Archive by Date
October 31, 2005
To prepare for the molasses-like evening commutes that come with the switch to Pacific Standard Time, here's a detailed PDF graphic in the Orange County Register on the anatomy of...
That weekend story on Watts in the NYT mentioned several nearby places where residents are moving. One of them, "Marina County," raised an eyebrow since there is no such place....
The city's Planning Department is "an agency caught in a time warp of past practices, old procedures, and outdated technology," Controller Laura Chick said in releasing her office's review of...
Sen. John McCain was on Airtalk with Larry Mantle (and John Rabe) during this morning's fund drive and was almost effusive in his praise for KPCC. Sure he was pitching...
Former LAT Editor John Carroll has been invited to spend a semester at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard. There's a good chance...
Yes, some tweaks to the look and the front pages box. The latter drove the former. The box now has separate links to view the actual front pages (where available)...
Expect some traffic disruptions downtown this morning around the funeral of former Rep. Edward Roybal. Services begin at 8:45 am Monday at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels, followed...
October 30, 2005
The Los Angeles-based website Violinist.com covered a pretty cool event this weekend. Every member of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra was left homeless by Hurricane Katrina and the later submersion of...
Little of this, little of that... ♦ Getty trustees form a committee to look into all this talk of purloined antiquities and mis-Munitz of funds. They also bring in attorney Ronald...
October 29, 2005
Times columnist Bill Plaschke, the leading cheerleader to get Paul DePodesta fired, hails the Dodgers' move in Sunday's paper and predicts that veteran old-school baseball exec Pat Gillick will become...
The Dodgers' young general manager had three years left on his contract and was in the midst of selecting a new field manager, but something changed the mind of owner...
The McMartin Preschool case is ancient history to many people in Los Angeles, but in 1984 the shocking story exploded out of Manhattan Beach. Dozens of children told amazing stories...
October 28, 2005
Pajamas Media has inked Judith Miller as keynote speaker for its Nov. 16 launch in New York (according to Roger Simon) and added Austin Bay to the editorial board...L.A. Times...
The L.A. journalist revealed her secret today at her blog, Cathy's World: Because sure, breast cancer is no fun; I’ve had friends who’ve died of it. But it also has...
Mark Lacter has been the editor of the L.A. Business Journal for almost nine years, with a two-year break (ending in 2001) as a senior editor at Forbes. He told...
Figures. When a mystery odor invades Los Angeles, it smells like sour milk and a soggy mattress. In New York, they get pancakes and maple syrup. * It's the talk...
Thanks for all the suggestions about the Front Pages box. I intend to tinker with both design and function when I get the time this weekend. So far, the Washington...
Vanessa Etourneau has everything a producer likes. She's mysterious, vaguely exotic and drapes her long lean body in expensive clothes. She's articulate, speaks with a French accent and is fluent...
October 27, 2005
Cathy Seipp, writing at the National Review Online, says that New Times founder and executive editor Michael Lacey has never been famous for his tact. She expects to see even...
Business page columnist Michael Hiltzik will be the next Times staffer to start blogging. Golden State is already up on the paper's website, leading with an entry on publisher Michael...
Today's front pages New York Times LA Times Daily News LB Press-Telegram OC Register IV Daily Bulletin La OpiniónMore local newsVariety Hollywood Reporter CBS-2NBC-4 ABC-7 Fox-11KPCC SoBay Daily BreezePasadena Star...
October 26, 2005
The Rob Barrett-Joel Sappell-Richard Rushfield team at LATimes.com has a lineup of new blogs and other projects in the wings, nearly ready to hit the public stage. First out into...
Former New Times Los Angeles reviewer Luke Y. Thompson is optimistic that the return of NT through the LA Weekly will be good. He even flew the colors last night...
Retired L.A. Times staff writer Ken Reich blogs that the LAT's new ethics policy forbidding sportswriters from voting in the college football polls cost USC the top ranking. It is...
Today's Daily News blows out the front page to list the names of the 2,000 U.S. military dead in Iraq. Here's the main story; the package is rich in online...
Marc Cooper is the first LA Weekly staffer (he is News Features Editor) to let loose with detailed thoughts on the coming marriage of the paper's mothership Village Voice Media...
Not everything, but a little something to get the day going... ♦ Chief Bratton says he'd like to stay around for a second term, starting in 2007. ♦ City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo...
October 25, 2005
I took in tonight's performance downtown of Les Canards et les Rois. Very enjoyable. The story was classic in its simplicity and the company talented and multi-national: Russians, of course,...
General Zod's campaign platform: When I first came to your planet and demanded your homes, property and very lives, I didn't know you were already doing so, willingly, with your...
When AFI Fest comes to Hollywood next month, the Times will host a day of interviews and panel discussions with prominent filmmakers, journalists and actor George Clooney at the Arclight....
Infinity Broadcasting said today that Adam Carolla will replace Howard Stern on FM 97.1 beginning January 3. Stern's last live show before he moves onto satellite radio will air Dec....
Mayor Villaraigosa scooped the local media with a statement on the passing of former councilman and congressman Edward Roybal. He was 89 and is the father of Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard....
The LA Weekly lately has promoted the timeliness of its website, quickly posting news and observations before the paper comes out. Not so on the topic of the paper's soon-to-be-new...
In his latest LA Notebook, Times of London correspondent Chris Ayres tells U.K. readers that he has decided to become a Los Angeles bicycle rider, despite his loathing of that...
Council president Alex Padilla's campaign for the state Senate just press-released the backing of LAPD chief Bill Bratton. The primary election isn't until June, but judging by the rush of...
♦ "We're going to try to keep an open mind until we can see what will happen...there are definitely a range of reactions and emotions," LA Weekly Editor Laurie Ochoa told...
October 24, 2005
Rosa Parks died today at home in Detroit at age 92. In Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, the granddaughter of slaves refused to give up her seat on a city bus...
Stanley "Tookie" Williams, co-founder of the notorious street gang The Crips, found out today that his execution at San Quentin has been set for Dec. 13. He is on Death...
The Los Angeles cartooning team of Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry broke into the Times in January with "Brevity." They got some attention then (including here on LAO) because the...
New Times is out with a press release today on its merger with Village Voice Media. Excerpt: "Together, New Times and Village Voice Media create a truly national media company...
David Zahniser reports in the Daily Breeze on the search for a new executive director of the Port of Los Angeles. Not that it's a hard job or anything: Help...
The Greek government is demanding that the Getty Museum return four antiquities they say were illegally removed from the country. The Getty is already under pressure from Italy over a...
Michael Sigman spent nearly two decades at the LA Weekly, departing as president and publisher in 2002 when management at Village Voice Media decided to make a change. He's now...
There's a big media scandal in Sweden over a journalist, Alexandra Pascalidou, who ripped off a 2003 L.A. Times story about Spanglish by Daniel Hernandez. Here's a link to the...
♦ The national board of the Screen Actors Guild caucused in Santa Monica on Sunday and fired executive director Greg Hessinger and three of his aides. Variety's hed: "Thesps gone wild."...
October 23, 2005
The New Times chain of weekly papers is taking over the Village Voice, LA Weekly, OC Weekly and three other papers to form a group of seventeen more-or-less alt weeklies....
October 22, 2005
That wave that rolled across the Westside at 1:18 pm. was a quake centered four miles west-northwest of Santa Monica. Preliminary magnitude: 3.1. It was short and jolting here, over...
Friday morning's traffic jam caused by President Bush's stay-over at Bradford Freeman's $10 million mansion in Brentwood was even worse than the night before. Today's Daily News banners a story...
October 21, 2005
Daniel A. Olivas at The Elegant Variation reviews the new release of Chicano, thirty-five years after the landmark book by L.A. journalist Richard Vasquez first made it into print. Rubén...
♦ The L.A. Times' Robin Abcarian compares Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' talent at "sucking up" to the archetypical insincerity of Eddie Haskell, the teenage brown-noser in "Leave it to Beaver"...
October 20, 2005
President Bush has arrived at LAX and is heading toward Beverly Hills by helicopter. Once he lands, traffic officials are expecting a rough time in the area around UCLA during...
Dr. David Lee and his Korean-American partners in Jamison Properties are the biggest owners of commercial real estate in Los Angeles County. They control seventy office buildings, thirteen medical buildings...
Supposed to be mostly sunny and in the 70s today... ♦ In his final regular column on the op-ed page, Times opinion editor Andrés Martinez proclaims "Lost" "probably the best TV...
October 19, 2005
Robert Greene opens his LA Weekly analysis of the current 14th council district campaign with a little history. He describes a 2003 rally where newly minted school board member Jose...
The LA Weekly has embraced Fashion Week in a big way. On the website there's a busy blog of items from the shows and parties by Linda Immediato, Caroline Ryder,...
Actor and director Joan Chen tells Filmstew.com that her on-screen career stalled after The Last Emperor "because people don't know how to write for me, that's just the way it...
KPCC's Larry Mantle aired an interview this morning on "Airtalk" with Basam al-Hussaini, an Iraqi-American from San Dimas who confronted Saddam Hussein during a break at the first day of...
During his campaign for mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa tried not to remind voters too often of his past leadership of the ACLU of Southern California. (Jim Hahn, conversely, pointed it out...
As several readers have pointed out in email, I missed this For the Record in the L.A. Times: B.B. King — A profile of B.B. King in the Oct. 9...
Just hours after I posted below about the OC Register's Lakers blog, the Times sends a news release about the launch of a blog following the team on LATimes.com. From...
♦ City Hall lobbyists now have to disclose online their clients, the issues they advocated and how much they got paid every three months. Daily News ♦ Hollywood waits and worries over...
October 18, 2005
Forget those rumors about LAT Assistant Managing Editor John Arthur taking over the Times sports department when Bill Dwyre retires. Arthur was named today to be the Page One editor....
The Movieland Wax Museum opened in Buena Park 43 years ago. Can't say I've ever been there, and now I never will. One of the more obscure Southern California cultural...
Managing Editor Tony Palazzo is leaving the Los Angeles Business Journal for an editing job in the L.A. bureau of Bloomberg News. And the new media reporter is Anne Riley-Katz,...
At yesterday's airport commission meeting, the Breeze reports, new executive director Lydia Kennard said she was negotiating with The RAND Corporation about how to implement the think tank's anti-terrorism recommendations...
Gore Vidal, the Valley and more Skid Row... ♦ Could it be FashionWeek in L.A. again so soon? My time does fly. ClothesHoarse has all the action. ♦ Groundbreaking is at 10:15...
October 17, 2005
USC has in its archives some precious copies of a noteworthy Spanish-language newspaper in Yankee Los Angeles. El Clamor Público began publishing in 1855, five years after California became a...
Trying to get more distance from the corruption stench that blew out of LAX and enveloped the Hahn administration, Mayor Villaraigosa's airport commission today created an Office of Ethics and...
Just took a look at my server logs and was surprised to see that the second most-popular search engine term for October is "Miranda McOsker." She is the 15-year-old Bishop...
This Halloween you won't see many (if any) of the Union 76 balls decorated as jack-o'-lanterns. Franklin Avenue has been keeping tabs on the balls' disappearance from the L.A....
A correspondent who reads the City Council files closer than I do sends paper from last week showing that Mayor Villaraigosa has withdrawn last month's appointment of architect Mark Rios...
Start the week off with a few observettes... ♦ At 9 am Mayor Villaraigosa will announce he has settled a dispute between the Bonaventure Hotel and the proposed convention center hotel...
Friday's abrupt departure of longtime LATimes.com editor Richard Core was not the only involuntary separation that day. At least a handful of newsroom staffers were let go, apparently as part...
October 16, 2005
Over the last three decades or so, countless Times writers (or so it has seemed) have found their reporting muse or their social conscience writing about Skid Row. In journalism...
The lede of a front-pager in this week's L.A. Business Journal calls Adelphia "the cable company that can do no right." The Deborah Crowe story was inspired by the much-chronicled...
♦ Variety is ending the VLife experiment. Last issue is Feb. 1. I believe Mike at FishbowlLA was first up with the news. ♦ Daily Breeze music writer Corey Levitan announced that...
I have no idea, but a new college football website in town says Matt Leinart's last-seconds touchdown dive to beat Notre Dame on Saturday should not have counted. The Wizard...
Happy news for the Angel City Press clan. Santa Monica Beach: A Collector's Pictorial History by Ernest Marquez won the Southern California Booksellers Association award for nonfiction on Saturday...
About the same time her first-person account of testifying in the the Valerie Plame affair appeared Saturday on the New York Times website, along with a long takeout by the...
October 14, 2005
Jennifer York, KTLA's airborne reporter for thirteen years until 2004, has an honored place in the lore passed down to the new recruits around the spacious LAObserved suites. She...
Richard Core, editor of the L.A. Times website since 2000, had his position eliminated Friday. He had worked at LATimes.com since its inception in 1996. It appears to be the...
Mayor Villaraigosa today named an "independent peer review panel" to look into the idea of a Wilshire Boulevard subway west of Western Avenue. He wants a report in November. The...
The centerpiece of today's New York Times Escapes section is a visit to the Channel Islands by Catherine Billey. She boats out to the national park with a Sierra...
A little bit late today... ♦ Mayor Villaraigosa asked for an outside review of the DWP's power failures and appointed Forescee Hogan-Rowles to the agency's board. ♦ Doug Dowie won't get to...
October 13, 2005
Matt Haber at the New York Observer compiles the recent media attention paid to Jennifer (J.J.) Philbin, a writer for "The O.C" who is the daughter of Regis Philbin. It...
From the Breeze: A Torrance attorney who says he has devoted himself to rescuing pigeons was arrested Wednesday after animal control officers raided his house and discovered at least 300...
Matt Szabo met Knight Ridder reporter Dion Nissenbaum during Richard Riordan's 2003 campaign for governor. Szabo was a campaign spokesman, and Nissenbaum covered the race for the San Jose Mercury....
Angels fans are bananas over the strange call by umpire Doug Eddings that gave the White Sox an extra out to win last night's game. If you missed it, the...
Judith Miller has just been added to the Saturday lineup at the California First Amendment Coalition Assembly on Saturday at Cal State Fullerton. The New York Times reporter who spent...
The Los Angeles Urban League announced that Blair Taylor will be the group's new president and CEO, succeeding John Mack. Taylor is Executive Vice President of College Summit, a national...
Kennedy was a producer and writer for KCBS and KCET and started the program "Life & Times" at the latter station. He died Oct. 5 in Palo Alto of liver...
Local TV hit hard all day Wednesday on the archdiocese revelations of more complaints of sexual abuse by priests and reactions from District Attorney Steve Cooley and lawyers for the...
♦ Robert Iger and Steve Jobs make nice, and will start making ABC shows available on the new video Ipod. ♦ Add a new pro to the ranks of local bloggers about...
October 12, 2005
Pink flowers of the floss-silk tree are the autumnal corollary of spring's lavender jacaranda blooms that color Los Angeles streets. Tim McGarry at Angels and Vagabonds blogs an appreciation, along...
The LA Weekly has posted a web story that Brent Shapiro, the son of defense attorney and author Robert Shapiro, died Monday after taking Ecstasy. He was 24 and a...
Andrew Kugler, a former legal, technology and political advisor to Rep. Zoe Lofgren and the California congressional delegation, has joined the government practice in the Los Angeles office of Mayer,...
Gene Hughes was 13 and fiddling with his AM radio in a Los Angeles foster home in 1940 when he picked up the LAPD dispatcher frequency. Entranced by this discovery...
Maybe not yet, but Slate's Kevin Arnovitz argues they have come a long way and can thank the Dodgers' ordinary-ness for the opening. Take away the Dodgers' persistent mediocrity, and...
Revamping of the Kinsley-less Times Op-Ed page continues. Editorial Page Editor Andrés Martinez just announced that Joel Stein, who has been writing that Hollywood sort-of insider column for the Sunday...
Big development in the high-stakes legal and public-image chess match over allegations of clergy sexual abuse and coverups by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. On Tuesday, the archdiocese...
♦ Tonight is Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's walk-on role on the George Lopez sitcom on ABC. Daniel Hernandez in the LAT analyzes the bilingual press conferences and other evidences of "the Latino...
October 11, 2005
Folks, San Bernardino County motorcycle deputy Daniel Lobo died this afternoon after hitting a car in Rancho Cucamonga. Lobo, another motorcycle unit and a patrol car were racing with sirens...
Off and on over the past year I've mentioned the scary string of restaurant robberies out in the Valley. There have now been more than a hundred heists and one...
The recently excused Dodgers manager is going to Pittsburgh, where the Pirates are on a string of thirteen losing seasons but the general manager is on his side. * Wednesday...
City Hall, Parker Center and other buildings have been affected. Power is slowly being restored, but some traffic signals have been out. Makes everybody happier about those huge raises for...
LAT editor Dean Baquet this morning made it official that Doug Frantz and Leo Wolinsky will be his number two's as managing editor. Features czar John Montorio also gets a...
Former Los Angeles Magazine editor Michael Caruso is leaving as editor of Men's Journal after two years. He declined to renew his contract because of unhappiness with Wenner Media's management...
The Wall Street Journal will trim the width of its pages by about one column to save $18 million a year in newsprint costs. The paper will also devote less...
Oops, sorry about the day (the headline said 'Wednesday' for the first nine hours or so. We think ahead around here...) ♦ Whispers in the wind say that Times editor Dean...
October 10, 2005
The only living mayors of Los Angeles—Antonio Villaraigosa, Jim Hahn and Richard Riordan—will share the same stage later this month. They have agreed to participate in a roundtable discussion on...
Over the weekend City Council president Alex Padilla was elected president of the League of California Cities, essentially a lobbying arm for city officials in the state. The question now...
Tad Friend, writer of the New Yorker's occasional "Letter from California" feature, once again explains his m.o. in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. Yes, he flies out from...
Since Columbus Day is not one of our two dozen company-paid holidays here at LAObserved LLC... ♦ The Supreme Court hears oral arguments this week in Garcetti v. Ceballos, the case...
With all the media buzz about the L.A. Times and its new editor, Los Angeles magazine broke with its usual practice and posted on the web my story about Dean...
A few days after the Tribune's Baltimore Sun said it would close its Beijing and London bureaus, the Los Angeles Times and its newspaper cousin the Chicago Tribune inadvertently made...
October 09, 2005
On the first night of the recent Topanga Fire, when Eyewitness News went off the air to make room for the network, ABC7 viewers were directed to the station's parallel...
Abel Salas did a nice q-and-a with me pegged to my Wilshire book in Sunday's L.A. Times Magazine. We met at the HMS Bounty and talked about the boulevard's importance...
Follow-ups, catch-ups and clearing off the desk for Columbus Day... ♦ Sunday's L.A. Times fronts a Steve Lopez column about his violin-playing street person, Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, taking in the stage...
October 07, 2005
President Bush said yesterday said that a serious terrorist threat to the tallest skyscraper in Los Angeles (now called US Bank tower) was thwarted sometime since 9/11. Just how serious...
Remember last week's ungrammatical smooch that the L.A. Times gave Harvey Weinstein in the form of a free full-page ad, the same day that the Weinstein Co. paid for ads...
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told Israeli Foreign Ministry officials this week that he will lead a delegation of local businesss leaders to Israel next year. Last month, the Korea Times disclosed...
♦ 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...
October 06, 2005
Mayor Villaraigosa did indeed name his citywide planning commission this afternoon. In addition to ex-councilman and former candidate for mayor Mike Woo, the appointees are former Tom Bradley deputy Jane...
Mayor Villaraigosa visited USC this morning for the school's 125th anniversary and talked up his own first hundred days in office. It's been a theme this week. He has already...
Mick Farren at CityBeat writes what a lot of writers and editors in the swirl of local alt weeklies think about the prospect of New Times buying the LA Weekly...
Weblogs Inc., the collection of 85 blogs and about fifteen full-time employees started two years ago by Jason Calacanis and Brian Alvey, has been bought by AOL, PaidContent.org reported last...
♦ Marc Weingarten reports in today's New York Times on a bitter lawsuit here in L.A. between singer Leonard Cohen and the manager he says looted millions from his accounts while...
John Humble's images don't glorify the city, but they do illuminate. His website has more. He has shot for Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Elle, The Los Angeles...
October 05, 2005
Joel Sappell has been the deputy editor in Business for entertainment coverage and the editor who oversaw the groping investigation of Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003. He will now become an...
Republican State Sen. John Campbell of Irvine came close yesterday—but not close enough—to winning the coastal congressional seat given up by Christopher Cox. Campbell will go through the motions on...
Organic chemist Robert Grubbs won the 2005 Nobel Prize in chemistry this morning, sharing the prize with another American and a French researcher. Says Caltech: Grubbs and this year's other...
Ken Auletta will be on KPCC to talk about his New Yorker piece on the Times and Tribune during the first hour of Larry Mantle's Airtalk today. The show comes...
Slow start to the day due to other commitments... ♦ Former Tribune reporter John Cook has posted a PDF of this week's New Yorker story on Tribune, the Times and Dean...
October 04, 2005
Ghoulish teaser on LATimes.com this morning:...
♦ Adelphia blames equipment failure related to the Topanga fire for depriving thousands of their "Desperate Housewives" fix. ♦ Mayor Villaraigosa's plan for improving schools falls into the hands of the Times'...
October 03, 2005
Times science writer Robert Lee Hotz reports on the website that David Baltimore's decision to step down as Caltech president "concludes a central chapter in one of the most remarkable...
We don't know yet who will manage the Dodgers next season, but it won't be Jim Tracy. He and the club agreed Monday on a mutual dissolution of their five-year...
For five years Cafe Bizou in Pasadena was the most popular local restaurant with Zagat's diner-voters, but no more. The new Los Angeles guide for 2006, out Tuesday, rates A.O.C....
As predicted by David Zahniser and Doug Irving in the Breeze, Mayor Villaraigosa today named Lydia Kennard to replace Kim Day as executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, the...
Sounds like a lot of viewers in Adelphia territory got the español version of ABC last night. A reader emails: My boss came into work last week asking if anyone...
Tribune Company CEO Dennis J. Fitzsimons flooded employee screens with another email today saying that the hefty tax bill has been paid and celebrating that the stock price drifted up...
Nobel laureate David Baltimore will give up his post as president of Caltech at the end of the academic year. Baltimore plans to return to the life of a professor...
In addition to last night's items on the Times stories by Ken Auletta and the Wall Street Journal, here are some other things you might want to know about: ♦ Getty...
First it was The New Yorker, now Monday's Wall Street Journal is getting in on the all-eyes-on-the-LAT trend. In today's free feature on the the WSJ website, Joseph T. Hallinan...
Playwright August Wilson lost his fight against liver cancer on Sunday in Seattle. A little over a month ago, he began talking to the media about his terminal illness and...
October 02, 2005
In a piece titled Fault Line in this week's New Yorker, Ken Auletta weighs in on the future of the LAT and gives some new details on the negotiations between...
October 01, 2005
Kim Day got the offer she couldn't refuse to leave as head of LAX personally from Mayor Villaraigosa's in-house counsel Thomas Saenz and deputy chief of staff Marcus Allen, according...
