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Villaraigosa warns of red ink and loves Crash...Jim Hahn gets $800 million to play with...Martin Ludlow and Octavia Butler are remembered in much different ways...big meeting today at Yahoo in Santa Monica...and the New York Times does Fred Segal. Lots more after you turn the page.
Last night's scoop: KPCC drops Kitty Felde
Photo: LA.com
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♦ Mayor Villaraigosa blamed his predecessors for creating a budget deficit that could reach $271 million, but he vowed to begin correcting it in the budget he proposes next month. The Times sent two reporters and an editorial writer to the press conference, the Daily News two reporters and a columnist.
♦ Villaraigosa loved Crash, his lawyer hated it. Chief Bratton has seen the film three times. Cara Mia DiMassa reports in the Times on the chatter, pro and con.
♦ Former mayor Jim Hahn will head a new $800 million housing fund at Chadwick Saylor & Co., the investment banking firm that hired him as a legal advisor after he lost the election last year.
♦ David Zahniser in the LA Weekly on Martin Ludlow: "For many who experienced him at City Hall, Ludlow was simply another disappointing politician who never quite lived up to his billing."
♦ Also in the Weekly: Jervey Tervalon remembers Octavia Butler, and DA Steve Cooley's charges against a Diebold whistleblower.
♦ Some grumbles in the Ash Wednesday pews over Cardinal Mahony's pro-immigrant message. (LAT)
♦ Lloyd Braun says he's not leaving Yahoo, but he will tell his peeps in Santa Monica today that the whole original content strategy that gave us Kevin Sites in Iraq is out. Next up: content acquired from others or created by users. Sites, however, will stay. (NYT)
♦ Alex Kuczynski justifies an L.A. trip to do a NYT puff piece on Fred Segal: "Los Angeles is a place where people live in a world of fantasies, and earn their livings by promoting fantasies, and so all the world — even the popular local clothing boutique — becomes a place to satisfy the needs for props and equipment."
♦ Turmoil in the Johnnie Cochran law firm is covered in the Daily Journal. No link for that one, but The Wave also surveys the debris left behind by Cochran's death.
♦ The killer of Santa Monica High student Eddie Lopez wore a bandana over his face and "shouted the name of a Los Angeles-based Latino gang" before firing. Lopez, a member of the baseball team, was not a gang member. (LAT)
♦ Starbucks Music is moving to Los Angeles from Seattle to be closer to the music biz.
♦ Renting out your home for a Hollywod location isn't all that much fun. (Pasadena Weekly)