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♦ TV Week here in Los Angeles reports based on sources that Katie Couric's move to CBS News is completed in principle and that an announcement that she is leaving NBC's "Today Show" might come as early as this week.
♦ With the trial of indicted ex-Fleishman-Hillard execs Doug Dowie and John Stodder scheduled to start this week, the Daily News' Beth Barrett looks back at the noise about "pay to play" investigations in the final year of the Hahn Administration. DA Steve Cooley and the U.S. Attorney's office say the probes continue, but legal scholar Laurie Levenson says "It looks like it's dying a slow death." Former Hahn commissioner James Acevedo, once thought to be a target: "I think it was good politics, that's all."
♦ Times media columnist Tim Rutten tears CNN and its angry-man anchor Lou Dobbs a new one, calling his nightly diatribe of "recklessness and violent rhetoric" on immigration a schtick: "'Fair and balanced' already is taken, so one supposes that Dobbs' slogan will have to be 'bully and bluster.'"
♦ Ron Fineman.com reports that Jennifer Gould is out as sports reporter at FOX-11. No official confirmation, but her name no longer appears on the news team page at the station's website.
♦ Loft living comes to Marina del Rey-adjacent.
♦ Rebecca Solnit and Gerald Haslam have pieces in Sunday's West magazine, and high school English teacher Debra Miller unfolds an interesting family tale that begins on "the day the police decided my mother killed my father."
♦ Celebrity hairstylist-turned-celebrity landscaper Art Luna gets written up in the New York Times Magazine. His clients include Reese Witherspoon and Kirsten Dunst (hair), Jamie Tisch and Lisa Eisner (gardens).
♦ Janelle Brown's New York Times report on last weekend's Taffy Akner-Claude Brodesser nuptials includes mention of the FishbowlLA editor's recent circumcision, part of his conversion to Judaism. Also in the NYT's Vows: Stephanie Fleischman and Andrei Cherny. He is the former Al Gore speechwriter who ran for state Assembly in the Valley in 2002.
♦ Condolences for bad travel karma to bloggers BoifromTroy and Franklin Avenue, though at the latter Mike and Maria seem to be enjoying their investigations of Oahu's shave ice and shrimp trucks.
♦ For April Fool's Day, blogging film journalist Luke Y. Thompson spoofed Cathy Seipp.
♦ The Los Angeles Times reviews LA Weekly writer Ben Ehrenreich's first novel, The Suitors. He spoke to Publishers Weekly recently about being Barbara Ehrenreich's son.
♦ I have a piece in the LAT Book Review, of Peter Schrag's newest California: America's High-Stakes Experiment.
Photo: Reuters/Keith Bedford via Yahoo