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In my Politics piece this month for Los Angeles magazine, while talking about South L.A. black politics post-Yvonne Burke I observe that reporters typically resist assignments at the county Hall of Administration. Especially reporters at the Los Angeles Times, who often see the county beat as a dead end where stories seldom make Page One. The last guy through, Noam Levey, stayed just months after coming over from City Hall and swiftly moved on to the Washington bureau, where he recently began covering Congress.
Anyway, Board of Supes staffers who have been nervously waiting to see who comes along next can now punch a name into their Treo's. Susannah Rosenblatt is coming downtown from the Inland Empire bureau. [Insert your own joke about that being the one part of the Times' Metro empire less desirable than the Hall of Administration's laconic and often-lonely pressroom.] She's young — a 2003 graduate of Wake Forest — but had an internship in the Washington bureau and was a researcher on the Times political desk in 2004. Her bio and other Times Metro moves follow after the jump.
Related media/politics note: Levey left City Hall because he began living with Leslie Pollner, the aide to Councilwoman Wendy Greuel who is now his wife. Pollner is herself departing City Hall to join him, but first the Central City Association is throwing a party tomorrow evening at the City Club — a "special reception honoring the chiefs of staff of the city of Los Angeles and bidding farewell to Leslie Pollner, outgoing deputy chief of staff for council president pro tempore Wendy Greuel." Feel free to noodle on the concept of the downtown lobbying group hosting all of the City Council chiefs of staff.
Memo on Rosenblatt from Assistant Managing Editor Janet Clayton:
Subject: California staff changes
August 16, 2006
Staff Changes--California
Susannah Rosenblatt, who has written a variety of breaking news and enterprise stories from the Inland Empire, will soon move to the City-County Bureau. In her new assignment, Susannah will cover the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and county agencies.
A 2003 graduate of Wake Forest University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in English with a Spanish minor, Susannah began her journalism career with internships at the Winston-Salem Journal, Sky Magazine, Telemundo and The Times' Washington Bureau. She also worked as a researcher-reporter on the Political Desk during the 2004 presidential campaign.
Susannah moved to the Inland Empire Edition of The Times in February of 2005. Her work there has included stories about rattlesnakes, desert princesses, brush fires, Seventh-Day Adventists and government agencies. She will begin her new assignment in the next few weeks.
Ashley Powers also will leave the vast deserts and mountains of the Inland Empire to join the Orange County Edition, where she will cover the beach scene and cities.
During her time in Inland, Ashley had a knack for digging up captivating, often quirky stories that were impossible to ignore, including: the Cabazon Dinosaurs being converted to creationism; the political demise of Riverside County> '> s only known goat mayor; and a caravan of Lake Elsinore tattoo artists riding to the rescue of Hurricane Katrina victims.
Ashley came to the Times in 2003 as a summer intern assigned to Orange County. She rejoined the staff in 2004 as a reporter in the Outdoors section, writing about subjects including surfer girls and lake monsters. Ashley has also interned at The Dallas Morning News and The Virginian-Pilot.
A 2003 graduate of the University of Toledo in Ohio, she will begin her new assignment in the next few weeks.
To replace these two departing reporters, Sara Lin and Jonathan Abrams will head East to join the Inland Empire Edition.
Sara started at The Times as a Metpro trainee in 2003 and was assigned to Orange County after graduation in 2004. There she was one of the lead reporters during the Laguna Beach landslide, wrote frequently about environmental issues and most recently covered the criminal court system.
A native of Hawaii, Sara went to Princeton University, where she studied political science and Mandarin Chinese.
Jonathan comes to the Inland Empire after a solid 18-month performance as a Times intern and then Metpro trainee, covering subjects ranging from high school wrestling to the trial of a serial killer. A Southern California native and graduate of USC, Jonathan interned in the sports departments of the Orange County Register and the Des Moines Register as well as The Times.
--Janet Clayton, assistant managing editor