Weekly archive
May 25 - May 31, 2003
Saturday, May. 31
Tim Rutten's fifth straight Regarding Media column on the New York Times problems notes that, "it was a lousy week for the Times, whose self-inflicted wounds continue to bleed onto... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Robinson had been the managing editor at KCBS-TV Channel 2 in the early 1990s and had also worked at KTTV/FOX-TV Channel 11. He won eight Emmy awards during a 22-year... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Friday, May. 30
Tonight is the final show of KCET's Life and Times with Jess Marlow as the co-anchor. Jess is retiring to Santa Fe, New Mexico after 37 years in Los Angeles... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Hugh Hewitt, once the designated voice of the right on KCET's Life & Times, goes a little deeper on the L.A. Times bias memo than he had earlier. He also... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
The longest-established news outlet to focus on Santa Monica is not a newspaper but the website Surf Santa Monica, which opened as The Lookout in 1999, a year to the... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Self-described conservative Republican L.A. blogger Luke Ford attends a panel discussion featuring warriors of the Left and Right -- Robert Scheer and David Horowitz -- and comes away charmed by... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
LAT science writer K.C. Cole shows up in this week's New Yorker with a story on Janet Conrad, "the woman who hunts neutrinos." Also in the New Yorker is a... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Thousands of booksellers, publishers, editors, authors and other literary figures are attending the gathering at the L.A. Convention Center. Bill O'Reilly, Molly Ivins, Al Franken and Tucker Carlson are all... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Los Angeles author/blogger Roger L. Simon asks the question, half facetiously we hope, after being underwhelmed by Bob Scheer's latest column on Jessica Lynch in the L.A. Times.... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Thursday, May. 29
Interest in LAT Editor John Carroll's memo on liberal bias (originally posted here at L.A. Observed) has been heavy, especially at the conservative punditry sites. Opinion Journal's James Taranto led... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Writing in the L.A. Independent, Beverly Hills author and journalist Tony Castro sounds skeptical that ex-mayor and current power broker Dick Riordan will actually produce a weekly newspaper in September... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
John Powers' appreciation of Bob Hope on this afternoon's Fresh Air includes this deliciously subversive wish -- to have seen Hope take on a more sinister-than-usual film role. Powers sees... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Susan Estrich, the USC law professor who ran the presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis, has an intriguing column out about newspaper op-ed pages. Nine out of 10 op-ed items are... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
The magazine is relocating to New York from its offices in Woodland Hills, says Keith J. Kelly in the New York Post. Editor Jerry Kindela was let go yesterday. [For... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Greg Goldin in the LA Weekly considers the new Moorish-palace Exxon station at Beverly and Fairfax, which opened last weekend. The design alone -- incorporating century-old French roof tiles, a... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
The new liberal political magazine being planned from L.A. by Helen O'Donnell won't be a revival of George but it still will try for a little of the Kennedy association.... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
In his L.A. Times op-ed column today, Robert Scheer responds to bashers who say his previous column on the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch got it all wrong. "When our... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Best piece I've seen yet on the Rick Bragg affair (the most insight with the least anti-NYT distortion) is Seth Mnookin's report on the uproar about Bragg among other New... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Wednesday, May. 28
Fun read on the Southern California beach and teen culture of the 1950s: Deanne Stillman's encounters with the original Gidget, posted at California Authors.com. As Stillman, a Los Angeles author... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Kathryn Downing, the CEO and publisher who presided at the L.A. Times during the Staples Center/Times magazine fiasco, is on the short list of candidates to be Oakland schools superintendent,... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
L.A. Observed Exclusive: Memo from LAT editor John Carroll on the paper's "liberal bias." $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Tuesday, May. 27
Gross will become director of the USC Annenberg School of Communication on July 1. He has been a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for 35 years and... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Eli Broad, the subject of a long profile by Ed Leibowitz in the June issue of Los Angeles magazine, gave up $5.9 billion in net worth to the weak economy... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Checking out the news rack headlines outside Starbucks this morning I did a double take at the colorful Daily News banner, thinking I'd missed a major obituary. Splashed large across... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
An LAT personnel memo today (posted at Romenseko's Media News) expands on the Sunday report here about television critic Howard Rosenberg retiring. He will give up the TV column in... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
"Obviously, I'm taking a bullet here," the suspended New York Times Pulitzer winner tells Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post. "Anyone with half a brain can see that. I'm too... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
LA Examiner.com pulls together a bunch of the online and Administration bile being spewed over Bob Scheer's column buying into the BBC report that the PFC Jessica Lynch rescue was... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Monday, May. 26
Rick Orlov in the Daily News reports that the state Republican Party get together at Dick Riordan's home last week took in $140,000, even without Schwarzenegger. (Here at L.A. Observed... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Mickey Kaus is shocked that New York Times reporters use material from stringers and interns, but he shouldn't be. I don't mean that as a knock at the NYT (or... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
David L. Ulin writes in the LAT about "Southland" by Nina Revoyr and "Fear Itself," Walter Mosley's second Fearless Jones novel. April Smith (North of Montana) is also back with... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
It's an experiment, like the rest of this. We'll see how it goes. Once I figure out how to automate a Romenesko-style letters page that's probably where the public feedback... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Mariel Garza in the Daily News reports that the L.A. star of the moment, police chief Bill Bratton, may be too mouthy for mellow Angelenos.... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Sunday, May. 25
Buzz is sweeping the second floor at the LAT that the television critic will give up his longtime column this summer. If true, news execs (among others) won't miss him.... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Macarena Hernandez, the San Antonio reporter whose story was lifted by Jayson Blair, gives her side of the debacle in the LAT Sunday Opinion section. She argues that blaming the... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
The New York Times story today on "Sleeping with the Ambassador" carries the headline Welcome Back to the Hotel California. It's a nice play on a little-known fact, though probably... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Gary Indiana hates it: "meretricious, revolting twaddle." In the book retired LAPD homicide cop Steve Hodel fingers his father as the 1947 Black Dahlia killer, using reasoning I doubt the... $MTEntryExcerpt$>