Who's Your Urban Daddy?

One of the hardest things to do with an urban magazine website is to put forth a tangible "vibe" that authentically reflects the city being showcased. The L.A. outpost of UrbanDaddy.com manages this, we think, in spades, with a slick graphic design and navigation template that screams wood-paneled, cigar smoke filled VIP room. The Los Angeles editor of Urban Daddy is Lonny Pugh (pictured), at the helm since the summer of 2007. He joined the company after a four-year stint with LA.com and has also freelanced for Los Angeles magazine and People.com. One of our first questions for Pugh via e-mail was, naturally, to dig deeper into his personal "urban daddy" credentials. "I grew up in Oregon," he explains. "Then I moved east to go to Boston University and came to Los Angeles right after graduation in 2000. I turn 32 next week and am very, very much on the [singles] market." Pugh writes most of the L.A. content himself and is quick to caution that this is no advertorial operation. He assiduously visits for example restaurant and nightclub sites while still under construction, helping in the process grow his website's daily email blast to 150,000 subscribers. As a whole, he says the Urban Daddy empire has 2.5 million registered users. In terms of record-breaking L.A. flavored content, Pugh - as much as this is possible via e-mail - does not hesitate. "The California Cougar Convention," he writes. "The numbers on that story were absolutely out of control. To this day it lives on in infamy." "There has been a lot of focus testing over the years to see how our readers engage with the website as opposed to the emails," Pugh continues. "The iPhone app has been another big platform for us; people seem to have really embraced that." A newer site-wide feature available at Urban Daddy L.A., The "Dashboard", aims to provide a cheeky interactive summary of what's going down in Lalaland. Among the barometers that can be checked there are a "Tightness of Pants Index." Pugh currently resides in the Los Feliz area, citing Malo, Thirsty Crow and Covell as some of his favorite neighborhood haunts. It would be very easy for Urban Daddy to re-purpose press releases, but Pugh says the privately owned company is firmly committed to the other end of the hipster spectrum. "We work hard to make sure we are emailing our readers with stories they haven’t gotten anywhere else," he insists. "A man or woman’s in-box is a precious, cluttered and crazy thing, and we want to rise above the noise." "We are delivering something actionable," Pugh affirms. "We might be tracking, internally, an upcoming noteworthy restaurant opening for two years. But we only share it with our readers when they can pick up the phone, make a reservation for this Friday night and go see it for themselves."

Fishbowl

Who's Your Urban Daddy?

Richard Horgan

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Richard Horgan