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Hertzbucks up: Bob Hertzberg disclosed Sunday that his campaign for mayor has raised $2.2 million, double what he reported in September. He now has nearly $1.6 million on hand. We'll learn tomorrow (or in Tuesday's papers) who the money came from and how he ranks when the campaigns file end-of-year contribution and spending reports, but it should mean that Hertzberg has the cash to be competitive.
Parks down: Picking up on L.A. Observed's tip from Thursday, the Times reports that cash-strapped Bernard Parks has dropped his nationally known campaign consultants. Mark Fabiani, Chris Lehane, Eric Jaye and Carol Butler have gone home, and local political operative Jewett Walker is the ex-chief's fourth campaign manager since last summer. Bernard Parks Jr. has also taken a leave of absence as chief of staff of his father's city council office to work on the campaign.
Curtain raiser: Eight weeks left to sway voters, the Times' Noam N. Levey notes in a Sunday front-pager. The graphics show the different voting geography of Los Angeles since Tom Bradley beat Sam Yorty in 1973 with a black-Westside Jewish coalition. They also remind us that it wasn't really very close last time; Hahn beat Villaraigosa 54% to 46% and won 10 of the 15 council districts (the Times' on-line chart has the numbers wrong for the 9th district.)
Burkle divorce: Ron and Janet Burkle's dissolution is reaching new levels of nasty, the Business Journal says in a long front pager that's free on the website (and a details-rich sidebar that isn't.) The couple can't even agree on when they separated, and the supermarket magnate emailed the newspaper to call her legal claims "a final desperate attempt to extract money from me for a lifestyle which I find shocking." The LABJ also has follow-ups on KCBS reassigning its Special Assignment team, the Jewish Journal switching to free circulation and the Times dropping Garfield.
Tears in the Valley: Dennis McCarthy of the Daily News rides along as 94-year-old Olive Reynolds says goodbye to Van Nuys.
Behind the firewall: Sunday's Times Calendar section ran a long analysis of the Ambassador Hotel preservation conundrum by architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne. He writes: "The central antagonists in the drama, too, have canceled one another out—if only in a negative sense. The school district has proved inflexible and unimaginative....The Los Angeles Conservancy, meanwhile, has filed suit...on the basis of a plan that even it must realize is not just politically unpalatable but architecturally suspect." The online version is subscribers-only.
New York Times' future: Business Week cover story says the last great family-owned paper has some daunting numbers problems. At least it's a newspaper with a plan for surviving in the new media environment. Editor Bill Keller and Deputy Managing Editor Michael Oreskes answer questions in an online-only extra.
* New anchors: Rob Weller, Nischelle Turner and Elizabeth Espinoza will co-host a new weekend morning show on Channel 11, RonFineman.com reports. The site's readers also voted Channel 7 anchor Marc Brown the best on-air person in local TV news and Jillian Barberie of KTTV's "Good Morning L.A." the worst of 2004.