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Today's Hollywood Reporter is out with the who-makes-what piece of the trade's annual Women in Entertainment issue. Julia Roberts stands atop the actress salary Top 10, able to command a...
LA Observed archive
for November 2005
If you don't find what you want here, check another month or search below.
Today's most-emailed L.A. Times story is the off-lede talker about the U.S. military covertly paying Iraqi newspapers to run propaganda written by American troops. Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi report:...
I don't know for certain that L.A. Observed's scrutiny played any part, so let's just applaud the Times for making the right call. Mark Kurtich, the senior VP of operations,...
Jon Wiener, the KPFK host and Nation contributing editor, posts an email that left-side historian Mike Davis sent to Susan Brenneman, the deputy op-ed editor at the Times, rejecting an...
In another move to save a few bucks, the Times is once again closing the ornate main entrance to its historic building—shutting off public access to the Globe Lobby and...
Sacramento columnist George Skelton opted out of the L.A. Times buyout at the last minute. But a more prominent name put himself on the list: longtime Pop Music Editor/Critic Robert...
In the classroom and panel discussions I've been having lately about blogging, someone always asks whether blogs can be believed. I usually give a spiel on knowing who to trust...
Charles Crumpley, Money Editor at the New Orleans Times Picayune since 2002, starts Jan. 1 as editor of the Los Angeles Business Journal, the staff has been told. LAO reported...
Last night's sold-out show at Staples Center was a homecoming for Paul McCartney, whose current U.S. tour ends tonight. He and Heather Mills own a big mansion in Pasadena, and...
L.A. County health director Thomas Garthwaite resigned today in a closed session of the Board of Supervisors. He has accepted a position as chief medical officer of Catholic Health East,...
Before he edited the L.A. Times Book Review, Steve Wasserman was deputy editor of the paper's op-ed page and Opinion section (and before that was a researcher for Robert Scheer.)...
Mayor Villaraigosa didn't announce any public events for today, but he was plenty busy. He spoke at the joint swearing-in of new City Council members Herb Wesson and Jose Huizar....
LA Observed has been down much of today due to a "bandwith issue" at the server end. In short, a rush of visitors this morning pushed us unexpectedly over the...
Hollywood will add jobs this year and next, but the overall picture is still cloudy says a report to be released today by the L.A. Economic Development Corp. Advancers in...
Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and former L.A. Times columnist and reporter Robert Scheer have been pals a long time—at least since Scheer interviewed the "boy mayor" of Cleveland for...
LA Weekly Publisher Beth Sestanovich told the staff this morning that the Justice Department gave the okay for New Times to acquire Village Voice Media, and with it her paper...
Author and former state Sen. Tom Hayden had a strong letter in Sunday's Calendar section praising the Times for tough coverage of the Getty. But, he writes, much more scrutiny...
Nearly a dozen posts made their way onto the blog during the so-called holiday break, including the first (exclusive) list of which familiar names look to be leaving the L.A....
Wife-and-husband team Elizabeth Snead and Joel Stratte-McClure used to jointly byline their celebrity gossip dispatches for the Daily News and the other LANG papers. Then Snead started dispatching her side...
Like all big newspapers, the Washington Post is stumbling toward an uncertain future, online and off. One of its online experiments is a blog page called Post Remix, where readers...
⇒ The Paul Williams-designed Holmby Hills home adjacent to Harvard-Westlake (formerly lived in by Bruce McNall and Ronald O. Perelman) will be saved and moved to Pasadena, the NYT says....
Steve Wasserman, the Times book editor until earlier this year, will give his take on the cutbacks at his former paper in the first issue of Truthdig.com, the webzine by...
LA Observed took note last year when Joie Davidow, co-founder of LA Weekly and the late LA Style, went Roman part-time. Laurie at LA.com points out that she now runs...
Who's leaving and other weekend buzz from inside our local downsizing newspaper: ⇒ Did Publisher Jeffrey Johnson kill an editorial that was tough on General Motors this week? Multiple sources...
Yes, that was campaign consultant, lobbyist and PR company capo Joseph Cerrell in the Times' California section on Friday. He's the force behind a drive to designate a section of...
City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo got a visit at home Friday from tenants facing eviction from the Lincoln Park Garden Apartments in Venice. The Venice Paper says that about thirty of...
Sports columnist T.J. Simers claimed in Thursday's Times column that he just noticed his paper's month-old, Daily News-citing Lakers blog—and says the Times should have gone with the other NBA...
In the December issue of The Atlantic, Hanna Rosin is the latest writer to take a look at the Jesus-ization of Hollywood. They sit in a semicircle on the homey...
Slate magazine's senior editor Andy Bowers wrote just before the holiday about switching his four-mile commute to two wheels. It confirmed his bias that Los Angeles is "an almost pathologically...
The board of directors met today and decided on a split vote to let me start roasting their turkeys a few milliseconds early, provided I make up the time later....
The discussion board at Chowhound Los Angeles is mulling the news that a simple hamburger at the Westside's venerable Apple Pan has crossed the six dollar barrier. Chowhoundies are divided...
No perps have been added to the LAPD's Most Wanted list since August 10, at least on the web. Not sure whether that means the bad guys are getting caught,...
LARadio.com is marking off the shows that Howard Stern has left on 97.1 FM—that would be fifteen, including today's. The charmingly noir 1947Project is counting down to the January 15...
♦ Alex Padilla on Monday endorsed Eric Garcetti as his successor in the City Council president's chair. Let the record show that on May 27, LAObserved posted: "Alex Padilla will remain...
Would-be blog moguls Roger L. Simon and Charles Johnson have jettisoned the OSM identity they took when they jettisoned Open Source Media, the name that replaced their original working title...
To see an earlier side of Arnold Schwarzenegger, check out the video LA.com found of Mr. Universe at Carnival in Brazil talking about how at heart he's a derriere man,...
Sunday's Daily News ran a story on the L.A. County Coroner websites that try to match up an identity or relatives to the thousands of unclosed cases on the rolls....
Larry Southwick probably thought he had gotten lucky when he called the Long Beach animal shelter and was told that, yes, officers had collected his missing parrot, ZZ (named for...
Recruits at the LAPD Academy now spend the last four weeks of their seven-month training cycle walking a beat. Forty-three officers have begun patrolling downtown's Historic Core and in the...
The mayor made his appointments to the board that hears appeals from employees in the city's civil service system. Former United Teachers Los Angeles president John Perez is one of...
♦ Curveball was a screwball and the Germans knew it, but President Bush exaggerated his bad info on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction anyway, the Times said in Sunday's lede story...
No posting this morning. Check back later today....
When the Times chose to stake its biggest website initiative on the dicey notion that Hollywood awards are a year-round obsession of its readers, my main fear was that the...
Readers of the TV news website RonFineman.com voted Channel 7's Marc Brown and Michelle Tuzee the best anchors in town. Wasn't close. They beat the KCAL duo of Pat Harvey...
Robert Scheer's syndicated column, dropped last week by the Times, will appear from now on in the L.A. Alternative. The paper, formerly known as the L.A. Alternative Press, has been...
When LAPD motor officer Tyrhone Ragland got to Armanda Renee Donnelly about 4:30 Thursday morning, her Lexus 3000 was off the Santa Monica Freeway at La Brea, on its...
A jury in the Valley ruled today that Robert Blake is liable for the death of his wife, Bonny Lee Blakely. The ex-actor was ordered to pay $30 million in...
I don't know whether today's moves are being called layoffs, involuntary buyouts or flat-out firings, but a number of long-time staffers at the Los Angeles Times are being told to...
The L.A. Times plans to relaunch its Sunday magazine Feb. 5 as West. The name has a history at the paper. A previous incarnation of the Sunday magazine was called...
Mack Reed at LAVoice.org has a memo about the FAA moving inspectors out of the LAX area to the Valley and Long Beach. They don't sound too pleased....
Robert Scheer will not be heard on today's Left, Right & Center on KCRW. But ScheerNation shouldn't get all protesty and throw up a picket line on Pico. He is...
Signs went up Thursday night at the fixture on Highland Avenue. There will be a closeout sale, then 34 employees will lose their jobs. The Aron's website claims the shop...
♦ Leading with the Getty again. John Walsh, the museum's former director, told Warren Olney (KCRW audio) "the spirit of the place is being undermined" and said: "The problem is with...
I told you early last year about an extraordinary website that presents hundreds of photographs of Los Angeles landmark buildings, giving dates and information on the architects along with city...
Rep. Brad Sherman of Sherman Oaks has been using JDate under the name of "jim2005ofDC,” according to The Hill in Washington. A spokesman for the Democrat confirmed the revelation for...
Joining the gossip-fray at Defamer is invitation only, to a point: "We’ll be sending out a first round of invitations to frequent tipsters, assistants, bloggers, loose-lipped craft servicepeople, etc etc...
Valley College student Bay'an Hedayaty says he was just snapping some shots of the Red Line station at Hollywood and Highland for a photography class assignment. But it was 10...
A reader writes: I just called to cancel my subscription to the Times – except for Sundays. And if the new TV Guide, which I get for $13 a year,...
The new blog collective that yesterday called itself Open Source Media responded today to the accusation that the name was already taken. The explanation is that the site's trade name...
At last night's road-show City Council meeting in the old Van Nuys City Hall, some safety improvements to the Valley busway were announced. They mostly involve slapping car drivers in...
♦ Yeah, curator Marion True shouldn't have taken that $400,000 loan from two wealthy art collectors right after the Getty acquired their collection. Today's front pages New York Times See/Read Washington...
Former Superior Court Judge Kevin A. Ross lost his seat on the bench today for ethical violations and lying to the state panel that investigates judges. Seems the legal establishment...
Rabbi Steven Tucker of Temple Ramat Zion in Northridge died Nov. 10 in a solo car crash in Yosemite National Park that authorities described as a suicide. The Jewish Journal...
Times Editor Dean Baquet follows up the publisher's message with his own announcement. Staffers have until Nov. 25 to decide if they want to take the buyout terms: Nov. 16,...
This morning's missive to the Times staff from Jeffrey M. Johnson says: "Beginning this week and over the next three weeks, departments will be communicating specific initiatives including job reductions...
Item 1: Items from five Gawker Inc. blogs, including Defamer, will be featured on Yahoo! News. The Huffington Post already has a deal with Yahoo. Item 2: Open Source Media,...
Yesterday's incoming email at the LA Times was lost due to an outage between about 5 pm and 7:30 pm. Will Bob Scheer's fans claim they inundated the server? Meanwhile,...
When Will Campbell called to drop his subscription after the paper axed his favorite Outdoors section, the handler on the other end accidentally read him the spiel for the Bob...
♦ Reacting to the Times' series on abuses by conservators for the elderly, the Board of Supes formed a task force and an L.A. judge ordered an investigation into one of...
KCRW's Warren Olney kept asking for a reason why the Times would shed one of its few recognizable voices, but Andrés Martinez would never specifically say why he dumped Bob...
After spinning through all the candidates they really wanted, the Dodgers today hired San Francisco Giants assistant Ned Colletti to be their general manager. The GIants have finished ahead of...
It was only last January that ex-Channel 5 anchor Sharon Tay landed a hosting gig at MSNBC. Well, TVNewswer reports today that MSNBC At the Movies and the "MSNBC Hot...
Bob Sipchen, the editorial architect of the Times' Current section (former Sunday Opinion), is moving back into the newsroom for a role in an as-yet-unannounced new initiative. Sipchen's departure from...
Times staffers who fear another budget shoe dropping this week (and the rumors are strong about some hammer falling tomorrow) won't be reassured by the word that swept through their...
L.A. Times editorial page editor Andrés Martinez took the unusual step of publishing an editor's note today to explain the paper's decision to drop Robert Scheer from the roll of...
Gary Dretzka of Movie City News knew Brenda You, the L.A. writer who apparently committed suicide over the weekend, and adds some needed texture to her story in an unpublished...
♦ More cuts are coming within weeks, Times Editor Dean Baquet confirms in a staff story about his shutdown of the Outdoors section (reported here yesterday) for financial reasons. "I made...
The fledgling blog and advertising network to be launched Wednesday by Los Angeles bloggers Roger L. Simon (the novelist and screenwriter) and Charles Johnson (operator of the controversial Little Green...
Gawker posts this regarding the weekend death of Brenda You, a freelance writer who had the unusual profile of having been a Playboy model, a protege of Bonnie Fuller at...
Sources at the Times say the Outdoors staff has just been told the section will put out its final issue on Dec. 6. No word yet on what becomes of...
The Denver Business Journal says that billionaire Phil Anschutz is on the short list of potential buyers of the 32 Knight Ridder newspapers. For anyone who still thinks that Anschutz...
Robert Scheer continues his exit tour, tossing rhetorical bomblets at the Times for dropping his syndicated column. Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, posts some of Scheer's comments to...
Catching up with a longer-than-usual helping of Monday morsels... ♦ The Times' powerful package on conservator scams was three years in the making: among other things, a prime example of the...
Just a few that caught my attention... ⇒The Times launched a four-part investigative series on abuses of the elderly by "professional conservators," looking at every instance in Southern California between...
Unlikely hero "El Pando" Guillermo Ramirez punched in a goal during the second overtime—at 124:18—to give the Galaxy the championship of Major League Soccer. Final score: 1-0. The Galaxy only...
Bob Scheer's dis-invite from the Times op-ed page resonated all day: ⇒ Email from ex-Timeser David Crook: "Re this line in Scheer's au revoir: 'My only regret is that my...
Final demolition of the historic Ambassador Hotel has been moving ahead somewhat out of view up until now. Crews have cleared the grounds, gutted the interior and removed nearly all...
The "father of modern management" was a professor at Claremont Graduate University from 1971 to 2003. From the L.A. Times obituary: Drucker was called "the man who invented management," but...
Author and performance artist Lisa Crystal Carver blogs that she was assaulted last night outside Mondo Records by "lifestyle Satanist" Stanton LaVey and his girlfriend Szandora, because of something they...
New Times editorial chief Michael Lacey flew into John Wayne yesterday and spent several hours with staffers at the OC Weekly, one of the Village Voice Media papers he is...
In an email to friends and supporters, soon-to-be-ex Times columnist Robert Scheer blames Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson for his ouster from the op-ed page: On Friday I was fired as...
Today's L.A. Times reports on what the news side calls a "major shake-up" of the paper's op-ed page (detailed here yesterday), leading with the dropping of controversial presences Robert Scheer...
♦ Today's Jewish Journal cover features a large noose and the question: Should Tookie Die? Today's front pages New York Times See/Read Washington Post See/Read LA Times See/Read Daily News See/Read...
The Dodgers are selling off the seats they are pulling out of the stadium for replacement this off-season. You have to take a pair and they go for $250; limit...
The L.A. Alternative Press is going weekly and taking a new name: the L.A. Alternative. The first issue will hit Friday, Dec. 4, according to a release that landed today:...
The editorial cartoonist that liberals love to hate, Michael Ramirez, is not part of the new Times op-ed lineup announced today by Editor of the Editorial Pages Andrés Martinez. You...
The venerable and recently retired Variety columnist began posting yesterday and says that Michael Hiltzik's blog in the L.A. Times inspired him to take the plunge. "I'll avoid the obvious,...
Marc Cooper writes in the LA Weekly that the axing of Robert Scheer's syndicated op-ed column amounts to another bad circulation-draining move by the Los Angeles Times: To mediate its...
♦ Remember last week when Nissan denied having made the decision to leave Gardena for Tennessee? At a press event today in Nashville the company will cease the denials. Exit 1,300...
Former L.A. Times editor and reporter Bob Baker posts at his Newsthinking website that newspaper journalists shouldn't accept their obsolescence quietly. Excerpt: If newspapers are going to die, as most...
A study reported today in Nature suggests it may be possible to give several seconds' warning before a major earthquake hits based on the P waves sent out when an...
Everyone has seen the circular Holiday Inn pushed right up beside the 405 at Sunset Boulevard. Time to recalibrate. After renovation inside and out, the upscale boutique Hotel Angeleno will...
There's more to add to Monday's item about Tail o' the Pup, which may have to close on San Vicente in West Hollywood. The Pup opened in 1946 at 311...
♦ You know how Washington Mutual has been letting anyone take cash from their ATMs for free? Not anymore. ♦ To see whether Jose Huizar eked out a clean win in the...
Voters rejected every one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's so-called reform measures, as well as the other propositions on Tuesday's ballot. The only one that could even be considered close was...
IN Los Angeles is out with a strong story on the death of two-year-old Sarah Angelina Chavez, six months after she was taken away from her lesbian foster parents and...
San Francisco Bay Guardian editor/publisher Bruce B. Brugmann is kicking his campaign against the New Times-Village Voice merger into higher gear. His paper is in competition with the NT-owned SF...
Here's an update to my exclusive post last Friday on the end of Robert Scheer's column on the L.A. Times op-ed page: He went on KPCC's "Airtalk with Larry Mantle"...
I forgot to include this in the morning roundup: I'll be on KPCC with Kitty Felde this afternoon at 2:30 to talk about Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles....
♦ Mayor Villaraigosa will vote today in his new neighborhood in Hancock Park-adjacent, not back in Mount Washington. Meanwhile, don't expect any L.A. Times exit poll data. Too expensive this time...
I mentioned in the morning that pinning down newspaper circulation figures is a bear. Now this: Hours after the ABC (via Editor & Publisher) said that average daily circulation at...
Just days after Michael Jackson referred to wine as "Jesus Juice," Los Angeles-based CBS News producer Bruce Rheins and his wife, actress-writer-producer (and fine art model) Dawn Westlake, apparently filed...
Facing a Monday with more bad circulation news and head scratching about the Times' outsized devotion to Hollywood awards hype, Associate Editor John Montorio dispatched an email to the Calendar...
Posters at Chowhound L.A. picked up the news first, added to by Pat Saperstein at Eating L.A. and Franklin Avenue. The California Crazy-style hot dog stand may lose its home...
That was the average weekday circulation for the six months that ended September 30, according to Editor and Publisher. The report from the Audit Bureau of Circulation says it reflects...
In addition to this big serving of Monday items, don't miss the late-Friday postings about Bob Scheer, some media moves and a shakeup of the LAT's City Hall coverage... ♦ Ethics...
Connie Chung and Maury Povich were local TV news fixtures in Los Angeles before going on to better—or at least other—things. Chung came to Channel 2 as a reporter and...
The Press-Telegram has sold its downtown Long Beach home of eighty years and will move next summer into a fourteenth-floor newsroom at Arco Center on Ocean Boulevard. The existing newspaper...
...and nothing. Arizona 52-UCLA 14. At least there's still one undefeated football team in town....
Lornamatic needed to lose a guy in a hurry. Starbucks came through....
Patt Morrison reviews Sen. Barbara Boxer's co-written first novel in today's LAT and calls A Time to Run "a passable political thriller of wishful thinking and wish fulfillment — Capitol...
The blogger at The Mess That Greenspan Made heard reports that the Hummer dealer in Westlake Village was having big trouble moving inventory. Talk had it that the dealer was...
Reporter Matt Myerhoff is leaving the L.A. Business Journal to be communications director for Councilman Greig Smith...Lots of newsroom buzz at the Daily News about the futures of Business Editor...
Assistant Managing Editor Janet Clayton has fielded complaints about the depth, breadth and savvy of Times' local political coverage since she became the Metro staff boss last year. Late Friday...
Lots of chatter in local media circles these days about the syndicated L.A. Times columnist and KCRW commentator from the left. First, it appears that Scheer is about to lose...
Mickey Kaus has posted a follow to my follow to my original post on his original post about a Halloween night gang fight on the border between Santa Monica and...
♦ A senior Times editor says the paper checked out Mickey Kaus' second-hand report of a big Halloween gang rumble in Brentwood—just a few blocks from Editor Dean Baquet's residence—and was...
Since the ad column is filling up with spots aimed at Tuesday's elections, it seems like the right time to remind everyone of the LAObserved ethic regarding political ads. Pretty...
Tuesday's Correction of the Day out of the New York Times (about the non-word trustiness) is riffed on during tonight's 8:30 pm re-airing of the "Colbert Report" on Comedy Central....
Franklin Avenue blogs about an amusing encounter with a 411 operator who didn't know—and wouldn't believe—that the 818 area code is in Los Angeles. Or that Granada Hills is a...
An internal email circulated today at the Nissan offices in Gardena says no decision has been made about relocating to Tennessee. Doesn't seem like many employees believe it, but the...
Dennis B. Underwood, the CEO and general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California since April, passed away at age 60 after battling cancer. He was a nationally...
Mayor Villaraigosa has dispatched city traffic officers to thirteen intersections along the Orange Line route across the Valley. The MTA will also step up its education campaign to convince Valley...
In addition to the newsy posts below about Nissan and Chief Bratton, here are some morning nuggets... ♦ The City Council approved an unusual tax-exempt bond scheme that could be worth...
Mayor Villaraigosa's new police commission overruled LAPD chief William Bratton and decided that a detective who shot an unarmed burglary suspect was in the wrong. This kind of rebuke hasn't...
Talk of Nissan departing Los Angeles County appears to be more than talk. Thursday's Times says that the company "is likely to announce as early as next week that it...
The biggest physical change at the Los Angeles Times since the Tribune Company took over has been the clearing out of the former Times Mirror headquarters suites. The sixth floor...
On the third commuting day of the Valley busway, an Orange Line bus was hit by a car on Woodman Avenue. They are expecting up to ten injuries, Channel 4...
Because of the anti-Bush protest along Wilshire Boulevard this afternoon and evening, city and UCLA officials are warning of street closures in the Westwood area. Veteran Avenue is already closed,...
Mickey Kaus reports at Kausfiles that he was told of a large gang fight on Halloween night at the corner of San Vicente and 26th Street on the border of...
Newly announced L.A. Times op-ed columnist Meghan Daum (website) gets the full treatment in today's New York Observer. She owns a home in Echo Park and wrote a novel, The...
♦ A new network city blog launched here Tuesday. Curbed LA, an offshoot of New York's Curbed, says it will "look at the changing face of our fair city and its...
If you go to the movies at CityWalk, Beverly Center or the Magic Johnson Theatres, you'll soon get some new entertainment for those nineteen minutes [seems awfully high!] that on...
With Joel Sappell leaving the Business section to run LATimes.com, the Times needed a new editor to oversee coverage of the business side of studios and entertainment. That person is...
♦ Guess what: all the cameras mounted to catch red-light runners in L.A. were quietly turned off in June. Councilman Dennis Zine spilled the beans. Today's front pages New York Times...
Clinton fundraises in LA
Jim Henson Studios on La Brea became a presidential campaign stop on Thursday.
Brown declares disaster area
The natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Performing arts with cheer
Donna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
