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♦ Mayor Villaraigosa nearly filled the Tom Bradley Room on the top of the City Hall tower with media there to hear him recite the accomplishments of his first 98 days in office. (Day 100 doesn't come until Saturday.) More than a dozen cameras, plus radio reporters and scribes from the Times, Daily News, Copley, AP, LAWeekly, Daily Journal, L.A. Business Journal, La Opinión, LA Independent, City News Service and several Korean language outlets came for the mayor's remarks. He spoke and took questions in English and Spanish. The LAT had four reporters on scene, the most of anyone. Fox-11's John Schwada got the mayor to say he intends to take control of the LAUSD in his first term, which became the headline. Sampling of the coverage: Times mainbar and schools sidebar, Daily News news story and editorial, Breeze mainbar and schools sider, Associated Press, NBC4, and La Opinión and Hoy in Spanish. Also: Pravda picked up Villaraigosa's harsh words for Gov. Schwarzenegger's state ballot measures.
♦ Also in the Times, Tina Daunt sums up 100 days of photo ops for Villaraigosa.
♦ There is no current credible terrorist threat against Los Angeles subway and rail lines, Villaraigosa said Thursday.
♦ The mayor has hired a press deputy who is trilingual in English, Spanish and Korean. She is Patricia Park, a recent USC grad.
♦ City Controller Laura Chick releases her management audit of the City Treasurer's office at 9:30 am.
♦ A Times editorial spins Adelphia's ongoing Spanish-language screw-ups as a good thing for somehow encouraging more interest in languages, instead of the poor service that most Adelphia customers (and Times readers) probably think it. Clever play with bilingual writing though.
♦ Claude Brodesser at FishbowlLA apparently reported first that Ruth Vitale and David Dinerstein were fired by Paramount Classics. [Movie City News says it was first by two hours.]
♦ Blogging.la's Jeff Koga shot a whole lot of pictures of Fiona Apple performing and talking last night at Tower Records on Sunset. Guess he likes her. Easy to see why.
♦ Hollywood Reporter music editor Chris Morris has picked up a side gig trying out as host of "Watusi Rodeo," Indie 103.1's weekly Americana show. It airs Sunday from 11 am to 1 pm.
♦ Bay Area politics blogger Chris Nolan and friends have morphed their site into Spot-on.com. Nolan is the print convert who coined the term stand alone journalist. One of her friends is Josh Trevino, the war blogger formerly known as Tacitus. I like their design.
♦ Did I mention that the Best of L.A. issue of LA Weekly is bound, has 392 pages and weighs at least a pound? Mack Reed attends and covers last night's Weekly party.
♦ That mansion that burned down in Pasadena was not the Batman house, but it was a Batman house. More significantly, it was a Paul R. Williams house.
♦ The axe continues to fall in Tribune land. The Baltimore Sun is eliminating its Beijing and London bureaus.