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Archive by Month
January 31, 2004
Expect an exodus of Hollywood celebs away from the Howard Dean camp this week if he doesn't come back strong on Tuesday, the L.A. Business...
My piece on PR giant Fleishman-Hillard and its top local operative, former Daily News managing editor Doug Dowie, is now up on the Los Angeles...
Coverage of California prisons, with L.A. Times reporters Jenifer Warren and Mark Arax. Sunday from 1 to 1:30 p.m., KPFK (90.7 FM)....
January 30, 2004
Jennifer Trosper, mission manager at JPL for the Mars rover Spirit, has converted to the 24-hour, 39-minute Martian day. What her days are like, from...
Steve Lowery at OC Weekly remembers in a column this week the brief era when Jerry Nachman, the ex-New York Post editor who recently died,...
The Times plans to reopen its grand front door on First Street, the city landmark "globe lobby," for the first time since Sept 11, 2001....
Every so often Times sports columnist T.J. Simers comes up with a memorable line. His opener today makes it for me: Sometimes you worry you're...
Now that Pixar has broken with Disney, studios are getting in line to propose marriage to Steve Jobs. All he's done is bring in $2.5...
In his L.A. Times column today, Steve Lopez characterizes the subscribers who cancelled after the paper published its Gropegate stories at the end of the...
The actor, writer, economist and Republican activist wrote "Monday Night at Morton's" for E! Online for seven or eight years. He cites his changed worldview...
When I noticed last night that the #3 Internet search term (after "Paul Magers" and "Gretchen Carr") that lands the unsuspecting here is "Giuliana Depandi,"...
January 29, 2004
Dan Weintraub, the Sacramento Bee columnist-blogger (California Insider) whose take on Arnold Schwarzenegger during the campaign and his first months in office has been largely...
Three times in the past 14 months, federal judges have ruled that ex-Marine Thomas Lee Goldstein was improperly convicted of murder. Still, he sits in...
The L.A. Times plays catchup today on the week's city corruption grand jury story with a 460-word piece that carries five reporter credits -- two...
Two docs in New York tell Lloyd Grove in the NY Daily News that John Kerry's forehead is shot full of Botox. The candidate says...
Mickey Kaus' Kausfiles has been on the ground on the campaign trail (on Slate's dime) for a couple of weeks, getting back in touch with...
Jon Weisman, who writes the Dodger Thoughts blog, will be a guest on "Which Way L.A.?" with Warren Olney tonight at 7 p.m. on KCRW...
The KABC radio talk host has a deal for a show to run on CBS or UPN in the fall, the Hollywood Reporter says. Elder's...
January 28, 2004
The former law reporter in the L.A. bureau of the Wall Street Journal is named the new editor of the paper's successful Weekend section. (Romenesko...
Just came back from Silver Lake where a strange coppery glint in the hills caught my eye. The mystery beacon was sunlight reflecting off...
New York Times executive editor Bill Keller is backtracking from last week's surprise comments on the future of the paper's Sunday Book Review. He told...
Deputy Mayor Troy Edwards testified before the corruption grand jury yesterday, the Daily News reports. Says the paper's Beth Barrett: Edwards was a key fund-raiser...
The Writers Guild board kept Charles Holland in place as president, despite questions about the stories he tells about his background. I especially like that...
A couple of comments were posted yesterday to an old entry (one of the first at L.A. Observed) on the death of writer Eddie Little....
January 27, 2004
A former top executive at LAX, Richard M. Janisse, was called to testify today before the county Grand Jury looking into corruption in the awarding...
Today on Day to Day (KPCC 9 a.m., KCRW noon), Xeni Jardin profiles a guy who's a little tech crazy -- he has 11 video...
January 26, 2004
The Radio & Television News Association of Southern California handed out its annual Golden Mikes on Saturday night. Here are some of the dozens of...
Joe Mathews of the Times' Sacramento bureau has sold a book proposal called The People's Machine: Governor Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy, says...
The L.A. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is having an event on Wednesday with five local PIO's -- and it's not cheap. $22...
Dean Singleton, Hearst, Copley & Scripps. (From Editor and Publisher, thanks to Brooks for the tip). Earlier: LAT campaign gifts...
In the heyday of soaring circulation and ambition in the 1980s, the L.A. Times basked in the warmth of being the flagship publication of a...
Glenn Bunting's piece in the L.A. Times magazine on sports writer Frank Deford's journalistic mistakes certainly elicited a bunch of response. On Saturday, the Times...
Shelby Coffey, the former editor of the L.A. Times, returned to the pages of the Washington Post Sunday with a review of two books on...
Matt Haber, half of the duo that writes the very readable blog Low Culture, had a piece in yesterday's New York Times' Arts and Leisure...
For some reason, the name Paul Magers - the new anchor on the Channel 2 news - is one of the most common search terms...
The Downtown News says the Morrison Hotel at Pico and Hope near Staples Center is for sale. The hotel appears in a photograph on the...
The Writers Guild board meets today to figure out the latest mess it has itself in, involving the credentials of the new guild president, Charles...
January 23, 2004
Rep. Billy Tauzin has turned down the MPAA's offer to take over for Jack Valenti. Instead, he'll apparently become the highest paid trade association lobbyist...
The acclaimed German-born photographer lost control of his Cadillac leaving the Chateau Marmont (where he lived with his wife June) at 11:40 this morning and...
LAVoice.org is a new community site made up of, says the FAQs, "ultra-local newsgatherers, pundits and outspoken writers whose collective knowledge of their neighborhoods and...
"Democracy Now," the national show hosted by activist Amy Goodman that airs mornings on Pacifica Radio's KPFK, fixated yesterday on John Kerry and George Bush...
The fashion monthly decrees the top poker game in town is the Gourmet Poker Club, which has met once a month for 25 years: Barry...
January 22, 2004
Warm Santa Anas - mellow beach weather - in January. So clear that Catalina Island looked to be hovering in the bay, instead of 26...
The City Council voted Wednesday to add Los Angeles to the list of 230 cities, counties and other government bodies opposed to parts of the...
Agustin Gurza has been focusing on Latino pop music for Calendar and now will write about the "entire Latino arts and entertainment scene." The memo...
Publishers Lunch reports that Paris Hilton (or her agent, Dan Strone at Trident Media Group) is circulating a book proposal for Tongue in Chic: Confessions...
The New York Times has yet to hire a new book review editor, but that person will almost certainly be an outsider and make these...
Collage Dance Theatre, the innovative company behind last year's "Sleeping with the Ambassador" performances inside the abandoned Wilshire Boulevard hotel, is looking at doing a...
The first time Nikki Finke met Ray Stark, the producer-agent-publicist threatened her. She calls him the Most Vindictive Man in Hollywood, but still wept upon...
Author Susan Choi is the guest today on Bookworm with Michael Silverblatt (KCRW, 2:30 p.m.). Her novel is American Woman, told from the point of...
The February issue of Los Angeles is the annual Oscar-timed number, with Patricia Clarkson and Benicio Del Toro on the cover. Inside are a piece...
January 21, 2004
Journalist RiShawn Biddle throws off the gloves on his blog and declares, "Why I Can Never Be a Conservative (Ever Again)." It's complicated, but here's...
The Daily Dish (meaning gossip page) at the N.Y. Daily News says today that bad-boy Beverly Hills publisher Michael Viner, no stranger to the pages...
Last week in The New Yorker, Nation columnist Katha Pollitt confessed at length about web-stalking the lover who left her for a younger art critic....
Cathy Seipp pokes fun at Pitzer College president Laura Skandera Trombley -- and the school's decision to stop using the SAT -- in a piece...
L.A.'s movie screen landscape looks to be changing, Carl Diorio reports in today's Variety. Mann proposes to build a five-screen, stadium-seating theater at the north...
The L.A. Times has created a new senior job, assistant managing editor for photography, and filled it with longtime Timeser Colin Crawford. Yesterday's memo follows:...
The L.A. Press Club and Reason magazine are teaming up to throw a book party for ABC co-anchor John Stossel and his latest, Give Me...
January 20, 2004
On the front page of this week's L.A. Business Journal, Howard Fine chronicles Mayor Jim Hahn's differing takes on Gov. Schwarzenegger (free with registration): When...
LA.com, the city guide website being jointly produced by Gannett, Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group and Stephens Media Group, has a new blog up: LAComfidential. Most...
January 19, 2004
A couple of L.A. Times names showed up in a Washingon Post story Sunday about journalists who make political campaign contributions. The relevant passage: Los...
In yesterday's LAT Book Review, David L. Ulin considers the newest study of Los Angeles by Cal Arts professor Norman M. Klein, a novella and...
Magazine and tabloid sales are off as much as 20% due to the southern California supermarket strike, says a Business story by Melinda Fulmer in...
The other shoe falls: Just days after the La Opinión-Tribune divorce became final, the Tribune Co. discloses it will launch a daily Los Angeles edition...
Some DN readers didn't get the paper today. Here's the explanation from the website home page: To our readers: Because of electrical problems at the...
Tad Friend's "Letter from California" for The New Yorker this week is about the L.A. River -- the line on the contents page reads, "Trying...
January 18, 2004
The Boston Globe's Ideas section (via Commonwealth Magazine) maps out the "10 regions of U.S. politics" and puts L.A. in a narrow, brown sliver that...
January 17, 2004
Looks like a pretty good scoop by baseball writer Ross Newhan on the front page of the L.A. Times: Los Angeles developer and philanthropist Eli...
Collins, the TV editor at Hollywood Reporter, returns to the L.A. Times as a television writer. He used to be a regular Times freelancer and...
January 16, 2004
US Weekly's follow-up cover story on Britney Spears' brief marriage carries 16 bylines. Discuss. (from NY Daily News)...
Oleander bushes are the latest Southern California plant infected by a scourge that seems imppssible to stop. If they all start dying, some parts of...
David L. Ulin has a new book coming in July on earthquake prediction -- and the op-ed in today's L.A. Times to prove it. Where...
January 15, 2004
The paper announces it will combine with New York's El Diario/La Prensa to establish a national chain of newspapers catering to Latino readers. Reports the...
For those who keep track of such things (you know who you are), L.A. Times Business Editor Rick Wartzman is shuffling some desk assignments. As...
La Opinión and the Tribune Co. formally broke off their relationship today, several months after it began publicly unraveling. The Lozano family, which owned 50%...
SaveDisney.com, the get-even website that Roy Disney and Stanley Gold launched last month after angrily leaving the company board, is already announcing a redesign. The...
Harry Shearer sits down for a Q-and-A with Dean Kuipers at CityBeat. It doesn't take long for the subject to turn to Harry's least favorite...
Kate Sullivan in the LA Weekly likes what is happening at 103.1 on the FM dial. I haven't listened to the new Indie 103, but...
KCBS Channel 2 is misleading the L.A. Times about the status of former anchor Gretchen Carr, says Ron Fineman. The paper reported the station claims...
Today is the big sit-down between Maria Shriver and the head of NBC News over her future on the air, the LAT says. Tim Russert...
The Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood is getting a Red Box to go with the Blue Whale and that green thing next to it....
January 14, 2004
Richard Horgan writes at FilmStew that Peter Biskind's new book, Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film, will be the...
A couple of blogs mostly rooted in Los Angeles, Slate's Kausfiles and the Volokh Conspiracy, were finalists in the Blogger of the Year category of...
The Daily Trojan rounds up yesterday's gathering of journalists talking about celebrity coverage at the USC Annenberg School. Dean Baquet, Tim Rutten, Robert Scheer, Ed...
Best smirk-inducing line in today's LAT story on Leland Wong, a top City Hall fundraiser and all-around operator. Wong said he was unaware of a...
Lead story in the LaLaTimes (not to be confused with any other Times)....
It always used to be humbling, and a mite embarrassing, at the LAT when California groups wishing to make a statement would buy full-page ads...
January 13, 2004
Bill Plaschke in the L.A. Times says the pending Dodgers sale to Boston developer Frank McCourt is looking more and more like a bad deal....
Schwarzenegger adviser Mike Murphy, described by Television Week as a "hot-hot-hot Republican campaign strategist," has been hired as consulting producer for Dennis Miller's new show...
Staff reporter Glenn Bunting's first-person cover piece in the L.A. Times Magazine on Sunday dinging the reputation of author and Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford...
Alexander Proctor, the ex-con accused of threatening Times reporter Anita Busch over a story about actor Steven Seagal, was sentenced to 10 years on an...
The L.A. Daily News got itself a new publisher and CEO Monday. Tracy Rafter had been a senior VP for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group,...
Local book deals from Publishers Lunch Former Time entertainment reporter Benjamin Nugent sells Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing, the life, career, and dramatic end...
January 12, 2004
Sorry, otherwise engaged. L.A. Observed will return Tuesday....
January 09, 2004
From a mediabistro party in December at the Loews not in Beverly Hills, though the hotel would like you to think so. Photos include (but...
Here's a way you know your book is having an impact -- when the New York Times national staff runs a feature on what people...
Author and New Yorker writer James B. Stewart's next book target is Disney. He's well along on the project, which Simon and Schuster will publish...
The USC Annenberg School and the Poynter Institute are presenting a discussion next Tuesday (Jan. 13) on, in their words, "journalism ethics, standards, and editorial...
A shorter Friday roundup: L.A. Times front: Schwarzenegger budget cuts, Bush's manned moon mission. Daily News front: Rover success, mission to Mars. Film Week, KPCC...
January 08, 2004
The ESPN columnist who scored an early copy of the Pete Rose book and posted the first review -- Alysse Minkoff -- works out of...
The park's practice of charging locals lower admission off season -- $8 to $10 less than tourists -- is legal, a state court of appeal...
Newsweek's Los Angeles bureau chief David Jefferson went through the interviews, negotiated over salary and start date, and accepted the high-level job of Associate Editor...
The L.A. Film Critics awards for 2003, via Movie City News. The site's Leonard Klady opens the door a little on the selection process....
The new edition of Slate's annual Movie Club, in which five film critics serially dish at agonizing length on the year's cinema, includes Manohla Dargis...
In print: L.A. Times front: Schwarzenegger to propose 10% fee hikes at UC and CSU, up to 40% for grad students. Daily News lead: Reaction...
Film critic Henry Sheehan, a regular on KPCC's "Film Week" segment, has added audio interviews to his website at HenrySheehan.com. The first is a lengthy...
In a web-only story on the LA Weekly site, Christine Pelisek takes a look at the coroner's report on the Oct. 21 stabbing death of...
UCLA professor Mark A. R. Kleiman uses some pointed blogger critiques of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Chicago professor Daniel Drezner to make...
January 07, 2004
Jeff A. Taylor at Reason's Hit and Run blog argues it's OK for Maria Shriver to report for NBC and help to govern California, which...
From L.A. city hall bureau chief David Zahniser in the Daily Breeze: Responding to widespread pressure from the city’s librarians, a City Council committee has...
It's Bill Sing, the L.A. Times Business Editor for six years until the new Tribune leadership came in. The paper has also hired Marc Lifsher...
Media critic Cathy Seipp dings today's L.A. Times front pager on that domestic terror plot in Texas for quoting a journalism professor unpopular with the...
In the L.A. Times food section today, Charles Perry unfolds the colorful past of theme restaurants in Los Angeles. He says it all began with...
Editorial writers mostly liked Gov. Schwarzenegger's State of the State speech last night. Steve Lopez doesn't join them. L.A. Times: Masterful...Schwarzenegger delivered a tough but...
Tim Rutten turns his LAT Regarding Media column today into a tribute to his longtime friend John Gregory Dunne, who died last week. A snippet:...
On the air: Day to Day, KPCC 9 a.m./KCRW noon - President Bush's proposal to change immigration laws. Fresh Air, KPCC 1 & 7 p.m....
January 06, 2004
"Advice Goddess" Amy Alkon shows up in the new Psychology Today quoted as a member of The Brights, described in the piece as "a growing...
The site Sports by Brooks says today, based on undescribed and unnamed sources, that it is "unlikely" NBC will pick up the talked-about series based...
In today's L.A. Times Calendar, Lynell George interviews three authors whose settings are fragments of the Los Angeles whole: Alan Rifkin (Signal Hill: Stories), Elizabeth...
Responding to a growing sense of a corruption scandal, Mayor Hahn yesterday banned his commissioners from getting involved in interviews of city contractors they would...
Writers Guild head Victoria Riskin did indeed quit this morning, as recommended yesterday. A press release is up on the WGA website....
Remember those stories in December saying that Maria Shriver was cozily back at work at "Dateline NBC," and the LAT story (and L.A. Observed post)...
Well, education cuts aren't off the table anymore. The L.A. Times says Gov. Schwarzenegger will propose cleaving $2 billion out of the ed budget today...
Martin Schall's Los Angeles Architectural Photo Gallery at you-are-here.com has up 800 images of buildings, panorama views and scenes of local communities. He's got more...
Items: * LARadio.com reports that KNX 1070, which axed the nightly Drama Hour saying it wanted to concentrate on news, has raided KFI for non-news...
January 05, 2004
As part of his mea culpa book tour, in which he finally admits flouting baseball's #1 rule and lying about it tastelessly for 14 years,...
Writers Guild president Victoria Riskin was not an an active member of the guild when she was reelected in September and should resign, says an...
George Russell Weller has been charged with 10 felony counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence for driving through the crowded Santa Monica farmers market...
KTLA Channel 5's coverage of the Rose Parade got higher ratings in Los Angeles (again) than the three big networks combined, says Michael Schneider in...
An Atlanta consulting firm that declares the "best" urban newspaper by simply counting stories of interest has rated the L.A. Times tops in the country....
Question: What property has the highest assesed value in Los Angeles County? #1 - Getty Center museum and research institute $2.2 billion #2 - BP...
Associated Press does a little feature on Court TV's Diane Dimond and her scoops on the Michael Jackson sexual abuse case. A few months ago,...
Honchos of The New Frontier, the self-appointed successor to George magazine long promised by Kennedy friend Helen O'Donnell, tell Folio they will finally launch in...
January 01, 2004
New York Times L.A. correspondent Charlie LeDuff is in the news again over a plagiarism accusation. This time it's an old one, posted on Romenesko...
L.A. journalist Joseph Mailander recounts on his blog (Joyrides Without Maps) how he got caught up in yesterday's cancellation of that Aeromexico flight to LAX,...
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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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