Donnelly was the deputy editor of the L.A. Weekly from 2002 to 2008. Before that, he was the arts editor of New Times Los Angeles and editor in chief of the seminal Los Angeles pop-culture magazine Bikini. Donnelly earned a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley. He started dreaming up Slake several years ago when he asked himself a simple question: why doesn’t a city as cool and vital as Los Angeles have a publication as cool and vital as the city?