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Bill Bradley of the LA Weekly is up on the Weekly's site with a story that Arianna Huffington will drop out tonight on "Larry King Live" and call for a...
LA Observed archive
for September 2003
If you don't find what you want here, check another month or search below.
Not much is as embarrassing as running the obituary of someone who still breathes. But running the wrong picture comes close. The unfortunate culprit this time is KTLA, which apparently...
Alan Arkatov, a former television producer and media consultant for James Hahn and Bill Clinton campaigns, is taking over the new position of President and CEO of the Southern California...
Tony Hillerman sits in his office, somewhere in New Mexico, and ruminates on his framed Auto Club of Southern California map of Indian Country for the L.A. Times Outdoor section...
The highlight of the L.A. Times op-ed page today isn't the paired recall pieces by Robert Scheer and Dan Schnur. It's Joseph Wambaugh's literary take on the news rocking the...
Hilary E. MacGregor attends an underground girl fight in the downtown warehouse district. If by underground you mean with a publicist, at 11 in the morning, and the fights are...
It looks like the end of free movie DVDs and videos for the thousands who vote on the Oscars, and assorted Hollywood hangers on. With Sony signing on last night,...
Email brings word of a full week of media-related goings on at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Times and locations vary, so for more check the Annenberg site. Tonight...
A Valley entrepreneur has gone public in the Daily News with his desire to build a 9,000-seat sports and music arena in North Hollywood. The Oasis would be at the...
The New York Times covers the issue of newspaper sponsored blogs with a small Business section piece that contains an interesting tidbit: the Dallas Morning News does not pre-edit the...
The L.A. Times and apparently everybody else got scooped by today's Washingon Post front pager on the Justice Department looking into the leak by "two senior administration officials" of Valerie...
Writer Nancy Rommelmann (LA Weekly, Los Angeles mag, lots of other stuff) plans to depart Los Angeles for Portland next June when her daughter finishes middle school. She is writing...
Thomas Curwen in the L.A. Times Book Review and Thomas Mallon in the New York Times Book Review both weigh in on Joan Didion's dark take on a California spoiled,...
The lead L.A. Times editorial today recommends a no vote on the recall -- no surprise there -- and says no as well on all the wannabe governors. Schwarzenegger is...
Not sure how much I'll be posting this weekend, but here's a few things to chew on. This may will be was added to through the weekend. Jay Rosen, the...
In the Los Angeles Magazine profile mentioned a couple of posts below, Frank Gehry suggests that his Disney Hall -- as well as MOCA and the Cathedral of the Angels...
Eric Zorn, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, began posting items on the paper's site in August. He conferred with the Sacramento Bee's Dan Weintraub first, and worked out with...
Dr. Kaus puts Huffington on the couch to figure out why she got so peeved by Arnold's needling. I've noticed this distressing character trait in Huffington, who can be extremely...
If you only see Los Angeles magazine on the newstand, this month the cover is on fall travel. Subscribers, however, are getting a gorgeous Dan Winters photograph of Disney Hall...
Yes the Indian casinos are the biggest spenders in state politics, but they aren't the reason California is in a hole. Arnold has taken their money before. So what's with...
The new memoir by novelist James Brown, The Los Angeles Diaries, visits a side of L.A. not frequently traveled or well chronicled. Anne-Marie O'Connor of the Times joins Brown for...
New Republic writer and now blogger Gregg Easterbrook says that Schwarzenegger could not possibly have written the op-ed under his name in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. As someone who...
The L.A. Press Club is doing another no-host cocktail gathering on Monday, Sept. 29 from 7 to 10 p.m. at the poolside bar of the W Hotel in Westwood. It's...
Jeff Jarvis, who started Entertainment Weekly and was Sunday editor of the N.Y. Daily News, has some interesting format ideas for the "post-Internet newspaper." He goes beyond "shorter stories" and...
Cathy Seipp uses her CityBeat column this week to peruse the first issue of Distinction magazine and other L.A. glossies in search of some inner meaning. I don't think she...
In case you can't find your ideal political mate among the 135 candidates on the recall ballot, here are 26 more who have qualified as write-ins. Lovely. (San Jose Mercury)....
Scoring the big debate: -"Gray won" - Dave Jensen, Condor blog -"I'd say (Cruz) won" - Outside the Beltway blog -"I don't think anyone won" - Dan Weintraub, Sacto Bee...
CalPundit's Kevin Drum posted the following message and got 26 comments: I'll be spending the day in lovely El Segundo today. Blogging will resume this evening. One of the comments...
The issue of LA Weekly that hits the Web tonight and the street tomorrow will endorse a no vote on the recall (and on Prop. 54) but encourage votes for...
For Laurie Garrett, the award-winning health writer for Newsday, it was one broken embargo too many by her competitors at the New York Times. She emailed a complaint to the...
Worst in six years, say the stories in the L.A. Times and Daily News. It's still better than it was in Los Angeles a generation ago when you'd come in...
Dan Weintraub tells Mark Glaser at the Online Journalism Review that the shift in his editing regime at the Bee is a minor deal. "Obviously I liked it the way...
The recall election is back on for two weeks from today, compliments of the 9th Circuit. Unanimous 11-0 decision that the ACLU says it won't appeal. I'm guessing Prestopundit is...
New: L.A. Times obituary by Bob Drogin Mark Fineman, one of the L.A. Times staff writers in Iraq, died this morning of an apparent heart attack suffered in Baghdad. He...
Last week's soft L.A. Times story on duck liberators freeing four quackers from a foie gras shed in Sonoma didn't elicit much reaction, according to the most recent internal missive...
Kudos to Mickey Kaus for getting the Bee's executive editor on the phone to talk about the Weintraub blog, and for correcting the always far-fetched notion that the Bee's editors...
Warren Olney's Which Way L.A.? plans to look at the Indian tribes and the role of their money in politics, today at 7 p.m. on KCRW (89.9)....
T. Coraghessan Boyle's next novel The Inner Circle -- his sixteenth -- has just sold to Viking. The agent's blurb is intriguing for a Boyle work, from Publishers Lunch: "...at...
Friends of Mark Antenorcruz, the Covina man shot and killed in the Dodger Stadium parking, are expressing their feelings in the comments of the LAO post from last week. Here's...
I see that the always smart Justene Adamec at the pro-recall conservative CalBlog joins me in saying let's wait to see IF Dan Weintraub's freedom to blog away has in...
I can't explain it, but this was one of those weekends where a lot of posts happened. A ton. Here are a few that are further down the page, with...
Patt Morrison's Inside Politics column in the L.A. Times reports the City Hall rumor that if Bustamante is elected governor, new councilman Tony Cardenas will return to Sacramento as the...
Amy Wilentz, the author of Martyrs' Crossing, is writing a book on the recall and California. She opined in Sunday Opinion on the 9th Circuit....
Maureen Dowd does Beverly Hills with Arnold....
Todd Matthews at OC Weekly considers The Register's new marketing campaign to "Take Back the Morning." Meanwhile, the Reg continues to hang a monster 250-square-foot banner from its five-story Santa...
This is an inside baseball kind of post for the journalists and writers who come here, and long, so I'll break it up into two sections. There's a small but...
RestaurantWatch.com is a new site that lets you check the health inspection grade of L.A. restaurants by zip code. With registration, you can create a watch list, see inspection details...
Roger L. Simon has posted a nice report from the weekend's Santa Barbara Book and Author Festival, two days after posting that he was through blogging for the moment. Glad...
His bosses at the Sacramento Bee have ordered Dan Weintraub to submit his California Insider blog items to a high-level editor before posting. Tony Marcano, a former LAT editor who...
From the September poll by the Public Policy Institute of California: Both independents and moderates are evenly split on the recall. A higher percentage of Republicans are for (86%) than...
The second annual West Hollywood Book Fair is today. Plenty of local authors will be there, among them Carolyn See, Janet Fitch. Aimee Liu, Denise Hamilton and Charles Phoenix and...
Remarks by 9th Circuit liberal jurist Harry Pregerson in Henry Weinstein's story in the L.A. Times on Saturday have legal types talking. Pregerson was on the three-judge panel that blocked...
The L.A. County Museum of Art's all-night, free-admission art party Thursday night had crowds lined up around the block. Think this city is starved for safe non-commercial public spaces and...
City officials say it cost Los Angeles taxpayers $183,000 to close streets and direct traffic at the Bob Hope memorial service in the Valley on August 27. According to David...
Jill Stewart's latest anti-Gray Davis column from Sacramento is being aggressively fact-checked by liberal-leaning lawyer Steve Smith at his blog and in the comments to a Matt Welch post at...
Republican strategist and commentator Arnold Steinberg, in Tim Rutten's L.A. Times column today: Schwarzenegger's strategy requires a docile news media, and he's getting one. Steinberg and Rutten (and Democratic strategist...
Robert Garcia Tagorda, who was at the game, reacts at Priorities and Frivolities to last night's murder in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, apparently a Giants fan shooting a Dodgers...
The L.A. Times today takes its turn trying to figure out Mickey Kaus -- "a brainy, iconoclastic dart-thrower." The widely read, Venice-based blogger for Slate tells Bob Baker that he'll...
Victoria Riskin was reelected president of the Writers Guild of America, West. The rest of the top officers were reelected too, without any of the turmoil that surrounds the Screen...
Arnold's campaign requires every staffer to sign a five-page confidentiality agreement, including a clause that the agreement itself is a secret. The L.A. Times received a copy: Schwarzenegger has devoted...
Mayor Hahn missed the deadline to appoint or replace 20 city comissioners, which under the city charter means council president Alex Padilla now gets to make the choices, the Times'...
Earlier in the week, recall candidate Mary Carey wrote (well, maybe she wrote) an op-ed piece in the L.A. Times making some points about the debates. Now the Times' Roy...
I must admit that as I read into the story in today's L.A. Times California section about a midnight raid by "duck freedom fighters," I kept waiting for the punch...
New York magazine plans to start a blog and is apparently hiring Elizabeth Spiers of Gawker to help on that and write pieces for the magazine. At least that's what...
Back at Variety after seven years at the L.A. Times, television columnist Brian Lowry is happy to discover "they've painted the place." Over that time, he says, entertainment coverage has...
Looks more and more like the recall election -- if it's allowed to go ahead -- will be a landmark of sorts for voter turnout, as some enthusiasts have predicted....
In Ramblin' Man, his upcoming biography of Woody Guthrie, USC journalism professor Ed Cray explores Guthrie's years in Glendale, Topanga and Silverlake hanging out with other notable lefties of 1930s...
The Daily Trojan alumni site lists info on 2,070 former staffers of the USC student paper -- by year and by name. Have fun....
For five good years in the 1960s, Johnny Cash was a Valley boy. Also in the LA Weekly: Jonathan Gold reveals where to find the other, other, other white meat....
When Jerry Roberts left the San Francisco Chronicle and turned up last year as editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press, more than a few newspaper types moaned that he snagged...
California Authors notes two contrasting reviews of Joan Didion's Where I Was From: Patt Morrison, LAT: "...a soul–searching look at California’s complexities and contradictions." Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic: "He laments...
The piece by Peter J. Boyer in last week's New Yorker is the most calm and even-handed I've read about Mel Gibson and his self-described mission from God to make...
Or to put it another way, busy day for non-blog things. Will post later....
Ron Fineman is back online with On the Record, his pay site with insider reports on Los Angeles TV news. He reports on the move of political commentator Sherry Bebitch...
In response to the latest L.A. Times Poll on the recall, Mark DiCamillo and Mervin Field of the Field Poll have posted a long rebuttal (in PDF format) to the...
Syndicated columnist Amy Alkon wrote a remarkable piece for the Los Angeles Times a few years ago (I think in the magazine) about tracking down the creep who stole her...
Greg Lindsay in Women's Wear Daily cites sources saying that Emmis Communications is reluctant to bid for New York magazine, seeing it as "a major fixer-upper, requiring millions in editorial...
The Simi Valley teachers union president is upset at education coverage in the L.A Daily News and is urging members to cancel subscriptions and stop using the paper in classrooms,...
West Nile virus, now confirmed in Los Angeles County....
The Column One story in the L.A. Times today grew out of reporter Rosie Mestel being told by a doctor, at age 43, that she did not have a left...
The L.A. Press Club is hosting a debate among four of the recall candidates for governor on Wednesday at 3 p.m. The confirmed participants are Cruz Bustamante, Tom McClintock, Arianna...
HBO is losing the popular "Sex in the City," but to lessen the blow the cable network has commissioned a six-part documentary called "Pornucopia: Going Down in the Valley," about...
Publishers Lunch Weekly brings word of several local book deals, the most intriguing touted as "the first inside history of the RAND Corporation," the Santa Monica think tank. To write...
Readers have asked in email why the Los Angeles TV website run by Ron Fineman is off-line today. Ron explains that it's a little Network Solutions snafu, and he'll be...
Lou Cannon will be on Life and Times Tuesday night (7 p.m., Ch. 28) to talk about his fifth book on Ronald Reagan. He also has an op-ed in today's...
A new Los Angeles literary event, "Our Favorite Writers," begins tonight with Jeffrey Eugenides, author of the The Virgin Suicides. He will read and talk with Mona Simpson, the author...
Loyola law professor Rick Hasen is blogging on the 9th Circuit court order delaying the recall election, a move he supported in a brief. Incidentally, he has a piece about...
Schwarzenegger called John Carroll, editor of the L.A. Times, to tell him that the LAT's coverage had been very fair and balanced, political reporter Mark Z. Barabak said yesterday on...
Ron Brownstein, the national political reporter based in Washington for the L.A. Times, is among the most influential of the scribes covering the presidential campaign, says Howard Kurtz in the...
Slate takes a quick look at the four influential book review publications Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal and Booklist. You've probably never read these magazines, even if you've seen...
We'll be seeing more of the Hollywood Reporter in posters and ads around town as part of what the New York Times calls the trade's first big marketing campaign in...
The star DJ on the #1 music radio station in Los Angeles calls Jeff Smulyan, the president of Emmis, a good boss and "someone you can talk to." A profile...
The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association made L.A. Times film reviewer Kevin Thomas only the group's second recipient of a lifetime achievement award. There was a bash over the...
Most places the best-read story in today's newspapers will be about Ben and J. Lo. But at Los Angeles City Hall, everyone will turn first to the L.A. Times piece...
Boy, that Mickey Kaus has some nerve. He keeps violating the blogger code by actually leaving his computer to report stories. Couple of weeks ago he went to the gym...
Frances Ring, the former editor of Westways, wrote a poignant piece in the Sunday LAT Opinion section about being old and losing her license to drive. Perhaps the test would...
The L.A. Times reports that rat traps are set up all over the new Disney Hall auditorium, in advance of next month's opening. No one was available Friday evening to...
Cathy Seipp's media column in CityBeat this week is about her pal Mickey Kaus and his runaway success as a blogger (gets paid by Slate, draws 20,000 hits a day,...
The Breeze reports that FBI agents are conducting interviews about payments for land purchases needed to expand LAX. Reporters David Zahniser and Ian Gregor say the investigation centers on money...
The new L.A. Times Poll has the recall itself still barely ahead (50-47 with 3% sampling error), Bustmante sinking like a leaky balloon (high negatives, under 50% Latino support), Arnold...
Just how serious will Emmis Communications, owners of Los Angeles magazine and Power 106 radio here, be in the crowded derby to acquire New York magazine? Steve Cohn, editor-in-chief of...
Bernard Weinraub in the NYT covers the Huffington fundraiser in Holmby Hills Tuesday night: ...the liberal-come-lately newspaper columnist who has frequently opened her Brentwood home to stars, talent agents, producers...
Just yesterday, the New York Post and Variety ran planted stories about disgraced New York Timeser Jayson Blair getting a book deal at New Millennium Entertainment here. Today, the NYT...
Schwarzenegger said on The O'Reilly Factor that the L.A. Times is biased against him, with one of his points that they put more stories about his rivals on Page One...
As we've noted before, Leslie Epstein's Los Angeles novel San Remo has gotten nice treatment in the New York Times. He had to have been nervous about it though, the...
The humiliated ex-journalist was turned down by New York publishers but struck a deal with New Millennium, the Beverly Hills publishing house run by Michael Viner and Daborah Raffin, says...
Tim Rutten thinks that Schwarzenegger's use of AM talk radio contributes to his gender gap with women (along with violent movies and the Oui article). Rutten's LAT column today lets...
Robert Gelfand reports in The American Reporter on a quiet little 3-way newspaper war brewing in San Pedro. On one side is a new advertising supplement by Dean Singleton's Long...
Richard Karpel, the head of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, takes issue with Matt Welch's piece on blogs in Columbia Journalism Review (recommended by me here). He doesn't object to...
The mailing list for Distinction, the magazine from Angeles Publications -- which is the Los Angeles Times ad department in disguise -- is supposed to be the 50,000 highest-income households...
The L.A. Times today debuted its weekly section on outdoor life. A section like Outdoors has been pondered for years as a natural for Southern California. I like the idea...
Brian Linse, who blogs at Aint No Bad Dude, has up a nice tribute to his friend Warren Zevon....
Local blog Shock and Awe recently took a fair shot at Snopes.com (the Urban Legends Reference Pages, also SoCal based) for a screed against Michael Moore over his remarks about...
The Democratic Leadership Council in Washington has reached out to tap L.A. city councilwoman Wendy Greuel as the group's "New Democrat of the Week." Here they explain why....
Those enjoying the Frank Gehry-Sam Hall Kaplan spat over Disney Hall may want to hear Kaplan's "City Observed" commentary tomorrow (Wednesday) on KCRW. In the advance transcript, Kaplan reviews the...
Peter Ueberroth has cancelled his public appearances and called a 1 p.m. news conference, apparently to make his exit from the recall race, AP reports. (Via Drudge Report) update 1:30...
Ad Age says that Emmis Communications, publisher of Los Angeles and other city and regional magazines, including Texas Monthly, has had talks about buying New York. Neither Emmis nor Primedia,...
A couple of South Bay papers, the Beach Reporter and the Palos Verdes Peninsula News, have been bought by Copley Press, owner of the Daily Breeze. Both of the smaller...
Round two of the independent recall polls begins with the Field Poll today showing Davis behind 55%-40%. Bustamante is still ahead of Schwarzenegger 30%-25%, with McClintock at 13%. Soon I...
Ron Fineman chastises Channel 5's "News at Ten" for making a story of co-anchor Mindy Burbano's wedding shower. But wait, it gets worse. In the lead to this "story," [co-anchor]...
SoCal blogger Lonewacko is driving across country and filing brief reports with photos. Over the weekend he posted a picture from the highest point in Kansas, Mt. Sunflower. In actual...
The Los Angeles-based Theme Park Insider is all over the latest Disneyland accident in which a man was killed on the Big Thunder Mountain roller coaster. Clearly, a dangerous pattern...
Catching up on last week: Romenesko's letters page has a couple of entries with opposing opinions on the L.A. Times liberal bias memo, pegged to the article by R. J....
The Fairfax High dropout narrated Los Angeles in his music. He revealed last year that he had inoperable lung cancer, then completed a new album, The Wind, before he died...
For the mediabistro.com party tonight at Santo Coyote on Melrose, the invitations carry a stern proviso: Sorry, no PR/Marketing folks or interns/students. Attendance is limited. ALL guests must be pre-approved....
I mentioned on Friday how urban design critic Sam Hall Kaplan gave Disney Hall a less than fawning review. Turns out that Frank Gehry was displeased. The architect braced Kaplan...
A sample of the winners announced on Saturday night: Regularly Scheduled Daily News: Daytime "Good Day LA" (Fox11) Regularly Scheduled Daily News: 0-35 Minutes "Channel 4 News at 11pm" (NBC4)...
Ian Gregor in the Daily Breeze says it's the Texaco station on Century Boulevard at LAX, the last place to fill up before returning a rental car. "They don’t care...
Not the Schwarzeneggers, though Carla Hall writes in the L.A. Times today on Maria Shriver's more prominent role in THAT campaign. No, the family to watch may be the Rubalcavas....
Literary journalism of the sort practiced by Pulitzer winner Barry Siegel of the L.A. Times national staff has its fans and detractors. Count the UC Irvine School of Humanities (and...
Filmmaker Lionel Chetwynd is the usual go-to guy for journalists who dust off the "lonely Republicans of Hollywood" story. He also wrote and produced the Showtime docudrama "DC 9/11: Time...
Now that Matt Miller has his own book out, the moderate moderator of KCRW's politics show Left, Right & Center is being a guest and his colleagues are playing the...
I've tweaked the colors and margins a bit, bumped up some of the font sizes and made a coding change that should help the blog work better with RSS news...
Scott Timberg in the L.A. Times dares go where not many in the local media have ventured -- to talk to people who don't much like the Frank Gehry-designed Disney...
In his day job Ken Baker is the West Coast executive editor in L.A. for Us Weekly. Somehow he also finds the time to write personal books. His first, Man...
Jonathan Cohn, the former executive editor of The American Prospect and The New Republic, has a Los Angeles Diarist piece in the current TNR on the studies at UCLA and...
The people behind the legendary La Brea Avenue hot dog stand are touting it as a sitcom setting. They entered the Pilot Project competition and made the semi-finals, writes Kevin...
Strikingly similar stories in the Times and Daily Breeze today on Matt Middlebrook's resignation as top communications aide to mayor Jim Hahn. Both stories talk about Middlebrook running Hahn's campaigns...
Writing for an audience that is not primarily other bloggers, and some who don't visit many websites of any kind, I get a lot of questions about the form and...
George Christy is the defrocked Hollywood Reporter columnist who left the trade paper after colleague Dave Robb investigated -- and tried to report -- that Christy was way too friendly...
The covers of CityBeat and ValleyBeat: Ann Coulter Story of the week at The Simon: Why I Still Read Maureen Dowd...
Joie Davidow was the first style editor of LA Weekly, beginning in 1979 -- so long ago that Melrose had not even turned cool. Jay Levin ran the start-up paper...
I thought of Mike Davis a couple of weeks ago when the LAT ran an astounding photo from up around Lancaster of a billboard bent backwards 90 degrees. "High winds"...
The L.A. Weekly, being predictably liberal again to excite the cadre for Bustamante (sarcasm alert), in a piece by former Democratic consultant Bill Bradley headlined "Take the Money and Run":...
Thunder heads piling over the San Gabriels and the Mojave are especially humongous this afternoon. The line must be 30 miles long -- brilliant steaming white, violent and a mile...
Dan Weintraub feels compelled today to explain that as a politics blogger for the Sacramento Bee, as well as the paper's opinion page columnist, he is above all else an...
The unusual L.A. blog In the Hat has caught the eye of Danish television, which sent a crew to get the tour of Eastside gang turf from "Wally," who monitors...
The Writers Guild of America, West website explains why L.A. residents will soon see billboards all over that show the black-and-white face of an unidentified screenwriter and a familiar line...
I shouldn't have been surprised (end of post) that studio location filming irked parts of L.A. in the 1920s. An e-mailer writes that film crews were bothersome even earlier: I...
The afternoon talk team at KFI (AM 640) has been voted the #1 Los Angeles radio personalities by the readers of LARadio.com, the subscription website run by Don Barrett. A...
For his 30th birthday, Variety television editor Michael Schneider and his wife Maria Villar put together eight teams and staged a mad dash around Los Angeles looking for clues, inspired...
The Aesthetic wonders, reasonably: Something that has always puzzled us, particularly now that gas prices have gone through the roof, is why the price of gas isn't cheaper in El...
Schwarzenegger's No Hard Questions Tour plays the "John and Ken Show" today on KFI (AM 640), some blogs report, though KFI's website has no mention. He's supposed to be on...
A selection from the August Index: Rank of California governor Gray Davis's approval rating in May among the lowest in the 55-year history of the state poll : 1 Number...
The first issue of Distinction, the upscale SoCal lifestyle magazine from the creative minds at the L.A. Times advertising department, is arriving now in 50,000 high-income homes in Los Angeles...
I apologize for not posting that the blog was shutting down for the weekend. Sure did feel good though to skip reading about the recall. I'm not going to catch...
Clinton fundraises in LA
Jim Henson Studios on La Brea became a presidential campaign stop on Thursday.
Brown declares disaster area
The natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Performing arts with cheer
Donna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
