming articles in the paper were really advertorials. To avoid disruption, instead of correcting him, I silently left the meeting.

Under Molina’s ownership, the Post maintained news coverage, though in 2023, they erected a paywall to make it difficult to read articles without a subscription.

On March 5, 2024, Grobaty announced his retirement from the Post. About two weeks later, after some union organizing activity, the staff was reduced from 17 to eight. Long Beach Journalism Initiative, said that nine of its members were laid off, while three surviving members went on strike.

On March 24, 2024, Long Beach Post publisher Melissa Evans wrote to her staff, “four months ago, the Post separated from our for-profit ownership, quickly became a nonprofit and retained nearly all of our previous staff based on the promise of several large donations, some of which did not materialize. As of Friday, our full-time staff is now roughly 50% smaller, consisting of six exceptionally talented journalists and two tenacious business-side employees.”