The Planning Report, the monthly about Los Angeles and So Cal planning and development published by David Abel, is letting its readers vote online on which of the following "in-progress mega-projects will confer the greatest benefit on L.A.?"

LA Live 33%
Grand Avenue Project 26%
Universal City Mixed-Use Development 10%
Build-out of Playa Vista 6%
None; mega-developments don't pay off 25%

Abel's TPR also publishes Metro Investment Report and VerdExchange News.

The president of the Southern California Broadcasters Association has a bone to pick with a recent L.A. Times house ad claiming the paper has more reach to offer advertisers than the area's top radio stations. From a footnoted post by Mary Beth Garber on the group's website:

Perhaps The LA Times should face the facts instead of distorting them. In the Los Angeles DMA, THE LA TIMES' daily circulation and readership has diminished every year since 2004. In that same time, the number of people listening to Radio each week in the LA market has increased each and every year.

On the average day, nearly 90% of the Adults 18+ in the Los Angeles market will spend over 3 hours with Radio, and 70% of that will be spent with just their favorite Radio station.

We don't question that THE LA TIMES could have a place at the table in a given media mix. We do question why they have to resort to distorting the facts in order to get there....

I'm also angry and appalled that one of the nation's largest newspapers would attack another medium based on such loosely gathered and poorly put together facts. I can only guess that by presenting their attack as an ad, instead of a news article, THE TIMES hoped to preserve their remaining journalistic integrity. No such luck.

And the correction o' the day: Oops, the Santa Monica psychotherapist isn't gay. "The reporter misunderstood the name of his partner and misinterpreted references in the conversation, and incorrectly assumed Graber to be gay," says a For the Record in today's Times.

Jimmy Fallon to take over for Conan O'Brien

The SNL alum will slide in when O'Brien comes out here to take over for Jay Leno, Kim Masters says in a look at the coming musical chairs of late-night TV. NPR

Paramount hires a top flack

It's Patti Röckenwagner, wife of Hans and the vice president of regional communications for Time Warner Cable. She'll be Brad Grey's exec VP of corporate communications. Nikki Finke

Marcus Allen appointment in trouble?

Kerry Cavanaugh reports that some City Council members are balking at paying the new city administrative officer $70,000 more than the departing Karen Sisson, making Allen the fourth-highest paid L.A. official. DN

Villaraigosa donor set to receive city land?

Developer J.H. Snyder has contributed $160,000 to the mayor's political and philanthropic causes and would receive three acres in the North Hollywood redevelopment area. Snyder's side says they already paid CRA market rate for the land. LAT

Mayor vetoes hiring of law firms

Villaraigosa blocked City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's request to bring in nine outside firms to handle cases arising from last year's May Day melee. It's only the mayor's third veto. DN

Urban falcons are contaminated

Peregrines in Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Francisco contain the highest levels of flame retardants found in any living organism worldwide. LAT, Breeze

Time's list of 100 people

LAT columnist Joel Stein worked the red carpet (see the video) for last night's Time 100 bash in New York. The list.

Regarding yesterday's item from the Daily Mail about LAPD Chief William Bratton advising the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, Bratton says there has been no contact between them:

I have had no conversations with Mr. Johnson, I have not spoken with any members of his administration and I have not been approached to act as an advisor as it relates to matters of crime reduction.

More at the Daily News' Mean Streets blog.

I never know what to really make of this data, but Scarborough Research has released its 2008 Newspaper Audience Ratings Report. It aims to estimate, based on telephone surveys, how many adults look at a newspaper's print edition or website in a seven-day period. For Nielsen's Southern California market area of 13.1 adults, here's the ranking:

OK, how about comparing the LAT's percentage of its market with the country's best-read papers? Nearly all major papers outperform the Times, some by a significant margin. Ranking after the jump:

Cal State Long Beach psychology professor Kevin MacDonald is a hero of the anti-Semitic crowd for writing that Jews have evolved as a tribal elite that conspires against the interests of "Europeans" and suggesting that college enrollment be restricted and taxes increased for Jews to fix inequities with white gentiles. Nazi ideology, he also wrote, "may well have been caused or at least greatly facilitated by the presence of Judaism as a very salient and successful racially exclusive antithetical group strategy within German society." Brad Greenberg in this week's Jewish Journal sits down with MacDonald, who is called "America's foremost anti-Semitic thinker" by some civil rights groups.

His three-volume critique of Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy" -- known collectively as "The Culture of Critique" and published by Praeger in 1994, 1998 and 1998 -- claims the religion discourages inclusion, eggs on anti-Semitism and uses study of Talmud to thin the reproduction of less intelligent members. The books have become sacred scripture for white supremacists, and a growing number of MacDonald's colleagues have urged the university to denounce his writings.

"He is repackaging traditional anti-Jewish beliefs in contemporary pseudo-scientific language," said Jeffrey Blutinger, a history professor leading the push against MacDonald. "If you think of classic anti-Jewish tropes of Jews as clannish, conspiratorial, opposed to Christendom, a threat to the nation, using contemporary ideas as a way of undermining traditional beliefs -- all of these show up in his writing."

[skip]

"The Nazi types are reading his stuff like it is the Bible," [Heidi] Beirich continued, "and they're using it to say why Jews should be exterminated, why they should be thrown out of the country -- because he says Jews are responsible for all this immigration that is destroying white culture. His books are like the new Bible of the movement."

Also: Jewish Journal editor Rob Eshman comments at KPCC on the meaning of Israel's 60th birthday.

Former KPCC reporter Doualy Xaykaothao showed up today reporting for National Public Radio from Thailand on the Myanmar relief efforts. Before joining KPCC last year, the Laotian-born Xaykaothao had reported and produced for various NPR shows. She's now listed on the NPR website as a freelance producer/reporter in Asia.

The seaside city has asked Ken Starr, dean of the Pepperdine Law School, to convene media and legal experts to help draft an ordinance that would control paparazzi swarms around local celebs. They're talking about possible buffer zones and a tax on the photogs. "We're coming up on another summer season. Let's hope we are not in store for another tsunami of paparazzi," Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich says. "Maybe they will think twice before shoving a camera in your face." Starr has plenty of experience in the tabloid realm as the prosecutor in the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Looks like LAPD chief William Bratton could be traveling out of the city more than ever. The mayor of London just announced that he has signed Bratton to help advise on how "zero tolerance of graffiti, fare-dodging and other minor crimes can prevent more serious offending," the Daily Mail reports.

The man who cleaned up the streets of New York is to help mastermind Boris Johnson's crime crackdown in London....

Mr Bratton, who is now head of Los Angeles police, oversaw reforms in bureaucracy and policing in New York which produced stunning results where crime rates nose-dived and quality of life soared.

"Bill Bratton can teach us a lot about reducing crime," a Tory source said. "Obviously, he's not going to be a day-today adviser but he will be on the end of a phone to offer help."

Council happy with Lindsey

Councilwoman Janice Hahn says, "We have great confidence in Gina Marie Lindsey," but acknowledges the way contracts are issued at LAX could be better. LAT, DN
Also: Lindsey disputes Seattle audit. Breeze

Fighting over the 405-101 interchange

This time the issue is whether some of the wildlife refuge there should be sacrificed to improve flow between the southbound 405 and northbound (or westbound) 101. DN

School official kept 'scrapbook' of relations with student

The dean who supervised assistant principal Stephen Rooney at Foshay Learning Center apparently knew of the abuses. LAT

Enviro groups sign off on Tejon Ranch project

Developer will set aside 178,000 wild acres in the Tehachapi range and make available 62,000 more for public uses. In exchange, environmental groups will not oppose the development of 26,000 homes, plus hotels, condominiums and golf courses, at the far end of the Grapevine along I-5. LAT

Betty Pleasant explains the whole black thing

In another column pushing Mark Ridley-Thomas over Bernard Parks in the Supervisor race, the Wave's Soulvine columnist tells some recent South L.A. history from when Mayor Jim Hahn dropped Parks as LAPD chief: "Even though I had serious problems with Parks as police chief, I was incensed by what all those white people were doing to him and I used the bully pulpit of my paper to help whip up rage against those people, to circle the wagons against those people who were bringing down a Black man. Our support for Parks had nothing to do with his being chief, and everything to do with his being Black. Yes, the instinct to close ranks racially does come to the fore, and to quote my grandpapa again, 'sometime it be like that.'" Pleasant was then city editor of the Sentinel. The Wave

Taco trucks get more coverage than corruption

Most Angelenos probably didn't notice last week's indictment of Bell Gardens city councilman Mario Beltran on seven felony theft counts, a felony perjury count and five misdemeanor counts for campaign disclosure violations, says L.A. sniper. CityBeat

Garcetti blogs tribute to Robert Nudelman

The director of preservation issues for Hollywood Heritage "was a friend and someone with whom I worked closely during the last seven years to ensure that Hollywood’s history would be preserved and celebrated as it entered its second Golden Age," blogs Council President Eric Garcetti. Nudelman died this week at age 52.
Also: Patrick Range McDonald in the LA Weekly.

Jonathan Gold visits the new Father's Office

He calls the original "easily the most controversial restaurant in town, either a mecca of cuisine or a haven for louts, a hop-scented mosh pit or the source of the best moderately priced dinner on the Westside." About the new Helms Bakery location in Culver City, Gold writes, "It’s a lot bigger than the first one, and your chances of acquiring a table, a bowl of curried mussels, a glass of exotic tap ale and an allotment of new friends at any given time are exponentially greater than they would be at the Santa Monica bar." LA Weekly
Also: The Lakers' night at Mozza.

Dodgers' 50th anniversary drives him batty

Lifelong fan Neal Pollack's take in the CityBeat cover story: "The Dodgers have crafted a silly, if not repulsive, carnival of gauzy manufactured nostalgia. I’ll say it if no one else will. The Dodgers’ 50th anniversary in Los Angeles celebration is irretrievably lame." CityBeat

Elaine Dundy, author was 86

The novelist and biographer of Elvis Presley had been married to critic Kenneth Tynan and traveled in elite literary and Hollywood circles. She died in Los Angeles May 1. LAT

In our developing L.A. noir story to beat them all, Mayor Russell Napolitano was snatched off the sand beneath Santa Monica Pier and thrown in a motorboat. He tried fighting with Omar, the kidnapper he recognizes from Brentwood, but all it got him was a face full of sand. Now they're on shore at Venice, sirens are closing in, and His Honor still doesn't know whether Celeste is OK or why somebody wanted his subway map bad enough to kill for it. The rest is up to you, the readers of LA Observed. Eric Estrin analyzes the newest twist at his Script Notes blog.

Previously at the LAO Script Project:
We're still here
Somebody really wants that subway map

Perhaps Sam Zell realized his troubled new company needs a full-time boss, or maybe he just tired of his newspaper toys after a few months in charge. Whatever, executive VP Randy Michaels today was named Tribune Company chief executive operating officer, "responsible for all aspects of the company’s publishing, broadcasting and interactive divisions." This means that L.A. Times Publisher David Hiller now reports to Michaels, not Zell. This time there was no gag press release or frat-boy humor, just a terse announcement from Zell and a quip from Micheals that "people are saying ‘newspapers are dead'...so, naturally, I want to take on even more responsibility for our print business." WSJ, Chicago Tribune, E&P

New Zell-watching blog: Tell Zell claims to be written, anonymously, by a "loyal Los Angeles Times peon....most of the time." It parses the latest from innovation guru Lee Abrams.