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Morning BuzzChannels 2 and 9 lead the Emmy pack
The sister stations took home eight local Emmy's on Saturday, followed by Fox 11. Top news writer was Mary Harris of NBC 4, and non-news writer was Kris Koenig of KOCE. Full list.
Rookie officer shot with AK-47
Doctors are doubtful they can save the hand of James Tuck, who was shot three times during a stop in Montecito Heights.
Soon to be a movie of the week
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes pulled over to help a shaken couple on the Ventura Freeway who had just had an accident on Saturday night, People magazine says.
Sara Jane Olson's life behind bars
The LAT's Jenifer Warren and Robert Durell get inside Chowchilla's prison.
Web redesign at Fox 11
New name too: MyFox. There's much more news and video, blogs by anchor Jeff Michael and other staffers, and of course photos of Jillian Barberie's wedding. The public is allowed to register and blog as well. Don't go if you don't have a fast connection: lots of resource-sucking doo-dads.
Movie downloads for sale on MySpace
Fox will make its films available on the popular journal service and other websites.
AFTER THE JUMP: Media items on TMZ's success, the Times' supposed Israel bias, a reunion of L.A. Reader alums, a tribute to '70s B-actress Candice Rialson and more, plus Project Restore's weekend attack on City Hall, the mayor returns to Sacramento and a journalist blames "the Jews" in the Mel Gibson affair while another drops his Times subscription. Lots more for a Monday where those came from.
Politics
Fire and flood at City Hall
Fireworks at Saturday night's Project Restore dinner on the south lawn somehow ignited a fire on the 9th floor...which triggered sprinklers...which soaked the 9th, 8th and 7th floors. Fitting, I guess, since Project Restore paid for the redo of City Hall several years back. I'm told the extra entertainment provided by fire trucks and sirens helped enliven the evening. My source says the dinner was more sparsely attended than in past years, people in the back complained of not being able to hear the speakers, and women in heels had some difficulty negotiating the uncovered grass. And with all the speeches, dinner reached the tables so late that there was rebel talk of ordering in pizza.
Back to Sacramento
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is in the state capital today to testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee on his school bill, AB 1381. The new Los Angeles Parents Union, created to push the mayor's reform agenda, is going too via bus caravan.
Geographic message diversity
Villaraigosa's pitch on the school plan varies by community, Naush Boghossian finds in the Daily News. Also: Rick Orlov columnizes that Eli Broad's stated opposition is not being followed up with action.
Media
Explaining TMZ's success
General manager Alan Citron, a former LAT entertainment business reporter and editor, tells the Los Angeles Business Journal that the site had ten million unique visitors in July, only its eight month online.
“We’re a hybrid – a traditional news organization in the progressive environment of the blogosphere,” he says. “This is one direction news coverage is headed. It’s so immediate. We don’t have a deadline – we report the news when it happens, even in the middle of the night or on holidays. That immediacy has a lot of appeal both to the people who gather the news and those who read it.”
LAT bias on Israel
The Current section's Outside the Tent feature ran pieces from a Jew who dislikes the LAT's coverage of Israel and Muslims who think the paper is anti-Hezbollah.
A reader writes
"When you review the Sunday LA Times this week, ask yourself why this nifty, must-read investigative piece ("Probes Targeted UCI Researcher" by Christian Berthelsen) wasn't on A1? On second thought after re-reviewing the front page, you'll probably agree that this UCI story was not as newsworthy as the explosive story on the boom in GenX RV purchases."
Converting front lawns to art
In the L.A. Alternative cover story, Lucinda Michele Knapp explores artist Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates project.
Longtime journo drops the Times
Rip Rense emails, "We finally cancelled the Times here. We're a no-paper household for the first time in my life. All-net and NPR now."
L.A. Reader reunion
Erik Himmselsbach covers the weekend festivities at James Vowell's place in Yucaipa.
News website
BrooWaha intends to be an online newspaper where readers choose the importance of the stories. First L.A., then New York. Some stories are in French, for reasons I can't discern.
Blog talk
Tim McGarry of Angels and Vagabonds has added a second blog, Fourth and Olive, just to pass along what he's reading. It's named for "the location of Angels Knoll, a small park on the eastern slope of Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles. The park is a pleasant place to read on a fine day."
Stan Chambers to get SPJ award
The KTLA legend receives the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement honor at next week's Society of Professional Journalists' national convention in Chicago.
Magazine inflation
100 is the new 50 when it comes to lists.
Noted
She'll never darken my door
Dianne Bates is an L.A. journalist whose website and newsletter ("received by over 3,000 media and VIPs") blames "the Jews" in the Mel Gibson affair — including "Jewish TV reporters like LA TV station KTLA’s Sam Rubin." She testifies that Gibson was nice to her once. Aw shucks...:
Mel Gibson supposedly verbally slammed more than one group when he was arrested last week for DUI, but only one group of people whined and complained and demanded apologies and “talks” about his comments. Did any women’s organization bitch about his comments about a female officer? No. Nada. The only bitching came from those who have been chronically whining about their sorry lot in life for centuries – as if they were the only group in history to suffer hardship and racism. Obnoxious comments by inebriated arrestees are not uncommon and police officers are trained to deal with such behavior. But one of the officers (hmmm...wonder which one?) tipped off a Jewish gossip dog and Jewish TV reporters like LA TV station KTLA’s Sam Rubin ranted for days about Mel’s verbage and predicted the fall of his career. For the record, folks out here in Malibu like Mel and letters to the local papers touted one of our basic rights – the freedom of speech.
Author and screenwriter Michael Tolkin ("The Player") writes in the new Jewish Journal that "Mel Gibson's defenders don't understand the essence of Jew hatred, that it's a projected fantasy, and that the Jews Gibson hates are not real Jews or real people, they're all the Jews he doesn't know."
Redwood and Far East Cafe return
The former press-and-pol hangout the Redwood Saloon on 2nd Street downtown will reopen soon with a soft launch as a pirate-themed hipster bar. The former Far East in Little Tokyo has become the Chop Suey Cafe, and the personal reviews I've heard so far were decidely mixed. Downtown News does them both.
Candice Rialson, R.I.P.
Blogger Dennis Cozzalio at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule couldn't believe that no one noted the passing of the 1970s B-actress and has been compiling links and comments.
Reward now $150,000
For information on the murder of Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy Maria Cecilia Rosa.
Photographing Fairfax
Just Above Sunset's Alan Pavlik turns his eye on the Fairfax District.
1st Street disruptions
Work on the Gold Line extension to Boyle Heights will cause 1st Street to be closed intermittenly near Alameda.
Today
KPCC must like Susan Carpenter
The LAT's "Throttle Jockey" columnist has already been on John Rabe's Off-Ramp this month, and today is scheduled for a segment on "Patt Morrison."
Around LA Observed
From our contributors
Jenny Price had a piece in Sunday's LAT Current section about the misogynistic, mean and inaccurate gun nut comments posted on the Web in repsonse to an article she wrote about the shooting murder of her brother and his fiancee five years ago.