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This should have been posted on February 20. That was the day that Ricardo Lizarraga became the first Los Angeles police officer killed on duty since 1998, and the first...
LA Observed archive
for February 2004
If you don't find what you want here, check another month or search below.
Online city guide LA.com formally launches this week, two years after Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group bought the domain name from Las Vegas Internet entrepreneurs. The L.A. Business Journal says the...
Deanne Stillman recently got Amazon.com to delete 16 customer "reviews" of Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave that she calls "vindictive, malicious, and possibly libelous"...
Blogger Lonewacko was listening to KFI's "John and Ken" on Friday and reports that Bob Dornan, who wants to regain his old Congress seat in Tuesday's primary, claimed to have...
Michael Speier has been promoted to managing editor of Variety and Daily Variety, editor Peter Bart announces. Just last August, we had Speier being named M.E. for special reports. Incidentally,...
Some media, books and L.A. events coming up in March:...
David Freeman, the author and screenwriter whose latest Hollywood novel It's All True is about to be published, puts the Oscars into a little local perspective in Sunday's LAT Calendar...
Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes both write letters to the editor in the Sunday L.A. Times remembering and lauding Frank del Olmo, the LAT editor-columnist who died Feb. 19...
Ron Fineman's On The Record says that Channel 2 aired tape of nude women celebrating Brazil's Carnival on the 6 a.m. news this past Wednesday. A per-diem writer and editor...
Writing in The Washingtonian magazine, Harry Jaffe gives props to the L.A. Times for its investigative reporting. The story leads with former Washington Post writer Vernon Loeb in his new...
Cardinal Roger Mahony is criticized by name in a report today by the independent committee that looked into the Catholic church sex abuse scandal. The panel calls inaction by U.S....
Lead story on "Marketplace" today: We don't want to say that Michael Eisner's days are numbered, but......
Negotiators for the two sides reach a tentative agreement to end the supermarket strike/lockout that began in October. Now the workers have to vote over the weekend; picket lines will...
Los Angeles writer Andy Behrman's book Electroboy, just issued in paperback, tells his personal story -- and based on the summary I get why Hollywood is calling. Tobey Maguire wants...
Nick Clooney, the father of actor George Clooney, was a TV news anchor here on Channel 4 for a couple of years in the 1980s. He was also a host...
According to blogger Tony Castro, who cites an unnamed high LAT editor, the paramedics who responded to the call about Frank del Olmo's collapse last week were held for almost...
In the March 15 issue of Forbes, Los Angeles bureau manager Seth Lubove asks of Roy E. Disney and Stanley Gold, "so who are these guys--really?" He goes on to...
Los Angeles-based Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman is featured today on the New York Times website, answering reader questions in the "Forums" section about the Oscars and the movie business. So...
Well I guess there really is a presidential primary here next Tuesday. Tomorrow (Friday) at 10 a.m., John Kerry has scheduled a UCLA speech "where he will outline steps that...
Cathy Seipp's "Media Circus" column in Citybeat this week traces the history of the Razzies, the Golden Raspberry Awards, which were started by a friend of hers from UCLA. The...
Emmis Communications, which owns top L.A. radio station Power 106 (as well as Los Angeles magazine), has joined Clear Channel in banning on-air indecency. Says an exec in the Indianapolis...
Jeffrey Anderson in today's LA Weekly takes on the Times' coverage of Cardinal Roger Mahony and the sex abuse story. Religion writer Larry Stammer comes in for the most criticism,...
Juicy stuff in Michael Cieply's LAT story today about a letter from Michael Eisner to Michael Ovitz firing him from his ill-conceived Disney post back in 1996. The seven-page letter...
Mayor Jim Hahn isn't real happy that City Council president Alex Padilla got a City Hall guard to let him into the mayor's locked office over the weekend, ostensibly to...
Blogger Brooke Schreier Ganz, better known online as Asparagirl, recently moved to Los Angeles to be with her new (as of November) husband, Scott Ganz. They blog together at The...
Tonight KCET's "Life & Times" (7 p.m.) looks back at the astonishing career of Paul Revere Williams, the first African American architect in Los Angeles. When his practice took off...
The future of the Magic Castle overlooking Hollywood is up in the air, according to a piece by Gary Shapiro in today's New York Sun. Longtime operator Milt Larsen is...
Pilar Marrero, political editor and columnist at La Opinión, has been promoted to oversee the paper's metro coverage. As Metropolitan News Editor, she oversees a staff of 15 reporters and...
L.A. author and screenwriter Roger L. Simon has been a prominent "former-lefty-turned-Bush-supporter" on his blog, but he wrote this week of his disappointment over the president's move against gay marriage...
Here's an odd story out of Los Angeles City Hall by David Zahniser in the Breeze. Seems that Alex Padilla, the president of the City Council, and the chief of...
In 1997 during his investigation of President Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky affair, special prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr was chosen to be dean of the law school at Pepperdine...
Column One in the L.A. Times is devoted to a profile of Victor Davis Hanson, the Cal State Fresno classicist whose writings on the war against terrorism, immigration and other...
If hearing this telephone number doesn't make neurons flicker deep in your brain -- say it aloud, Richmond 9-5171 -- you might want to move on and skip this item....
The Ventura County Star today announced that Howard Owens, one of the journalist-bloggers linked in the left rail, has been named the daily's director of New Media. Owens has been...
Knoll's Black Forest Inn, a fixture on Wilshire in Santa Monica since 1982, closes for good on Saturday. Chris Nichols posts from the Pasadena Star-News on the LottaLiving website: Regarded...
Aaron Tonken, the Hollywood scammer due to be sentenced soon after pleading guilty to federal fraud charges, is circulating a book proposal, says New York Post gossiper Cindy Adams. She...
Attention City Hall (cc: Fleishman-Hillard): Mark Matassa has been the Times assistant metro editor overseeing city and other local government coverage. He's headed back to Seattle (where he has family)...
Passengers who empty their pockets to go through security at LAX leave behind a lot of coin in those little bins -- more than $7,400 in change in the last...
Cynthia Cotts in the Village Voice fact-checks Fox online gossip columnist Roger Friedman's feud with New York Times Hollywood reporter Sharon Waxman and comes down on her side. Cotts debunks...
The new Los Angeles Spanish-language newspaper from the Tribune folks debuts March 1. The editor is Reynaldo Mena, who used to edit the Orange Country Register's weekly en Espanol, Excelsior,...
When, if ever, has a movie review run on the front page of the Los Angeles Times? (Surely someone will know.) But I'm told that's where Kenneth Turan's take on...
Gary Dretzka at Movie City News examines the Bernie Weinraub question and the new Los Angeles magazine piece -- as well as journalism about Hollywood -- in a column that...
The NYT's lead story Tuesday reporting that the CIA got the first name and telephone number of a Sept. 11 hijacker two and a half years before the attacks is...
Heading into Thursday's debate at USC, John Kerry leads John Edwards in California by a whopping 32 points, the latest L.A. Times Poll finds. The debate will include those two...
There's a new journalist blog in town and on the list of links down the left side of this page. Tony Castro, Beverly Hills book author and columnist for the...
The Los Angeles chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists is throwing its annual banquet Thursday at the Hyatt Regency downtown. Linda Deutsch, the venerable special correspondent in Los Angeles...
New book deals from Publishers Lunch: Los Angeles Magazine editor R.J. Smith has sold The Great Black Way: Central Avenue and the Legacy of African-American Los Angeles to PublicAffairs at...
New York Times editor Bill Keller notified the staff today that disgraced reporter Jayson Blair's new book will be ignored by the paper. He also warned that it contains "hurtful"...
Rick Flaste, the L.A. Times Features Editor who came west from the NYT with Deputy Managing Editor (Features) John Montorio a few years ago, is returning to the New York...
There was a big to-do in Spanish-language radio on Friday, say LARadio.com and La Opinión (in Spanish but free). "El Cucuy," the afternoon DJ on KCSA whose billboards are all...
The Portland Oregonian's reviewer likes Charlie LeDuff's collection of New York Times pieces, Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts, published in January. Alternating between the...
Dan Neil, the auto columnist hired last year by the L.A. Times, has won the best commentary or column award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Judges called Neil...
The sudden death last week of LAT Associate Editor Frank del Olmo messed up a deal Mayor James Hahn had to leak his ethics reform proposals to the Times and...
The first issue of Vodka magazine, based here in L.A., has hit the streets with photographs from former District Attorney Gil Garcetti's book Iron: Erecting the Walt Disney Concert Hall....
Every channel on Comcast cable in West L.A. (at least) went blank at about 8:48 p.m., then for more than a minute broadcast an emergency flash flood and mud flow...
Jonah has redesigned the look of LABlogs.com and added a spot to run ads. Fear not, his impressive roll of the L.A. blog community remains, just moved to the left...
One of the books in Susan Salter Reynolds' "Discovery" column in Sunday's LAT Book Review is Malibu Diary: Notes from an Urban Refugee. It's by Penelope Grenoble O'Malley, an ex-upstate...
I'm not sure why anyone wouldn't just make their own guacamole, but if you need a reason to stop using the store-bought goo that passes for the real thing, here's...
There's a familiar name in the L.A. Times sports section Sunday. Mike Downey, now of the Chicago Tribune, but formerly the big cheese LAT sports columnist then the victim of...
R.J. Smith writes tough in the March issue of Los Angeles about Bernard Weinraub, the former White House and war correspondent who has covered Hollywood for the New York Times...
Journalist RiShawn Biddle (on his blog) turns up a Daily News job opening: Executive Editor. It's posted on Journalism Jobs.com: The Los Angeles Daily News seeks an executive editor to...
Not the fame or the music, but literally the glare off the shiny stainless steel skin. Residents of the condos across Hope Street say they have to close their blinds...
To continue the politics theme for one more item, the California presidential primary is less than two weeks away. But as Kevin Drum at Calpundit points out today, nobody's really...
John O'Sullivan joins KCRW's Friday afternoon show "Left, Right and Center" as the regular in the right seat. He is Editor-in-Chief of The National Interest, senior fellow at the Nixon...
Earlier this month, Brian Flemming threw together a bunch of photos and puckishly invented the speculation that President Bush had gotten a nose job. Last night, the nose job rumor...
The San Francisco Chronicle details the conservative and Christian political causes of L.A. Kings and Staples Center owner Philip Anschutz, while the LAT story finds a couple of newspaper industry...
He is profiled at home in Toluca Lake in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine. The piece is by Deborah Solomon. Roy E. Disney, who has long been derided as...
The top story at the Hollywood Reporter is the mixed message surrounding Saturday's Writers Guild of America awards at the Century Plaza. While writers are being feted, dissident members upset...
David Zahniser of the Daily Breeze is one of the first, if not the first, City Hall reporters to step back and ask what's up with controller Laura Chick. He...
Time for a change. Some new colors, things moved around, a general freshening -- and a rail for advertising on the right side. I've been getting overtures about accepting ads...
Last week's story on Koreatown nightlife in the LA Weekly elicited an unusual response -- a rebuking letter to the editor from Dennis Romero, a senior writer for the rival...
With $1.3 million already in the bank for his reelection campaign, and two grand juries breathing down his administration's neck, Mayor Hahn on Thursday proposed sweeping new restrictions on political...
Doug Dowie is out as general manager of the Los Angeles office of public relations giant Fleishman-Hillard. But there are two spins swirling around the move announced today in the...
The "Article of the Week" in The Simon is a mostly favorable take on Kevin Phillips, the disgruntled ex-Republican (and LAT Opinion contributor) whose new book American Dynasty rakes over...
Associate Editor Frank del Olmo suffered an apparent heart attack in the L.A. Times offices this morning and has died. Frank had been a member of the staff for more...
Beverly Hills' own smut publisher Larry Flynt is interviewed about porn, civil liberties and the Internet by Xeni Jardin today at Wired News. Wilshire Boulevard trivia question: why is there...
Marc Haefele -- "the dean of City Hall reporters," as KPCC likes to call him -- suggests in his L.A. Alternative Press column that Mayor Hahn should request the resignation...
Kevin Uhrich writes in the Pasadena Weekly cover story about Wayne Lee, his mentor and the late editor and publisher of The Enterprise in Simi Valley. A celebrated investigative reporter...
L.A.'s reclusive billionaire Phil Anschutz, who is almost never interviewed, is buying a newspaper: the San Francisco Examiner. Here he owns Staples Center, a bunch of downtown property and the...
The ordeal of Jesica Santillan, the Mexican girl who died of a botched heart-lung transplant at Duke University last year, gripped writer Nancy Rommelmann like few stories do. It might...
Three hours before the new season of "California Connected" debuts on KCET-TV tomorrow night, KCRW will air the program -- in which Gov. Schwarzenegger and four living ex-governors discuss the...
At a website called Violinist.com, Pasadena Symphony player Laurie Niles has been chronicling her bid to try out (as one of 500 applicants) for a section violin opening with the...
Los Angeles-based writer Caitlin Flanagan joins the staff of The New Yorker to write stories about "modern domestic life," says the NY Observer's Sridhar Pappu. Since 2001, Ms. Flanagan has...
The first store on the West Side opened Tuesday at Wilshire and Euclid. We have team coverage here and here and here....
LAT columnist Steve Lopez reads Cardinal Mahony's mea culpas on sexual abuse by priests and says they "aren't terribly convincing." The report by the archdiocese offers the usual long-winded defenses,...
The third season of "California Connected" begins on KCET this Thursday at 10 p.m. with a new host. Lisa McRee, the former ABC News reporter and co-host of "Good Morning...
Channel 2 (KCBS) has put its top-line anchors Paul Magers and Laura Diaz on the Sunday 11 p.m. news for the crucial February ratings period, says Ron Fineman.com. It hasn't...
L.A. writer Christopher Noxon has more than passing interest in Mel Gibson and the Passion of the Christ. He wrote about the movie and its maker (and its maker's wacky...
Kynn Bartlett, a website designer and host who blogs at Shock and Awe, Inland Anti-Empire, Next of Kynn and Maccessibility - and who comments occasionally here - is teaching an...
In e-mail, Distinction publisher Jane Dalea-Kahn takes exception to yesterday's post on the magazine, and confirms that another editor (at least the third see below) has taken over. Get your...
What is it about novels based in Los Angeles and books with journalists as the main characters? Publishers Lunch reports a low six-figure deal for this first novel with both...
Cardinal Roger Mahony will issue a report today disclosing that the Los Angeles archiocese has received molestation accusations against 244 priests, deacons and other clergy dating back to 1931, the...
A team of L.A. Times reporters won a George Polk Award in economics reporting today for their series on the global impact of Wal-Mart. The reporters are Nancy Cleeland, Abigail...
The widow of murdered reporter Daniel Pearl continues venting against his former employer, the Wall Street Journal, in a piece from the U.K. in The Independent. We wanted to know...
It's Thursday night in West Hollywood. Here's the info: WHO: Amy Alkon, Emmanuelle Richard, Cathy Seipp and the L.A. Press Club invite you to: WHAT: A party for the new...
Los Angeles has just two spheres, according to the latest Distinction magazine: West of the 405 and East of the 405. Here's how the Tribune Company glossy compares the two,...
In today's Downtown News, Michael Imlay looks into the colorful history (and the future) of the Hall of Justice downtown. Beaux-Arts in style, the 1925 hall is where big trials...
Southland by Nina Revoyr, Steve Oney's And The Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan & the Lynching of Leo Frank and Steve Hodel's Black Dahila Avenger are local...
TV Week reports that with "Seinfeld" heading into a new cycle of syndicated reruns, the series looks certain to reach $3 billion in license fees and advertising revenue collected over...
Patt Morrison notes in the Times today that while the Capitol stayed open until 5:30 p.m. on the day of the State of the Union speech, Hollywood Boulevard in front...
This week's L.A. Business Journal is chock full of stories. RiShawn Biddle covers the brouhaha at the Writers Guild over new president Charles Holland, his resume and the dissidents in...
In the Daily News today, op-ed columnist Mariel Garza vows to take the PR giant Fleishman-Hillard out of her Rolodex. She's not protesting Fleishman's pervasive influence in local government, just...
Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas's Hollywood Animal: A Memoir made today's L.A. Times bestseller list at #4, he's scheduled to appear Monday on KPCC's "Talk of the City" with Kitty Felde (on...
In December, Charlie LeDuff of the local New York Times bureau rode the L.A. River. In a story today, he rides Harleys with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the governor leads James...
City commissioners have donated more than $800,000 to local campaign coffers in the past five years, the Times reports today. That is over and above what the commissioners raise as...
Blogger BoifromTroy is gay, Republican and lives in West Hollywood. Blogger Tiffany Stone is (apparently) none of those things. But after he wrote of his desire for fondue, she got...
Joie Davidow, the local author who co-founded LA Weekly and the no-longer-with-us LA Style, recently acquired an apartment in Rome and gloats about it in the new Metropolitan Home. In...
At LAVoice.org, Mack Reed posts about the increasing number of political protest signs hung above and alongside the freeways. He links to FreewayBlogger.com, an antiwar site that encourages the guerrilla...
L.A. Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik today compares Michael Eisner's new situation to the one Gray Davis faced as last year's recall bore down on him -- and finds the...
In an interview with city controller Laura Chick in this week's CityBeat, Chip Jacobs credits her audits of city commissions with exposing the seamier side of local politics. She peeled...
Three on-air staffers at the channel 2 & 9 combine now write blogs on the station websites: morning anchor Kent Shocknek, weatherman Josh Rubenstein and "money man" Alan Mendelson. Jonah...
Wayne Gretzky is no longer the only former Los Angeles sports star with a prominent statue in town. Next to his more-than-life-size bronze outside Staples Center, Magic Johnson got an...
You can't say Joe Shea doesn't take the road less traveled. Two years ago, the editor in chief of the online newspaper American Reporter ran for office in the Hollywood...
In the parallel universe of George Wolfe's LaLaTimes, that is. Doesn't he know you don't joke about water in Los Angeles?...
Richard Turner, who reported and edited in Los Angeles for the Wall Street Journal, Herald-Examiner and TV Guide, is moving up at the Journal. He's been named the editor of...
The former assistant editor in the L.A. Times opinion section also had edited at the San Francisco Chronicle opinion page and worked for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He died this week...
Business Week Online's Thane Peterson reviews Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film and finds it revealing as a look at the foibles...
PEN USA has extended the entry deadline for this year's Literary Awards in journalism, drama, teleplay and screenplay until February 23. The competition is for writers who live west of...
Joel Kotkin, the L.A. author and urban analyst busy writing a book on the history of cities, rates the best (and worst) places for doing business in this month's Inc....
Richard Horgan at FilmStew tracks down Rona Barrett, once a fixture on Los Angeles television, now a lavender farmer near Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch in the Santa Ynez area. When...
Six months after becoming the New York Times cultural czar, Adam Moss leaves to become the top editor of New York magazine. Moss gets a lot of the credit for...
Comcast went around Disney chairman Michael Eisner today with a public bid to buy the company for $54 billion. Breaking web-only stories are up at the LAT, NYT, Variety, and...
The long-time personality did his final KIIS-FM morning show today and read a statement saying "it has been decided" that he give up the slot. On the air he explained...
This month's Vanity Fair piece on Anthony Pellicano is already being shopped to studios by CAA and finding a high level of interest, Rush & Molloy claim on the New...
Tom Hamburger, a White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, has jumped over to the L.A. Times Washington bureau to cover "the Bush Administration's dealings with lobbyists, donors and...
Rip Rense wasn't going to write about the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' appearance on American TV, but he couldn't resist. His position is clear. The Beatles are only the...
Dan Weintraub is the Sacramento Bee opinion columnist who began to blog last April, just about the time the Gray Davis recall effort took off. His California Insider broke news...
Readers of I Want Media and The Week magazine chose Bonnie Fuller, the editorial director of American Media, as their media person of the year. After a couple of months...
The Smoking Gun has posted a photocopy of the 12-page book proposal for Tongue in Chic: Paris Hilton's Confessions of an Heiress. Yes, it's just like you'd think it would...
Sharon Waxman in the NYT pokes around at the news that 69-year-old director William Friedkin is going to make yet another movie for Paramount, where his wife Sherry Lansing is...
Deputy mayor Troy Edwards, who appears to be caught up in the investigations of corruption swirling through City Hall, is the subject of a man-in-the-news story on the front page...
Arianna Huffington will moderate a panel discussion following a screening of Capturing the Friedmans for the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance Arts and Lecture Series on Wednesday at 7 p.m....
Pulitzer winner Suzan Lori-Parks is featured tonight. On Monday, Miles Corwin talks about how he got homicide cops to feel comfortable letting a reporter hang around. Tuesday it's Sandra Tsing...
Justene Adamec at Calblog feels the urge to call her mother, who would have been 64 this month, and say "OK, 12 years, you've been dead long enough. Stop fooling...
Someone more clever than I could fashion a great Variety-style headline out of this news: the trade paper will begin to publish a Mandarin language edition in China. It should...
That's Variety headline-ese for the repercussions from the Janet Jackson show at the Super Bowl. The latest: Janet confirms she won't perform at the Grammy's, and the SAG Awards will...
Under the headline "City Hall Probe Widens," the Daily News reports that new federal grand jury subpoenas went out Thursday to officials in three departments -- Airports, Harbor and Water...
Roger L. Simon signs a petiton calling for the recall of newly installed but embattled Writers Guild of America (West) president Charles Holland and urges others to do the same....
In the New Vanity Fair, contributing editor Howard Blum and freelance digger John Connolly (author of that much-rehashed Premiere piece on Arnold Schwarzenegger) team up for a piece on jailed...
LAVoice.org resides now at its permanent home (www.lavoice.org), after a little hosting snafu. Recent postings include a critical open letter to Mayor Hahn by publisher Mack Reed and a blessing...
The cover story in this week's Ventura County Reporter is an interview with Venice-based advice columnist Amy Alkon, who blogs here. (Thanks to Emmanuelle for the tip)...
Despite having CBS atop the ratings, Nikki Finke writes in the LA Weekly that Les Moonves should resign in the wake of several embarrassing incidents. Yes, resign, even though the...
David Willman of the L.A. Times Washington bureau picked up the $10,000 Worth Bingham Prize for his stories last year on the close relationship between drug companies and some scientists...
The soon-to-launch Los Angeles edition of the Tribune's Spanish-language paper Hoy will carry a weekly section of business news translated from the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ content will also...
Turns out that veep Dick Cheney and Justice Antonin Scalia didn't just happen to go duck hunting in Louisiana at the same time last month. The Times' David Savage and...
That traffic snarl on the southbound I-5 near Santa Clarita yesterday was caused by CHP officers and L.A. County Sheriff's deputies arguing on the freeway over which agency got custody...
NBC has ordered "ER" to delete a two-second scene of an 80-year-old woman's breast from tonight's show, citing the national furor over Janet Jackson's Super Bowl exposure. The Hollywood Reporter...
Page Six claims that unnamed members of the Disney board have reached out to National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern about taking over if Michael Eisner is ousted. A rep...
It's Thursday, the day when many of the free weeklies in town hit the street. • LA Weekly: The cover is about eating and drinking in Koreatown. Marc Cooper, Howard...
Blogger and occasional Salon writer John Gorenfeld is all over the case of the Downey mayor -- and former L.A. County Republican chairman -- who he says speaks at events...
My practice on links in the right-hand rail is to err on the generous side. I don't "trade" links as such. If its local and I think enough readers might...
That flash of Janet Jackson's breast at the Super Bowl has become the most searched-for event in Internet history, Lycos said today. It has been requested sixty times as often...
Reason's L.A.-based associate editor Matt Welch has a strong piece in the current issue that takes off from the bad experience of his wrongly accused friend, local blogger Tony Pierce,...
Film critic Henry Sheehan is promising to post daily reports from the Berlin Film Festival on his website at henrysheehan.com, beginning Friday....
Nice in-depth treatment in the latest New York Review of Books for Steve Oney's impressive 742-page investigation of anti-Semitism and racism in Georgia, And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder...
That's how much the campaigns spent in last year's recall election, the L.A. Times writes, based on campaign reports and interviews. Some of the biggest spenders: Schwarzenegger: $26.6 million (including...
Cory Doctorow, one of the co-editors at the blog Boing Boing, has released his second sci-fi novel Eastern Standard Tribe as a free online download at the same time it...
My observation last week that the Tribune Co. was operating the Times rather cheaply included this passage: "The premises are run so tightly that only one entrance remains open (to...
It's time, apparently, for another movie set in the San Fernando Valley. This time, Paul Thomas Anderson (who made Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love, but not Two Days in...
Independent Writers of Southern California is holding a panel discussion called "What Editors Want" on Saturday, Feb. 21 at 10 a.m. in Burbank. The panelists are freelance writer-editors Laura Shin...
Can't let the day pass without noting the return to the spotlight of big-name lawyer Leslie Abramson. She planned to retire in June, but instead joins the Phil Spector defense...
Sharon Waxman of the New York Times L.A. bureau gets the news that Mel Gibson has agreed to cut the most controversial scene in The Passion of the Christ. A...
Rick Dees has vowed to make a "life-changing" announcement tomorrow on his morning show on KIIS-FM (102.7). He's been in intense negotiations with Clear Channel over a new contract. LARadio.com's...
For those who are outraged by MTV's Super Bowl stunt, here's Michael Ramirez in today's LAT: For those who find all the outrage a bit amusing, here's Dateline: Hollywood's take:...
Maria Shriver resigned today from NBC News, ending an awkward moment for the network and the governor. [Actually, they're calling it an "extended leave of absence." Shriver also is free...
The L.A. Press Club is hosting an informational chat with "key political advisers and campaign strategists" in the California primary on Thursday. None, apparently, had confirmed by the time the...
Speaking in a new American Journalism Review article on food writing, Gourmet editor in chief Ruth Reichl trashes the L.A. Times food section that she inherited back in the day....
About a year ago, the L.A. Times tried to woo New York Times "Circuits" reporter Jennifer 8. Lee to jump papers, proposing she come to cover immigration. Instead, she traded...
Gray Davis is suddenly all over the place. A day after he schmoozed with Gov. Schwarzenegger at a Super Bowl party, he's in Variety for making a guest appearance (as...
Publishers Lunch brings word that actress Teri Garr is writing a memoir that will include her current battle with multiple sclerosis. She's calling it Does This Wheelchair Make Me Look...
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences thinks so, and they've got the cash -- a $134 million (and growing) nest egg, thanks to the annual Oscar show --...
Last week, the Downtown News asked for help identifying this photo of old downtown L.A. It was found in a city office mismarked "7th and Broadway" from 1908, when it...
An LA Weekly story on the artist Arnold Mesches, who got his FBI file and found out that friends and colleagues had fed reports on his personal habits and activities...
The former CNN anchor based in Los Angeles will do freelance reporting for the NBC bureau in Burbank, Television Week's Insider column says. Bay is the wife of Disney top...
Dennis McCarthy, the Daily News' columnist, attended a Super Bowl party in Encino with Gov. Schwarzenegger and the ex, Gray Davis, along with Mayor Hahn, Chief Bratton and a bunch...
"Life and Times" (KCET, 7 p.m.) is sending Patt Morrison, one of the Times' most liberal columnists, out to the Reagan Library in Simi Valley tonight to take a tour...
John Markoff in the NYT ("Hollywood Mogul Plays by Technology's Rules") and Richard Verrier and Claudia Eller in the LAT ("Clash of CEO Egos Gets Blame in Disney-Pixar Split")....
Stephen Reinhardt is the judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who the left likes most and the right most despises. He is married to the former ACLU...
Miscellany from the weekend: * Matthew Heller, who writes the blog for Courthouse News Service, wrote the cover piece in the L.A. Times Magazine today on Utah becoming a haven...
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.
