Monday shorts

Mondays are always so busy...

• This news won't help the layoff jitters sweeping the LAT's newsrooms this week. Tribune Company stock was downgraded Monday to "neutral" from "buy" by brokerage UBS, saying "it has underestimated the extent of circulation declines at the company."

• Robert Gelfand at The American Reporter read along with the LAT wikitorial experiment.

• KCRW General Manager Ruth Seymour says threatened cuts in funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting "pose a serious threat to public radio and television -- and to KCRW." Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. on The Politics of Culture, she chats with New York Times Foreign Editor Roger Cohen about the state of the European Union.

• Mark Cromer, the former features editor at Hustler, dishes about the inner workings and jealousies at Larry Flynt Publications — and names names — in an interview on Luke Ford's blog. Cromer is a former staffer at the Daily Journal and freelancer for the Times, LA Weekly and other publications.

• The San Francisco Chronicle on Monday launched a staff-written Culture Blog, with a nod to "collaborative blogs" Boing Boing, Metafilter and Newsblog. (Link via CaliforniaAuthors.com.)

• Down south, I just learned about Voice of San Diego, an independently funded online news site edited by ex-LAT reporter Barbara Bry. Longtime columnist Neil Morgan is on the board of directors along with community leaders, and there is a staff of seven. They are aggressively covering the mayoral race there up against the Union-Tribune.

• Here's something in common (besides that we're both blogs) between L.A. Observed and The Last Call, Nick Stewart's L.A. site of "legal news, reviews, and opinions from a member of the United States criminal justice system." He too is surprised by the amount of search engine traffic that comes in looking for posts about KTLA's Cher Calvin (in photo) and Sharon Tay. Calvin's glamour website, by the website, does appear to finally be gone. Here's her KTLA bio page.

• Tracy Rafter, Publisher and CEO of the Daily News, gives the keynote address at Thursday's graduation ceremony and dinner for the Valley Leadership Institute. The event is at the Beverly Garland Hotel in North Hollywood.

• Patrick Phillips, the creator and editor of the exhaustive site I Want Media, also oversees the webzine This is Not a Blog, a class project at NYU. It has run interviews with Jim Romenesko, Craig Newmark and others. At I Want Media, readers can enter a contest to pick the best question to ask Michael Eisner. The winner gets an answer from Eisner and a free copy of his new memoir, Camp.

• Someone asked about A+D, the architecture and design museum that used to be on Sunset Boulevard. Director Tibbie Dunbar emails: "We are in the negotiating phase for two potential new homes. As soon as things are finalized we will post the news on our website www.aplusd.org."

• This is a bit old, but fell between the cracks. Alex Cho is the new editor of Frontiers.

• Hak-Kyu Sohn, governor of the province of Gyeonggi, brings his campaign for president of South Korea to the Wilshire Grand Hotel on Thursday.

• Arthur, the local magazine, is gearing up to throw ArthurFest, a two-day music festival at Barnsdall Park in September.

Updated post