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Archive by Month
December 31, 2003
Three L.A. Times reporters -- Tracy Wilkinson, Ann Simmons and Chris Kraul -- have been injured in a car bomb explosion outside a Baghdad nightclub...
From the L.A. Times news obit: John Gregory Dunne, the journalist, screenwriter and novelist who chronicled the Hollywood movie industry in his book "The Studio,"...
December 28, 2003
The December issue of the L.A. Press Club newsletter "8 Ball" is up now at the organization's revamped website. (OK, it's been up for two...
SportsLetter, the online newsletter from the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, interviews author and journalist Don Wallace about his book on Long Beach Polytechnic...
The L.A. Times today follows up science writer Robert Lee Hotz's six-day series on the space shuttle accident with a strongly written lead editorial: The...
December 26, 2003
L.A. radio freelancer Emmanuelle Richard makes her living feeding the hunger of French stations for breaking news from here. So it's a bummer professionally speaking...
December 22, 2003
Alex Ben Block at Television Week checks in with longtime entertainment reporter David Sheehan, who left Channel 2 two weeks ago to work on syndicated...
The L.A. Business Journal, keeping up the pressure on the "pay to play" story about Hahn commisioners asking potential city contractors for campaign cash, reports...
Where, you didn't ask, is Gray Davis these days? Both Howard Fine in the L.A. Business Journal and Rick Orlov in the L.A. Daily News...
December 20, 2003
Tim Rutten on the symbiotic relationship between CNN's Larry King and Michael Jackson lawyer Mark Geragos, in today's L.A. Times "Regarding Media" column: Take what...
L.A. Times science writer K.C. Cole goes embedded at Fermilab for a first-person Column One about the hunt for elusive sterile neutrinos. It's one of...
The website Sports By Brooks says that during last night's Lakers game, Nicole Richie (the non-Hilton half of "The Simple Life" duo) was interviewed on...
December 19, 2003
Fans of Sandra Tsing Loh know that she sometimes writes about the eccentricities of her Chinese-American scientist father. He used to hitchhike around L.A. --...
John Ziegler will come to Los Angeles in January and work the 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift "live and local," as they say, reports...
In the midst of a piece praising his deceased former boss, columnist Rob Zaleski of the Madison (Wisconsin) Capital Times slams Los Angeles: In the...
Berkeley Breathed replies to a Palos Verdes fifth-grade critic on the Kids Reading Room page at the back of today's L.A. Times Calendar section. Sarah,...
After the Chicago Tribune bought the Valley News and Green Sheet in 1975, Schmidt took over as publisher and began the shopper's transformation into the...
Times columnist Steve Lopez tags along as a couple of unemployed Orange County Republicans try to crash Gov. Schwarzenegger's fundraising troll through the exclusive skybox...
December 18, 2003
Four months, 10,000 miles and many blog posts later, the Lonewacko blogging tour of America concludes. And he'd like some coin in his Amazon tip...
Sue Smethurst, the Aussie journalist strip-searched, handcuffed and deported at LAX last month when she showed up to interview Olivia Newton-John, adds some details for...
Variety editor Peter Bart is the lead item at Page Six today, due to Hollywood gossiping about who he's slyly dishing through the made-up characters...
Paris Hilton and "The Simple Life" on Fox outdrew Diane Sawyer's primetime sitdown with President Bush Tuesday night. Paris stomped the Prez among 18- to...
It's been a busy, and fruitful, blog week at Joyrides Without Maps. Check out Joseph's short ode to Playa del Rey (as viewed from The...
December 17, 2003
In a "Guest Comment" at National Review Online, Michelle Malkin way overreaches when she likens the Charlie LeDuff L.A. River miscue (posted about earlier today)...
On the Romenesko letters page today, former L.A. journalist Jane Birnbaum refers to the legend of Victor Frisbee, a fictitious character who used to show...
Essie Mae Washington Williams, the retired Los Angeles teacher who revealed Strom Thurmond was her father, tells her story on today's LAT op-ed page. I...
It's been a big week already for Los Angeles city controller Laura Chick. On Monday she made the news and the next day's papers by...
That Charlie LeDuff piece in the NYT last week on kayaking the L.A. River was too familiar for Blake Gumprecht, author of the 1999 book...
December 16, 2003
The magazine was purchased for $55 million this afternoon by Bruce Wasserstein, chairman of investment bank Lazard, says AdAge.com. Emmis (Los Angeles magazine) and the...
Players on this year's L.A. Kings come from Canada, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Russia, France, Finland -- and a few are even from the...
Steven Rosen writes on Indiewire today about L.A.'s place in the alternative cinema boom. To most people, a list of the top cities for the...
MSNBC gossip Jeannette Walls had an item in The Scoop yesterday dinging NYT Hollywood writer Sharon Waxman for using a quote from Harvey Weinstein without...
Good rant by Michael Schneider at Franklin Avenue on the renaming of L.A.'s tallest skyscraper. He wonders if many people even knew its old name...
December 15, 2003
The cover package of seven staff stories in this week's L.A. Business Journal explores the cash-based underground economy, with a mainbar by RiShawn Biddle. Capsules...
CityBeat media columnist (and blogger about L.A.) Cathy Seipp is taking on an added blog gig -- she will opine from the right once a...
Law professor Eugene Volokh uses the web traffic stats compiled by The Truth Laid Bear to argue that there is no solid evidence the blogosphere...
In this month's Written By, the journal of the Writers Guild, Calle Khouri and Gary Ross talk with each other about the writing process, directing...
We are all Paris Hilton, writes Fortune senior editor Geoffrey Colvin. If average Americans of even 30 to 40 years ago could see us today,...
The late Bill Farr was an L.A. Times reporter who became nationally known -- and an entry in First Amendment and journalism textbooks -- when...
A senior business officer at the USC Annenberg School for Communication misappropriated at least $100,000 before leaving the university last year, the campus Daily Trojan...
After our SaveDisney.com item last week, the site pressing the agenda of Roy E. Disney was deemed culturally Irrelevant -- but that didn't stop the...
December 13, 2003
The L.A. Times sent staff architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff to Baghdad some time ago and the result is a four-part series beginning Sunday with two...
Tim Rutten's media column today is another talker (his second this week). He opens with a swipe at what he calls the "nattering class" of...
News items: Reuters, Dec. 9 -- "Maria Shriver said on Tuesday that she had returned to her job as a NBC News television reporter after...
December 12, 2003
On the 5 o'clock news tonight, Channel 2 entertainment reporter David Sheehan read a report about Mick Jagger being knighted then told the audience that...
I Want Media's online poll (with The Week magazine) to choose a Media Person of the Year isn't even complete yet and already rates a...
The mother and sisters of Dodger Stadium shooting victim Mark Antenorcruz left their thoughts yesterday at this post from September....
NYU's Jay Rosen, writing at his PressThink blog, takes issue with Tim Rutten's L.A. Times Wednesday column dinging the idea of the New York Times...
December 11, 2003
Among the local journalists in Boston last weekend talking about narrative non-fiction were the LAT's Pulitzer winner (for Enrique's Journey) Sonia Nazario, her editor Rick...
In The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" this week, Tad Friend reports on what ensued when the L.A. staff of the National Lampoon website...
Not open on Sundays or nights any more, but still the best when it comes to L.A. pastrami. Richard Foss does the honors in CityBeat....
Richard Horgan writes at FilmStew that the Playboy Interview was once a cultural milestone, but today has become just another pit stop on the Hollywood...
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher was a Los Angeles journalist before going into a life of Republican politics, and the Daily Breeze says that at age 56...
Roy E. Disney and Stanley Gold have a new website: SaveDisney.com. (And while we're at it, Patterico's Pontifications has a new web address...adjust accordingly.)...
The LA Weekly 25th anniversary issue out today sounds like a keeper. The website revisits many past stories, and there is an interview with founder...
Bob Hope never lived in Burbank, Glendale or Pasadena -- the cities that own Burbank Airport -- but they have renamed the airport for him...
December 10, 2003
Tim Rutten was not impressed by Daniel Okrent's introduction as "public editor" of the New York Times, or his reason for being there. Rutten writes...
Gov. Schwarzenegger, who used to say he wouldn't play the political fundraising game, has accepted $750,000 in contributions in recent weeks. Dan Weintraub at California...
Slate's Jack Shafer read all 11,700 words of David Willman's report last Sunday in the L.A. Times on the influence of drug companies at the...
The studios had the wrong target when they suspected critics and reviewers of pirating Hollywood films. They should have been watching the Hollywood cops. From...
December 09, 2003
The once-pioneering JenniCam is closing down December 31 after seven years online, and Terry Teachout at ArtsJournal.com writes that Jenni Ringley deserves credit as the...
Yesterday's memo from the New York Times obituary editor calling for more fact-checking rigor was followed up today by a directive from on high. Standards...
Indefatigable L.A. blogger Robert Garcia Tagorda ("Priorities and Frivolities") has changed his address. He's now the proud owner of www.tagorda.com. Check out his clean new...
After Showtime ran the much-debated docudrama on the Reagans, the network followed it with a televised discussion among historians, biographers, and others. Today at 2:30...
Gov. Schwarzenegger has dropped his private probe into the groping charges against him, which Dan Weintraub says makes sense -- "nobody understood what the investigators...
December 08, 2003
Following a spate of erroneous or premature obituaries in its pages, the New York Times editor in charge of obits gets tough. His memo sent...
The Orange County DA Tony Rackauckas, who is engaged in a nasty feud down there with the L.A. Times and the OC Weekly, is the...
From Don Barrett's members-only LARadio.com today:Who Goofed, I've Got to Know? KLSX runs the Howard Stern Show live from WXRK-New York beginning at 3 a.m....
A segment tonight on "Life and Times" (KCET, 7 p.m.) revisits the issue of splitting Los Angeles into boroughs. Also, L.A Business Journal reporter David...
Variety.com has added more blogs since I last looked. The new ones are on porn's crossover to the mainstream and trends in the comic book...
The city's political class was abuzz last week about former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg acting more and more like he wants to run against fellow...
A story by Michael Cieply and James Bates in the L.A. Times details some of the payments and expensive gifts -- watches, motorcycles, overseas trips...
Charlie LeDuff of the New York Times tries to kayak the Los Angeles River and gets past downtown, only to be "discovered and expelled before...
December 07, 2003
Author, editor and Rotisserie Baseball co-founder Daniel Okrent wrote his introductory piece as public editor of the New York Times. They will appear every other...
December 06, 2003
Sue Smethurst was the Australian journalist detained at LAX last month when she arrived to interview Olivia Newton-John. After being strip-searched and held for 15...
The headline is from a keeper quote in today's L.A. Daily News destined for a long life in local newsrooms and political circles. The story...
Movie City News says that Focus Features was the first distributor to get free screeners into eager Hollywood hands this morning, using FedEx to deliver...
Developer Brian Sweeney called off his hunt for the lion that killed his goat -- the last male puma in the Santa Monica Mountains....
December 05, 2003
The president of the Society of Professional Journalists chapter in L.A. responds to criticism of KTLA news director Jeff Wald, at Wednesday's post here....
Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation goes on public display today at the Central Library. It was the star attraction last night at the preview showing in...
...of the L.A. Times Calendar section today. The double-page ad for HBO's Angels in America contains eight blurbs running the length of the page. But...
Diane Dimond, the Court TV reporter who has had scoops on the Michael Jackson story, is close to signing up as a contributor to ABC's...
Robert K. Dornan, the conservative who lost his House seat to Loretta Sanchez in Orange County in 1996 (and lost to her again in '98),...
Hugh Hewitt collected his prize this week for being an early and vocal adopter of the Schwarzenegger campaign -- the governor came on his radio...
Page Six rumors that Paris Hilton hooked up recently with a member of the L.A. Kings -- but it doesn't say which one. Get on...
December 04, 2003
From tomorrow's L.A. Times, by Ken Weiss: Though he insists that he only wants to scare the animal, not kill it, a land speculator received...
I never knew or even heard of author and Daily News book editor Bruce Cook until posting his obituary early last month, but plenty of...
Snappy new look to the website for The Planning Report by David Abel and friends, and an interesting list of L.A. stories this month: Steve...
It's tough being a reporter trying to cover the L.A. County Board of Supervisors because so much of the people's business takes place out of...
Movie City News has unveiled the MCN 100, a panel of critics, reviewers and film watchers who will vote periodically for Best Picture and other...
December 03, 2003
Some movement among editors on the second floor at the L.A. Times, where the Calendar and features staffs sit, was announced this afternoon. In: Style...
The L.A. Times covers the dust-up over last night's Beverly Hilton gathering of Hollywood liberals. It seems Drudge was incorrect when he leapt to the...
California Authors.com posts on a San Francisco Chronicle story by Edward Guthmann about the raging partisanship on best-seller lists, and has a separate entry on...
Ron Fineman, who runs the subscription site On the Record, objects to KTLA news director Jeff Wald being given an award by the L.A. chapter...
In addition to the reconstruct of the Times' Arnold stories, the new issue of American Journalism Review has a piece on newspaper blogs. In it,...
December 02, 2003
Seth Lubove, chief of the Forbes L.A. bureau, visits the set of the forthcoming Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator, and profiles the film's bankroller as...
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is in town. He speaks to the World Affairs Council tonight, then tomorrow addresses the City Council and visits an AIDS...
The new Whole Foods Market on Wilshire in Santa Monica -- built on the site of the former Madame Wu's Garden -- gleams with Santa...
Alex Ben Block at Television Week profiles Bill Rosendahl, the longtime host of local public affairs cable shows who is running for the L.A. City...
Amy Pascal, the wife of New York Times correspondent Bernard Weinraub, was named the most powerful woman in Hollywood by the Hollywood Reporter. She is...
The American Journalism Review steps back and reconstructs how the L.A. Times says it reported and edited the paper's controversial pre-election story that alleged groping...
Readers of the L.A. Times have come to expect cartoonist Michael Ramirez to toe the straight conservative line. So his drawing on Nov. 29 knocking...
This morning's L.A. Times story on the Disney flap includes an interview with departing board members Roy E. Disney and Stanley Gold -- but does...
Carina Chocano, the L.A. Times top TV critic, finds Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie surprisingly watchable. Despite its wickedly contrived and booby-trapped fish-out-of-water premise, "The...
Fox News commentator Steve Milloy has some criticism of Daily News' coverage of the Sunshine Canyon landfill controversy out in the Valley. His main target,...
UCLA Law's Eugene Volokh explains in a long post why the popular Volokh Conspiracy group blog does not allow visitors to post comments. Excerpts: 1....
December 01, 2003
Reason's December issue celebrates the L.A.-based magazine's 35th year in existence with a list of, yes, 35 "Heroes of Freedom" who "made the world a...
Good Michael Hiltzik column in the L.A. Times about Francisco Pinedo, who is trying to bring a bunch of new private-sector jobs to South Los...
Moxie points to Blogging.la, a site put together by Sean Bonner and Jason DeFillippo. Contributors include Xeni Jardin, Wil Wheaton and Moxie. And speaking of...
The L.A. Times' loss is Progress Media's gain -- or something like that. USC journalism professor Martin Kaplan, former speechwriter for Walter Mondale, has been...
Gay Republican West Hollywood blogger Boi from Troy envisions how a constitutional amendment based on Biblical concepts of marriage might read. A. Marriage in the...
Things sure are complicated around KPFK. I listened for a few minutes in the car Sunday to Ian Masters's program Background Briefing, and he recounted...
When L.A.O. posted last week on the county's crackdown on the terms "master" and "slave," the issue was already a week old (at least) on...
Roy E. Disney, vice chairman of Disney and the corporation's last link to the family, resigned from the board and called on Michael Eisner to...
Jim Yeager, the senior VP for worldwide publicity at Universal Parks & Resorts, is leaving to start a new firm with Linda Dozoretz, president of...
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| The funeral for Mark Lacter will be held Sunday, Nov. 24 at 12 noon at Hillside Memorial Park, 6001 W. Centinela Avenue, Los Angeles 90045. Reception to follow.
Before I lived in Echo Park, there was a tiny 1920s bungalow-cottage-standalone house on N. Occidental in Silver Lake. I...
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