Blogosphere

Light weekend reads

Photo credit: ERIC CHARBONNEAU / BEIUS Weekly's WORLDWIDE EXCLUSIVE NEWS BULLETIN on the wedding of Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher runs three paragraphs and carries eight credit lines for "exclusive reporting." People confirms the news with a thirteen-paragraph web story and zero bylines. Photo is from People's site.

The new regime at the LAT editorial board lets members publish one signed dissent from the paper's approved position a year. Karin Klein used her free card today, arguing on the editorial page that Gov. Schwarzenegger was right to promise a veto of the gay marriage bill because of Prop. 22. Senior editorial writer Judy Dugan used up her quota back in May; there may have been others but I missed them, and the Times archive doesn't make them easily available.

Los Angeles may have competition from up north for the 2016 Olympics. Matier and Ross columnize in the Chronicle that San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is getting advice from Olympian Sebastian Coe, who helped London win the 2012 games. The column has some good detail on the staging of Gov. Schwarzenegger's events: "The heavy makeup. The walk. The lights. The camera angles. Arnold uses all of it -- and knows just how to use it right down to the right angle for his face,'' said Laurence Leamer, author of Fantastic. Democrat advance man Ed Emerson is impressed by the stage markers, plasma screens and crew of 15 to 20 roadies ready to roll whenever the call comes: "It's by far the best operation I've ever seen short of the president."

If you heard Xeni Jardin's NPR report last week on the authors' lawsuit against Google and thought she favored the Google side, you may be right. She chipped in a piece in today's LAT Current section arguing that authors who resist Google are guilty of knee-jerk traditionalism. Also writing in today's Current: Gregory Rodriguez, Pico Iyer, Scott Duke Harris, Jack Weiss and Chicago Tribune sports columnist Mike Downey, the former LAT columnist, whose piece decries Chicago's loss of the Marshall Field's department store name to Macy's creep. I guess there was no one available to write about L.A.'s loss of Robinson's-May to Macy's creep.

Daily News columnist Bridget Johnson inspired William Safire's On Language column in Sunday's New York Times about the terms ick and yuck.

After watching how poorly evacuations went on the Gulf Coast, plans for how to empty Los Angeles if it ever becomes necessary are "going back to the drawing board," Sheriff Baca's head of homeland security says in Sunday's New York Times.

Attorneys for the Getty have determined that the museum has quite a few antiquities looted from Italian ruins in its collection, the LAT says.

And some L.A. blogs I dropped in on today: Blogging.la has photos from Saturday's anti-war march downtown...LAist observes that nothing says autumn like apples, and checks out them apples at the local markets...Rand Simberg recalls jury duty on a case involving Thomas Bond, the former Little Rascal who died...LAcomfidential listened in Friday when Wolfgang Puck walked off Star 98 while his ex, Barbara Lazaroff, called in to label him a cheat who was holding up their divorce papers..Asparagirl and Dr. Suarez get new Hollywood jobs and a new place to live...the SoCalLawBlogger takes a test that declares him to be a libertarian...and ex-Angeleno Nancy Rommelmann ruminates on the beauty of L.A. versus her adopted home of Portland (spotted at Matt Welch.)


More by Kevin Roderick:
Standing up to Harvey Weinstein
The Media
LA Times gets a top editor with nothing but questions
LA Observed Notes: Harvey Weinstein stripped bare
LA Observed Notes: Photos of the homeless, photos that found homes
Recent Blogosphere stories on LA Observed:
LA Weekly loses film critic Amy Nicholson too
California's secret water blogger is a she
Scientists who help write the movies
RV encampment on Tujunga Avenue in North Hollywood
Michael Higby, LA blogger, was 50
Original Wonkette blogger wants you to know she's a Christian
Andrew Sullivan to shut down The Dish
Andrew Sullivan to give up blogging (and get a life)


 

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