Lacter/margin/jan4/dt1st

It’s been a strange week. It always is during the period between Christmas and New Year’s, as so much of L.A.’s business world takes a breather in preparation for the coming year. Perversely, newsrooms tend to be fairly active during this period, what with year-in-review issues taking up most of the time.

And so it was for the Business Journal last week, as our team worked away on this week’s Deals of the Year package as usual, an informative look at the previous 12 months’ worth of mergers, public offerings, investments, contract signings and government projects. Go through those 50 deals and you’ll get a better idea of what makes Los Angeles tick.

While I’m very proud of the deals issue along with last week’s economic outlook section I’m also looking forward to 1999, and most especially the resumption of normal business activity. It’s downright eerie to be in a newsroom where the phones aren’t ringing and the faxes aren’t piling up. Of course, it’s hard to beat the rush-hour traffic.

Mark Lacter

Editor