Archive by Month
July 31, 2003
Recall Watch keeps a running tally of cash flow into the various committees pro and con on the recall, and links to news stories. It...
Claudia Eller and Michael Cieply in the L.A. Times say Schwarzenegger's got issues if he wants to eschew politics and remain a film star. In...
A feature in the Washington Post Style section on the colorful inhabitants of the Motion Picture home in Woodland Hills reveals some tough rules. You...
Marc Cooper attended the weekend strategy session at Arianna Huffington's house and thinks she is running for real, as an independent, but with a solidly...
Writing at FilmStew.com, columnist Richard Horgan goes for the contrarian take on Bob Hope and talks with Arthur Marx, author of an unauthorized biography a...
July 30, 2003
The Los Angeles media column about the blogging life and political demons of Slate's Mickey Kaus got the L.A. Observed treatment awhile back here (with...
Yes, that hearse and motorcade winding through the Valley this morning carried Bob Hope to his final resting place. Hope's daughter Linda says her father...
Where else would this happen? Two LAPD cops, officers Zine and Smith, are on night patrol in the Valley in a department black and white....
The Dodgers are still talking with Malcolm Glazer about buying the team, but there has been no change in status for several weeks, sources tell...
The new J Lo & Ben movie "has single-handedly disproved the maxim that there's no such thing as bad publicity," John Horn writes in a...
Rob Long of The National Review complains about KCRW's slant in a piece the L.A. Times op-ed page titles "Morning Becomes Apoplectic." Why do I...
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Edward Humes' eighth book, out in September, chronicles life inside California’s best public high school, Whitney High here in Cerritos....
Host Alex Chadwick is offering a glimpse behind the scenes of the first week of NPR's new Culver City-based live midday show "Day to Day"...
July 29, 2003
LA Weekly columnist Nikki Finke's lawsuit charging Disney with libel and unfair practices can go forward. A panel of three appeals judges found she has...
Malcolm Glazer has a tentative deal to buy the Dodgers and Dodger Stadium from News Corp., reports Reuters and CBS Sportsline. The price is said...
Some solid examples of investigative journalism run on L.A. television -- we'd highlight them if the stations will email us about them -- but now...
Michael Ramirez has gotten pretty good mileage out his Bush cartoon a week ago. The L.A. Times editorial cartoonist got a bit more attention over...
Today on "Airtalk" Larry Mantle plans to discuss how the LAPD deploys homicide detectives. A story by Jill Leovy and Doug Smith in the L.A....
For those of us who don't care strongly either way -- and who remember voting on all this less than a year ago -- the...
Michael Walker, a former editor at the L.A. Times Magazine and at Los Angeles, has sold a book on the city's place in 1970s pop...
July 28, 2003
The recall calculus is altered if what Dan Weintraub of the Sacto Bee reports on his blog is true: that Schwarzenegger has opted not to...
Rick Orlov points out that Tony Cardenas has been on the L.A. city council for less than a month, and already is planning a fundraiser....
Kim Godwin, the news director at channel 4, has been abruptly replaced by a former managing editor at the station, Robert Long. Ron Fineman reported...
July 25, 2003
I won't be adding much, if anything, between now and Monday. An outbreak of major L.A. news could change that, but I need to devote...
Replacing his old chief of staff. Too rich. Also the other Huffington. The ballot could be crowded with Huffingtons....
At least most of us are, writes Matt Welch in a new Reason article that argues against denying the vote to 4.6 million Americans with...
The Capitol Punishment columnist will be doing a special "Live from Sacramento" radio show about the recall on KFI Saturday and Sunday from 5 to...
I've put together a new grouping of links to sites on California news and politics, high in the right-hand sidebar. It's just a start, will...
Bob Morris at Politics in the Zeroes has the visual evidence for why Los Angeles drivers sometimes go insane. It's worth a click....
Which to lead with: Howard Rosenberg's television column -- since most people watch TV, and it has Kobe Bryant and Jessica Lynch in it --...
July 24, 2003
He tells Dean Kuipers at CityBeat that he still can't believe he lost the West Side city council seat, he grasps why L.A. voters would...
Stand behind your words, stay on topic and don't be abusive. As the note says on the new comments window, this is not a bulletin...
Eliot Javdan, class of 2002, was the stand-up guy secretly behind the website pushing the home phone, address and email and even satellite photo of...
In Editor and Publisher, Michael Ramirez laughs off the Secret Service reaction to his Bush cartoon. "It makes you wonder about our so-called 'intelligence' services,"...
Come August 4, the Calendar Live section of the L.A. Times website will start charging for access to users who don't subscribe to the newspaper....
In honor of the first-ever recall moment. Stewart plays it down the middle in her new Capitol Punishment column, referring to "the dopes trying to...
Mickey Kaus takes what I think (not being a recall junkie) is the contrarian view and suggests it is likely that Gray Davis beats the...
Haven't seen it -- so the welcome is conditional -- but anything that calls itself "L.A.'s scrappiest satirical newsmonthly" sounds good to me. L.A. Innuendo...
July 23, 2003
Mark Frauenfelder, cofounder of bOING bOING magazine, and Carla Sinclair write in the LA Weekly about chucking their house in Studio City and moving to...
...Women's Wear Daily. Distinction is the high-end magazine that the L.A. Times is launching in September via a new company that reports to the paper's...
Nikki Finke pops back into the LA Weekly with a "website-only exclusive" on Comcast expressing real interest in buying Vivendi Universal, and a long Deadline...
Finally got a moment to read the 'Regarding Media" column in this morning's L.A. Times. Tim Rutten, who reported extensively on legal issues during the...
Susan Estrich, USC law professor, member of the L.A. city ethics commission, author, former campaign manager and syndicated columnist. Her column. Some background at Romenesko's...
Rep. Christopher Cox says that the Secret Service used "profoundly bad judgment" this week in trying to question L.A. Times cartoonist Michael Ramirez -- and...
On Fresh Air with Terry Gross, the CEO of Clear Channel says that his network's buying up of stations has increased the format diversity of...
You knew it was only a matter of time. The woman who accused NBA superstar Kobe Bryant of sexual assault received death threats after her...
It looks like Distinction, the upcoming magazine from a newly created arm of the L.A. Times advertising department, is signing up actual editorial types. From...
The author, "a transit-dependent Angeleno" who actually lives in Lakewood, likes that his fellow citizens vote to tax themselves for light rail trains that few...
On the front page of the New York Times today are two dead Husseins, one Private Lynch and congressman Darrell Issa. The money man behind...
July 22, 2003
Fully half of this site's unique visitors for the month of July have come by in the past 48 hours. Searches for "Kobe" and related...
The book on Enron's demise by a couple of prize-winning Wall Street Journal reporters in the Los Angeles bureau will be officially released August 5....
Writing in The Aesthetic, Garrison Frost acknowledges the glorious image of Pacific Coast Highway but also disses it as "the most disappointing street in the...
If Arnold Schwarzenegger can run for governor, then what about Ozzy Osbourne, says the LALATimes....
KCAL-9 did the best job of covering the Kobe Bryant story on the day charges were filed, says Ron Fineman. The worst single effort he...
I'm taking down the Barry Siegel item -- it was bad information. If and when it becomes appropriate I'll repost something. My apologies all around....
The Secret Service dropped in on cartoonist Michael Ramirez on Monday. The agent only got as far as Karlene Goller, the L.A. Times attorney. Here's...
For those who like to plan way, way ahead, here are the guests scheduled to be on Bookworm with Michael Silverblatt on KCRW (Thursdays from...
July 21, 2003
But his accuser's are now, and so is her name, her photo and where she goes to college. Some L.A. bloggers, including Luke Ford, are...
L.A. Times editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez today issued a statement that explains the point of his Sunday sketch depicting President Bush with a gun at...
Staff photographer Carolyn Cole is making the L.A. Times decision to post her in Liberia pay off, sending home fresh photos daily of the deteriorating...
Our report last night on the Mickey Kaus profile in Los Angeles magazine is fueling some robust comments among the liberals over at CalPundit....
Jack Dunphy, the National Review mole in the LAPD, predicts that for the media it will be the OJ trial all over again: For those...
The Daily News front page banners a story on lessons for the recall folks to take from last year's Valley secession fight. The connection is...
Eric Umansky took the place of the late Angeleno Scott Shuger doing the popular Today's Papers feature for Slate. He's 30, has never worked at...
Bad news for Orange County DA Tony Rackauckas, the guy who is trying to manipulate coverage by boycotting the L.A. Times and OC Weekly. He...
Howard Rosenberg has been slipping his strong animal protection feelings into his L.A. Times television columns for some time now. In today's he skips the...
July 20, 2003
The Mickey Kaus cachet, writes R.J. Smith in the August issue of Los Angeles magazine: ...comes from being a liberal willing to attack liberals...He's an...
Click here for the full cartoon. The Michael Ramirez cartoon on the L.A. Times op-ed page today is creating a stir. The image evokes...
A nod from Bernard Parks, the ex-LAPD chief turned city councilman, decided the derby for council president, Howard Fine reports in the lead story in...
The two-hour daily news program that was called The Morning Show has been cut to an hour (8-9 am) and renamed "Uprising."...
A few more worthy L.A. based blogs have come to my attention: The Juxtaposition is by two young guys in the South Bay, writing about...
He still hasn't gotten a review of his Los Angeles-centric book here in L.A., but Donnell Alexander got a break today -- his Deadline L.A....
July 19, 2003
There's a website pushing Arianna Huffington to join the mini-race to replace Gray Davis if he is recalled, and some Democratic activists are talking her...
A little more than a month since the New York Times did a nice interview with author Leslie Epstein, his novel partly set in 1940s...
Northern California writer Kathryn Chetkovich confesses a major case of jealousy over the literary success of her former lover, who she loved most of all...
A Los Angeles woman, Maryann Gray, had a deeply personal response to the Santa Monica Farmers' Market tragedy -- 25 years ago she was driving...
July 18, 2003
The New York Times reports that Democrats are all riled up about New York mayor Michael Bloomberg's suggestion that city offices -- from his on...
Donnell Alexander, the former LA Weekly and ESPN Magazine writer -- and long-ago intern at the L.A. Times -- will discuss his new book, Ghetto...
Well it has a few, on special stories, but very few. In his media column in this Sunday's L.A. Times, David Shaw explores the Economist's...
Don Barrett, who operates the L.A. Radio website, writes on the L.A. Times op-ed page about making the wrenching decision to take the car keys...
TV stations in Los Angeles are planning to go live at 2 o'clock this afternoon when the Eagle County (Colorado) prosecutor announces whether charges will...
In a piece on the restoration of public murals in Los Angeles, the National Geographic website states the most famous one is Judy Baca's "The...
July 17, 2003
Rip Rense didn't toil in the media for 25 years without learning how to work the news hacks like me. Yesterday, he slipped word of...
The Church of Scientology owes $94,625 in back taxes on its Hollywood properties, the second time in recent years it has fallen behind, reports Kevin...
They are juggling the lineup a bit at KCRW (89.9 FM) to make room for Day to Day, the first news magazine show to be...
At the Writers Guild of America website, Ross Johnson's interview with L.A. author-blogger-screenwriter Roger L. Simon contains this painful admission: Simon lost $1 million of...
Jack Dunphy, the cyber pseudonym of the LAPD cop who writes provocative missives for National Review Online, predicts a riot if a jury acquits the...
The death toll at the Santa Monica Farmers' Market rose to nine late Wednesday night. Here is some of the overnight and morning reporting: L.A....
Fox Searchlight Pictures, the 20th-Century Fox unit behind the Internet marketing hit 28 Days Later, launched a Blogspot site over the weekend. The blog is...
Get this -- legendary newspaper editor Jim Bellows, L.A. Times columnist Al Martinez and former Her-Exer Rip Rense have all written books in the last...
KCRW will move Warren Olney's 1 p.m. national show To The Point up to noon today so that NPR can go live with Tony Blair's...
July 16, 2003
Susannah Breslin -- the Reverse Cowgirl -- returns to the pages of Nerve.com with Mannequins, a short sex story more twisted than smutty. Her short...
The LA Weekly that comes out tomorrow has an unfortunately timed cover feature on the 22-year history of Santa Monica's farmers market, with a photo...
Channels 2, 4, 7 and 9 (but not KTLA 5 or Fox 11, which are staying with regular programming) are all live from the Santa...
The prospect of Richard Riordan being on the ballot helps the Davis recall's chances in Los Angeles, Dan Weintraub analyzes based on the latest Field...
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, who is waging a high-profile battle with the L.A. Times OC edition, details his complaints in a letter to...
Michael Kinsley, Max Boot and Arianna Huffington on the L.A. Times op-ed page this morning. Read them, then guess which one is a Berkeley grad...
Michiko Kakutani's review in the New York Times of "Kate Remembered" blames author A. Scott Berg for too few revelations and too much hyperbole. A...
LAT-Early is a website that makes a game of trying to predict what the L.A. Times coverage of Israel and Palestine will say before it...
July 15, 2003
The lead story in The LALA Times -- "all the news that's fit to be tied."...
Hugh Hewitt is on the L.A. Times' case again, this time over a story on asbestos litigation. An aside: giving out the editors' email addresses...
Oren Kerr, one of the regular writers on the UCLA-based Volokh Conspiracy blog, has to stop contributing because he is now a clerk to Supreme...
"Airhead" is the Daily News' term, not mine. The DN editorial page calls Mayor Hahn's plan to modernize LAX either a bad idea or a...
Robert Scheer's L.A. Times op-ed column posits a "firm basis for bringing a charge of impeachment against the president who employed lies to lead us...
Having a liberal voice on KFI (640 AM) is apparently so unusual that Channel 28's Life and Times is doing a feature tonight on new...
July 14, 2003
The L.A. Times some time ago reassigned veteran editors to make sure staff-written pieces flow to the LATimes.com website earlier in the day, and it...
Former L.A. Times entertainment reporter William Knoedelseder worked for Barry Diller at Fox and USA Broadcasting -- and now has sold a book on the...
Kevin Drum at CalPundit wonders out loud how long it will be before pundit blogger Andrew Sullivan turns on new NYT editor Bill Keller. I...
Pulitzer-winning Los Angeles author A. Scott Berg will discuss his new book about Katharine Hepburn with Elvis Mitchell on The Treatment (KCRW 89.9 FM). The...
Former LA Weekly (and ESPN the Magazine) writer Donnell Alexander is back from a seven-city book tour and will read from his memoir Ghetto Celebrity...
Erik Himmelsbach, who writes the Valley Boy column every two weeks (I think) for Valley Beat, is my new favorite interpreter of the lore and...
After a furious month of posting on his Sacramento Bee blog, Daniel Weintraub hasn't added an item on the Davis recall -- or anything else...
Let the other blogs be intrigued by the New York Times' "corrective article" on TVT Records and Steven Gottlieb. My favorite correction for today is...
Bill Keller gets the top job at the New York Times, as many expected. No official word yet on #2, but Marty Baron -- formerly...
As reader "la s'nooze" points out, Jill Stewart's latest syndicated Capital Punishment column -- naming a bunch of big-money contributors to Gov. Gray Davis --...
Patt Morrison has an "only in L.A." item in her political notes column: city councilman Bernard Parks, the ex-police chief, helped roast Hustler magazine founder...
The situation at KPFK -- where sweeping on-air changes take full effect tomorrow -- makes the cover of today's Los Angeles Business Journal and is...
July 13, 2003
A Howard Rosenberg column in the L.A. Times last month about the way network news programs produce their stories irked ABC News president David Westin,...
Perusing the New York Times compilation of "Weddings & Celebrations" today -- they take up four pages in Sunday Styles -- a familiar L.A. journalism...
Michael at Franklin Avenue called directory assistance to get the number for Wahoo's in the mid-Wilshire area, and the voice from somewhere else in the...
July 12, 2003
Tim Rutten reports in the LAT today that Benjamin Schwarz, who has changed the profile of The Atlantic book section in his three years as...
Steve Carney, the freelancer who writes about radio for the L.A. Times Calendar, weighs in today on the KPFK brouhaha that broke more than a...
At noon Sunday on KPFK (90.7 FM), Barbara Osborn talks with Jason Salzman, author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits, a...
July 11, 2003
We're late on this one, but last week's Downtown News carried the news that Form Zero Books has given up on the Arts District and...
KRLA (870 AM) has ended its suspension of Michael Savage, says L.A. Radio.com. Earlier: KRLA yanks Savage...
L.A. Times senior photo editor Gail Fisher has won a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism. She gets a $10,000 stipend to produce a...
L.A. Times editors and managers were informed in a memo that managing editor Dean Baquet won't be leaving for the New York Times or anywhere...
July 10, 2003
The Car Show hosted by John Retsek and Art Gould is apparently back on the Saturday lineup at KPFK -- at least for now. Retsek...
Tonight at 6:30, KNX Newsradio (1070 AM) is airing a documentary by reporter Kari Moran on Catholic women, including nuns, who have been sexually abused...
The new Caltrans office building going up in the downtown Civic Center "owes its existence to earthquakes, union muscle and a tincture of politics," writes...
James Pinkerton, the former White House aide to Reagan and Bush senior, rips into Ann Coulter in his L.A. Times op-ed column. Not only does...
It'll be nasty on both sides, but Davis has no goodwill left to spend. Says John J. Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont-McKenna: "He...
I actually spent an enjoyable hour at LAX recently. I wasn't flying, just picking up my co-Observers. Getting in and out was painless (it was...
He doesn't blog often, this Joseph at joyrides without maps -- subtitle "notes on a reprehensible way of life" -- but I'm wishing he would....
July 09, 2003
Don Barrett at LARadio.com reports that KRLA (870 and 590 AM in Southern California) has pulled Michael Savage off the air indefinitely. Savage earlier was...
In the forum at the Herald Examiner alumni site, Saul Daniels has posted a link to a sad but interesting window into Los Angeles newspaper...
There's a new name floated for the recall ballot just about every day now. Steve Lopez re-endorsed himself today, the L.A. Examiner guys are riding...
RAND, the original Cold War think tank, thrives no matter which party is in the White House or controls Congress. A gleaming new headquarters is...
Regular Wednesday blogger Rip Rense this week recalls his days as the student newspaper editor (and campus punching bag) of Venice High School. He opines...
Dan Weintraub blogs: "If he runs, he wins."...
The aftermath of the Kobe Bryant arrest in Colorado (including Jay Leno's jokes) is being followed at SportsbyBrooks. The fan site LakersGround.net is also compiling...
For the next two weeks, the best young players for the Los Angeles Kings will practice drills and play pick-up hockey every morning at HealthSouth...
During last year's secession campaign, local officials promised to look at why Los Angeles is the only major city that requires homeowners -- even in...
That's Tim Rutten's take. His Regarding Media column in the L.A. Times today looks for an upbeat note, saying that the recent coolness toward Michael...
July 08, 2003
On NPR's "Morning Edition" tomorrow, and currently on the NPR website, Renee Montagne interviews Diana Abu-Jaber about her book Crescent, set among the community of...
The New York Times' Rick Lyman goes to Hollywood Park with Bruce McNall, the wunderkind of coin collecting and sports who turned con man, and...
Business Week's L.A. bureau is out with a cover story in the July 14 issue on film piracy, in which the money men of Hollywood...
July 07, 2003
From Publishers Lunch Weekly: Staton Rabin's DR. MIRACLE, a time-travel adventure about an African-American teenage science whiz from South Central L.A. whose best friend is...
Virginia Postrel, the former editor of Reason who has moved on to write books and commentary from Dallas, still keeps up with Los Angeles and...
Two young'uns, Alex Padilla (age 30) and Eric Garcetti (32), are not only the president and assistant pro-tem of the L.A. city council, they are...
The "Evil Empire" of big radio, Clear Channel Communications, will help the USC classical music station find sponsors. Steve Carney has the story in the...
The Media Action Network for Asian Americans is upset that John Cleese plays the father of Lucy Liu's character in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Writing...
Joshua Tree National Park's trees are dying off, the L.A. Times reports. "The short-term prognosis is that a large percentage of the Joshua trees will...
July 06, 2003
Phylicia Rashad renting a Santa Monica condo for $2,000 a month is the lead item in Hot Property in the L.A. Times real estate section....
Treason by Ann Coulter shoots to #2 on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list (behind Hillary Clinton's Living History), but doesn't crack the top...
July 05, 2003
"KPFK now moves towards the further diversification of programming as we do so in the area of political consciousness, cultural awareness and the empowerment of...
Twelve years ago I used this lede on a story about California's meanest weed: "What is three feet tall, armed with sharp needles, loiters in...
July 04, 2003
Instead of reporting on the unfolding disarray at KPFK, the L.A. Times radio beat reporter, freelancer Steve Carney, has a nice little feature in Calendar...
It's OK to place granite tiles in the sidewalk along Ventura Boulevard with the names of stars who strutted their stuff at Studio City's lone...
July 03, 2003
The OC Weekly's Anthony Pignataro gets in the face of Gordon Dillow, the Register columnist who was embedded with the first Marines to cross into...
Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll -- having already given his view on liberal bias at the paper, and having gotten a huge outside reaction...
The longest running program longest running non-music show on Los Angeles radio will come to an end on July 12. KPFK's schedule revamp has claimed...
Page Six says that actress Sharon Stone and hubby Phil Bronstein, top editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, have split up. He, famously, was the...
Producers and program hosts at KPFK, the Pacifica station at 90.7 FM, are getting phone calls informing them of new show times, curtailed hours and...
Since it's Thursday, here's a quick scan of the weekly papers...The LA Weekly looks at the state of liberty in America, updates the anti-trust action...
Jane Kahn will indeed be the publisher and Laurie Pike the editor of Distinction, the new luxury magazine to be run by a division that...
July 02, 2003
Barry Bearak, a New York Times staffer familiar in these parts from his many years as a star writer at the L.A. Times, quietly circulated...
Fresh off a live broadcast from the state capital on Monday, Kitty Felde is teasing to a debate on the Gray Davis recall on 'Talk...
Soon the last TV stations left in Hollywood will be KTLA (Ch. 5) and KCET (Ch. 28), Franklin Avenue points out. The blog made a...
L.A. writer Matt Welch (of L.A. Examiner.com and Reason mag) set off a comment frenzy at his personal website (58 and counting, and not all...
Ronald Grover bets that Arnold Schwarzenegger won't run for governor if Terminator 3 has a good holiday weekend at the box office. "For all the...
George Ramos, a reporter, editor and columnist at the L.A. Times for 25 years, is departing to become the chair of the journalism department at...
Tim Rutten's Regarding Media column in the L.A. Times blames the Laci Peterson frenzy on the hunger of the cable networks for summer programming, and...
July 01, 2003
Tongues were already wagging down at the L.A. Times on Tuesday morning over the Patt Morrison column in which she proudly accepts an invitation from...
Twenty years ago, award-winning Los Angeles author A. Scott Berg began talking with his friend Katharine Hepburn about her life. Four years ago, he began...
Demand for new schools is consuming land and historic locales all over Los Angeles. On Wilshire alone, the old Otis Art Institute is already a...
Playboy contributor Katie Moran has sold a book on her travels through the sexual culture of Los Angeles to Bonus Books. The 'On' Position, says...
UCLA's Anderson School gives out the Loeb Awards each year to recognize the best in business journalism. At the banquet last night in New York,...
