Weekly archive
June 15 - June 21, 2003
Saturday, Jun. 21
Selling MCA to Matsushita was the biggest mistake of Lew Wasserman's extraordinary career, Bernard Weinraub writes in his NYT review of Connie Bruck's biography, When Hollywood Had a King. Weinraub...
I don't know Hugh Hewitt's work well enough to know whether he is regularly dishonest to his blog's audience or just blinded by partisanship (or maybe posts without thinking it...
The Venice High School student newspaper The Oarsman spent months investigating a teacher's past relationship and messy breakup with actor Edward Furlong ("Terminator 2") -- then was barred from running...
Nothing ruins a good fight like giving in. Wendy Greuel said late Friday that she won't try to topple 30-year-old Alex Padilla from his lofty perch as president of the...
Friday, Jun. 20
An F-117A stealth fighter will scream across Los Angeles at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, for the Aviation Expo at Van Nuys Airport. For something called "stealth," it's quite loud,...
Excessive media consumption may lead to a sedentary lifestyle and risky sexual behaviour, says a position paper by the Canadian Pediatric Society. (Link from I Want Media)...
Paul Colford, the New York Daily News media writer, says newsrom buzz at the New York Times has it that Dean Baquet turned down an overture to leave Los Angeles....
Since Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas won't let the L.A. Times see press releases from his office, the Times is resorting to official freedom of information requests. Now they...
Eli Broad, the richest man in Los Angeles, may be ready to spend $60 million for a new home for modern art on Wilshire Boulevard, but the Eli and Edythe...
Exactly 34 years ago today -- also on a Friday -- Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker and Tina Turner played for 50,000 fans in Los Angeles. Not in a stadium, but...
Thursday, Jun. 19
L.A. author Jervey Tervalon’s upcoming novel, Lita, is excerpted in today's LA Weekly: "That’s what was weird about my life in Los Angeles; everybody saw me as what they wanted...
L.A. Observed can't observe with any cred on website design (for plainly obvious reasons...), and it's all personal preference anyway. But I'll just say this about the CityBEAT/ValleyBEAT site: the...
Remember the profile of Mel Gibson and his new film The Passion by L.A. writer Christopher Noxon last March in the New York Times Magazine? Says Richard Horgan, writing at...
A midseason spinoff of the WB's "Gilmore Girls" that was to have been shot entirely on location in Venice won't happen. Too expensive, says TVWeek.com. Amy Sherman-Palladino, creator and co-executive...
Longtime Hollywood publicist Lee Solters says of working with Michael Jackson, "Don't write this, but I finally quit because he wanted me to lie too often." It's from an interesting...
Mark Glaser at USC's Online Journalism Review writes about two websites on media that have found the magic. I Want Media is run from a New York apartment, Paid Content...
The Los Angeles-based radio program with an African American world view is growing fast and attracting "some of the most intense and visceral reactions -- both pro and con" in...
Editors of the L.A. Times Calendar section are probably relieved that today's LA Weekly does not contain a story by Nikki Finke. She's been working on a piece about Calendar...
Nick Schulz, the editor of techcentralstation.com, muses in an L.A. Times op-ed piece today on the irony that the Internet Gray Davis has championed as governor is helping to stoke...
"Most of the remaining white Democrats who hold public office [in Los Angeles] are Jews. As Latinos seek to improve their position, by the laws of probability, it'll come at...
Bit of a new look around here, prompted by the email gift a few days ago of a donated logo. To the talented graphic designer who took pity on this...
Wednesday, Jun. 18
The New York Observer's Sridhar Pappu writes today that newsroom sources at the New York Times say the derby to become executive editor is now a two-man race between former...
Right-wing columnist Pat Buchanan writes that his sources tell him Arnold Scwarzenegger has decided to run in the Davis recall election and will have the backing of Richard Riordan. Arnold,...
Cathy Seipp bemoans the plight of Los Angeles freelancers and puts some of the blame on the Times in her UPI column: "Conventional wisdom has it that the wretched state...
Friends of the former New Times writer and office manager, who passed away last month, are throwing a wake and want the word out: Marnye Gras Saturday, June 28 7:30...
Michael Slackman has the dateline from Hillah, Iraq in this morning's L.A. Times, but it may be among his last for the paper. Newsroom buzz says he has accepted an...
In advance of Hillary Clinton's June 29 appearance at Vroman's in Pasadena, the bookstore's Linda Urban tells Tim Rutten: "We've already had 500 requests for signed books, more than I...
Tuesday, Jun. 17
When was the last time a top LAPD official made the tabloid's gossipy Page Six? Umm--never? But John Miller, the ex-TV journalist brought in by chief William Bratton to head...
From UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy: Recent arrivals to L.A. might like to know this useful mnemonic for figuring out what side of the street a...
Just as baseball isn't the national game anymore, the Dodgers aren't the cultural glue they used to be in Los Angeles. But they still matter to many people, so here's...
The L.A. Times takes a second to the Dallas Morning News in general excellence in the Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards. They are not given for writing about the great state...
Jim Bellows, the respected editor who at different times headed the L.A. Times features coverage and ran the Herald Examiner, has been awarded the Clurman Award for Mentoring. That's something...
For years now the American Film Market has taken over Santa Monica's sidewalks, restaurants and movie screens in Feburary. Starting next year, the market will shift to November in order...
The semi-monthly newsletter of insider notes on state and L.A. politics was started by longtime Sacramento hands Bud Lembke and Larry Lynch. They are retiring and have sold Political Pulse...
Monday, Jun. 16
A couple of months ago I spent an uncomfortable 20 minutes on the basement "service floor" of the L.A. County coroner's office. I was there for a magazine article, those...
Ever wonder why KCRW, the Santa Monica College public radio station (FM 89.9), streams live across the Internet 24/7? Think wider prestige, new audiences, new subscriptions at fund-drive time from...
Michael Gougis in the Daily News reports on the internal backlash at Parker Center over John Miller, the ex-journalist for ABC who police chief William Bratton is paying $157,289 a...
Greg Packer lives on Long Island and likes to be quoted in news stories, both in print and on TV. He makes himself visible at big events and is always...
Managing editor Dean Baquet of the L.A. Times shows up at the top of another ranking of prospective NYT executive editors. This one is in New York magazine, where Carl...
Schwarzenegger the candidate, strip clubs trying to save lap dancing and the pop icon collections of author Charles Phoenix are among the free stories on the Los Angeles Business Journal...
Mayor Jim Hahn's dust-up with the city council over hiring new cops -- that's what it was ostensibly about anyway -- breaks into the pages of the New York Times...
While we're still on radio...Patt Morrison will handle the mike at KPCC's morning show AirTalk all this week while host Larry Mantle is on vacation....
Sunday, Jun. 15
Just to finish up the weekend...planting my garden Saturday I listened to all two hours of The Car Show on KPFK (90.7 FM) and I don't care anything about cars...
In Sandra Tsing Loh's 1997 novel, If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home By Now, a young bohemian couple lusts to buy a home somewhere suitably hip like Silver Lake...
Role reversal: The NYT's Sunday Styles section has three features from Los Angeles today. Amy Wallace, a staff writer at Los Angeles magazine, files a Father's Day Left Coast Journal...
