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⇒ The Daily News' Beth Barrett takes off from last week's nugget (and follow-up) about City Council time off to compare the L.A. council's pay and perks to other cities. Bottom line: "It's the best job in America."
⇒ You know how the L.A. County health department is screwed up and everybody knows it? The Board of Supervisors was told about this ten years ago and has been talking about studying the problem ever since, Noam Levey reports in Sunday's Times.
⇒ Strong piece in the LAT Current section by Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen who was kidnapped off the street, stripped naked and flown to Afghanistan then tortured under the American rendition policy. Four months later he was released in Albania—oops, wrong guy. By the time he got home, his family had left Germany for Lebanon.
⇒ Terry McCarthy, based in Los Angeles as Time Magazine's West Coast editor, got the axe in last week's belt-tightening at the magazine, says Keith J. Kelly in the New York Post. Also gone are the Moscow bureau chief and many high execs: "These are all very good people; it's no reflection on their talent," says Managing Editor Jim Kelly.
⇒ Cathy Gudis has left the Los Angeles Conservancy to be a professor of history at UC Riverside. Trudi Sandmeier starts as the Conservancy's Director of Education in January.
⇒ Steve Rosen at IndieWire rounds up the new Hollywood and film blogs, including Risky Biz by Anne Thompson, deputy film editor and Risky Business columnist at the Hollywood Reporter. She tells him she loves doing the blog: "I have to fight to keep from doing it more than a few hours each day. And it's helped my voice, helped my writing become more opinionated."
⇒ South Bay Magazine is out, with David Hunt the publisher and editor and Garrison Frost of The Aesthetic the arts editor.
⇒ Patterico is seeking a media "credential" (whatever that is) for some secret purpose. Let's assume it will involve a conservative lesson about journalists or the media.
⇒ Deanne Stillman interviews Cindy Sheehan in the year-end Rolling Stone, which proclaims the grieving anti-war mother from Bellflower "maverick of the year."
⇒ Correction of the week, sort of at the San Francisco Chronicle (via Sonoma State and Romenesko): "A story Nov. 15 about mathematical references on 'The Simpsons' TV show mistakenly said that 1,782 to the 12th power plus 1,841 to the 12th power equals 1,922 to the 12th power. Actually, 1,782 to the 12th power plus 1,841 to the 12th power equals 2,541,210,258,614, 589,176,288, 669, 958, 142, 428, 526,657, while 1,922 to the 12th power equals 2,541,210,259,314,801,410, 819, 278,649, 643,651,567,616."
⇒Clear Channel better hope that customers of its spin-off entertainment unit Live Nation.com don't click by accident on the hard-core pornography at LiveNation.net. Emails a music industry vet: "Apparently the brain surgeons at Clear Channel didn't do their due diligence..."