Archive by Date
September 30, 2006
Thought I recognized some of the scenery in "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." The board room scenes and corporate offices of fictional network NBS in Aaron Sorkin's new NBC...
September 29, 2006
Time to catch up on some media moves. Already told you this week about the demise of the Los Angeles Alternative, Harold Meyerson leaving the LA Weekly, and Tony Castro...
Tu Ciudad puts Carlos Mencia on the cover and at the top of its second list of 25 Angelenos We Love. What they meant to say is 25 local Latinos...
Laemmle Theatres has pulled out of the Fairfax 3 discount house at 7907 Beverly Boulevard. No word on what the future holds for the site, just off the corner at...
Bunch of chewy new posts around the blogs today, starting at Native Intelligence. Judy Graeme stumbles on the Getty's secret art exhibit for staffers only, Veronique de Turenne eavesdrops during...
King/Drew's future Consensus is building around letting Harbor/UCLA take over the hospital and keep it open. LAT Extending the Orange Line The MTA agrees to stretch the busway up...
September 28, 2006
After the district attorney's spokeswoman blasted investigative reporter Christine Hanley, the editor of the LAT Orange County edition responded: Susan Kang Schroeder’s letter to her staff about our reporter Christine...
Wild game still being played between the Dodgers and Rockies. Colorado scored three in the first to knock out Brad Penny. Chad Billingsley came on and gave up eight runs...
The building at 2379 Glendale Boulevard in Silver Lake is on the market for $2,995,000, according to an email from Dion Neutra. It's where his father Richard Neutra, who died...
The mayor's office completed its appointments to the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment board and announced the new members of the East L.A. and South Valley planning commissions. Familiar names if...
Today's New York Times carries a man-in-the-news on LAT publisher Jeffrey Johnson, who "seemed to many Los Angeles Times employees to transform himself as dramatically as Clark Kent does when...
LAFD captain alleges culture of fear for women Alicia Mathis, a 17-year veteran, filed a complaint citing gender discrimination, hostile work environment, harassment and retaliation. She is president of...
Organizers have been planning this afternoon's rush-hour shutdown of Century Boulevard near LAX for months. The script, so to speak, calls for 400 arrests during the demonstration by workers at...
UCLA's Anderson Forecast expects the declining real estate market to take a bite out of growth, but not create R-word problems for the California economy. Mark Lacter continues at LA...
Remaining staffers at Wendy McCaw's Santa Barbara News-Press voted 33-6 to join the Graphics Communications Conference of the Teamsters Union. McCaw immediately attacked the Teamsters, saying the union was in...
September 27, 2006
Nikki Finke is out with an LA Weekly story saying that David Geffen is actively trying to buy the L.A. Times and feels confident he will succeed. She also reports...
Rather than just fade away after it ceases printing on Friday, the Los Angeles Alternative plans to keep hope alive by publishing on the web. Not just a token presence,...
Harold Meyerson, the LA Weekly fixture [* keep reading...] who was editor of The American Prospect in 2001-2, is coming back as acting executive editor of TAP. Incumbent Michael Tomasky...
The Orange County District Attorney's office is attacking the Times again, this time focusing on an investigative reporter working on a story about the office's chief spokeswoman, Susan Kang Schroeder,...
Times critic Christopher Hawthorne welcomes the revived interest in tunneling a subway under Wilshire Boulevard all the way to the ocean. He writes today about its possible effect on the...
Still in London Mayor Villaraigosa continues his trip to the U.K. Reward in Valley restaurant heists The City Council offers $75,000 for info on the ski mask robbers who...
September 26, 2006
Ralph Story was a big deal on local television in the 1960s and 70s. He was the features reporter for "The Big News" on Channel 2 when the hour-long news...
George Foulsham, the managing editor who resigned from the Santa Barbara News-Press over the dictates of owner Wendy McCaw, was announced this afternoon as assistant managing editor for presentation at...
Variety Weekend is also calling it quits. The inside pages tried to draw in readers and advertisers with lifestyle coverage of and for the Hollywood entertainment community: passions and diversions...
Last week's News & Chatter post about the LAT sports editor giving the Times Staff Writer designation to reporters from sister papers rang some alarm bells. Romenesko picked it up,...
Another Los Angeles weekly paper bites the dust. This week's L.A. Alternative will be the final issue. In print form anyway. The letter to writers from owner Martin Albornoz suggests...
King/Drew aftermath With the Willowbrook hospital failing its "make or break" inspection, closure appears imminent. The feds plan to stop all funding, UCLA says it will pull its medical...
We began summer with a sold-out Neon Cruise and we'll end it that way too. LA Observed Night returns to the Museum of Neon Art downtown on Friday, Oct. 13....
September 25, 2006
When the developer of controversial Runkle Canyon threw up new fences to keep out prying eyes, residents at the west end of Simi Valley upped the ante. They got hold...
Marty Kaplan, associate dean of USC Annenberg, takes the Times to task at Eat the Press for Sunday's bizarre inside ad for Time Warner Cable. The ad covers page 37...
It must be let's talk about L.A. month at the blog of the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. Last week Sydney Pollack answered questions from Andrew Krucoff, now it's Arianna...
Legal issues of LAUSD takeover It's not at all clear the mayor will prevail in court, says LAT legal writer Maura Dolan. Garcetti's future The Times picks up on...
September 22, 2006
Mark Lacter blogs over at LA Biz Observed: Getting relatively little attention in today's stories about the Tribune announcement was a sentence buried in the press release. It relates to...
Los Angeles police arrested Ramon Flores in the June 1 assault on KABC radio reporter Sandy Wells outside the Academia Semillas del Pueblo Charter School. At the time, Wells had...
Arif Alikhan, an advisor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, is returning to Los Angeles as Deputy Mayor for Homeland Security and Public Safety. He replaces Maurice Suh, who is returning...
Sebastian Rotella yields the Paris bureau to become a roving international investigative reporter, plus a new correspondent in Baghdad. Memo after the jump:...
Won't be posting much at News & Chatter today or over the weekend, due to some outside commitments. But there's plenty to check in on elsewhere around LA Observed. Mark...
September 21, 2006
Conan Nolan just left LA Observed Tower and I may be on NBC 4 at 5 pm talking about the Times-Tribune situation. (I was, along with Prof. Bryce Nelson of...
The liberal Episcopal congregation in Pasadena won't turn over the emails and other documents requested by the IRS. The church's 26-member vestry voted unanimously to not cooperate in the government...
By the way, the memo went out Monday that Sallie Hofmeister is the Times' new Business section poobah for entertainment and technology coverage. It follows after the jump:...
Today's Los Angeles Times sports section carries a story on NASCAR racing under the byline of Times Staff Writer Ed Hinton. One problem: readers (and probably most Times staffers) don't...
Journalists were treated to a four-star sit-down in Manhattan, says Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes, finding the whole thing unseemly. He also reports on a Getty Trust board meeting...
Nikki Finke says at Deadline Hollywood Daily that Dean Baquet's three top deputies have a "suicide pact" to resign on the spot if he is fired for refusing to carry...
Tony Bill is a regular around Santa Monica Airport and the Spitfire Grill, which is one of LA Observed's unofficial remote bureaus. He's been flying since he was a teenager...
You might think of director Sydney Pollack as a New Yorker, but he has been here for thirty years. He answered questions for the blog of the 92nd Street Y...
Board meeting day at Tribune LAT publisher Jeff Johnson returned from his scolding in Chicago to say he had reached "an understanding" with the bosses back at the Tribune...
September 20, 2006
City Administrative Officer Bill Fujioka let it be known today that he will retire at the end of the year, giving the mayor another senior slot that he gets to...
Mayor Villaraigosa's travel plans for Asia have firmed up. He'll be gone Oct. 8-21 on the trade mission to boost business at LAX and the port and promote travel to...
Billionaire George Soros, one of the right's favorite bogeymen of the moment, is in town tonight for a chat at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. He'll be questioned on...
Today's Editor and Publisher has the wording of the letter that hundreds of staffers at the L.A. Times have signed in support of editor Dean Baquet and publisher Jeff Johnson:...
Times columnist Steve Lopez met the former mayor at Yang Chow in Chinatown yesterday, and they talked about Hahn's new improved life out of the public eye: a steady lady...
John Meroney writes at the National Review Online that Brewer, who died Saturday, "never ran a movie studio or directed a picture, [but] for about a decade he had as...
Remember in June when entertainment lawyer Paul Karl Lukacs quit the rat race and took off around the world, blogging about it at Knife Tricks? He got as far as...
George Lucas gifts $175 million to USC The money will provide a new home for the film school. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gives $1.8 million Green Dot gets...
Mayor Villaraigosa is taking the show on the road, heading first to London and Manchester next week at the request of Prime Minister Tony Blair to speak about global climate...
September 19, 2006
NPR's David Folkenflik came up with a good piece this afternoon for "All Things Considered" that fleshed out some of the internal corporate struggle going on at the Los Angeles...
After yesterday's post about missing the end of the game to see "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," several readers commiserated — or noted that my contretemps was so old...
That's up from $7 and applies at the Brentwood museum and the villa in Malibu-adjacent. Because, you know, the Getty doesn't have enough money....
The California Clean Money Campaign emailed supporters last night that co-founder and chairman Ted Williams died yesterday morning.. Funeral services will be Thursday at Mt. Sinai. An excerpt of the...
On the eve of a crucial board meeting, Tribune Company chairman Dennis J. FitzSimons sent a contentious four-page reply to Los Angeles civic leaders who had said publicly the company...
Duty calls away from the desk so it's Morning Buzz Lite today... Don't even pretend you're surprised Frank Gehry's vision of the Grand Avenue project is running about 40% over...
September 18, 2006
Fred Roggin on NBC-4: "One of the most incredible games you will ever see." I bailed out of the Dodger-Padres game to look in on "Studio 60 on the Sunset...
Perhaps bracing for a premature end to his team's baseball season, Dodger Thoughts' Jon Weisman has launched Screen Jam. I'll let him explain: As readers of Dodger Thoughts may know,...
NBC 4's Joel Grover looks to have another installment of his Jiffy Lube expose coming tonight at 6 and 11 pm, according to the station's website. After Grover's two-part investigation,...
Steve Sugerman, the first former Fleishman-Hillard executive to be sentenced for overbilling the city and other PR clients, today received three years probation and 250 hours of community service. Before...
The children's section of the Central Library downtown provided the setting for Gov. Schwarzenegger to sign the bill shifting some control of Los Angeles schools to Mayor Villaraigosa. "Today we...
ADDED: Wall Street Journal on Times Mark Lacter dissects today's WSJ story on the Times and Tribune at LA Biz Observed, including the disclosures that Eli Broad and Ron...
September 16, 2006
An evolving post that may be updated through the weekend, with the newest at the top... Meet LA Observed contributor Jenny Burman and other writers from the new issue of...
Times columnist Tim Rutten adds his voice to those advising the Tribune Company — essentially his bosses — to consider selling the LAT. His Saturday column contrasts the Tribune's latest...
Mark Katches, Senior Team Leader/Watchdog Journalism for the Orange County Register — talk to them about the titles, not me — leaves Oct. 31 to be assistant managing editor for...
September 15, 2006
After all the morale-sapping speculation about a new wave of Tribune-ordered cutbacks, LAT publisher Jeff Johnson felt moved to email words of reassurance to the staff. Are they reassuring? You...
LA Observed contributor Denise Hamilton will be a featured guest at Sunday's 5th annual West Hollywood Book Fair. Deanne Stillman and myself will also participate. I'm appearing on a panel...
Baquet's defiance a national story Today's New York Times follows the LAT's Thursday story on L.A. Times editor Dean Baquet refusing to make the deep cuts in the paper's...
September 14, 2006
Yahoo! Sports says that its own eight-month investigation has turned up evidence that Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush and his family received more than $100,000 in airfare, hotel rooms, limos,...
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and State Sen. Gil Cedillo rode together as teenagers on the Eastside* and did battle arm-in-arm in the labor movement before teaming up when both got elected...
In the aftermath of the letter from Warren Christopher and others urging the Tribune to shape up in Los Angeles or get out, today's report on August revenues finds the...
Celebrity gossip Marc Malkin is taking his act from The Insider to E! Online. He will write the daily Planet Gossip column to launch in October and co-host a weekly...
The late Otis Chandler's legendary collection of rare automobiles and motorcycles goes on the auction block next month. More than a hundred vehicles will be on sale, with some likely...
USA Today jumps on the palm tree story, pointing out that demand in Las Vegas and Arizona has pushed prices to $20,000 for some Canary Island palms while noting that...
Not the moderate he seems Maher Hathout of the Muslim Public Affairs Council has been "less than moderate" about Israel and the Mideast in speeches given within his community,...
Under pressure to extract more budget savings by further cutting the staff, Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet admits in the paper today to a "difference of opinion" with his...
September 13, 2006
LA Observed contributor Bruce Feirstein's Diary in this week's New York Observer reports on the odd bits of political street theater that accompanied jack-of-all-trades activist Ted Hayes as he hung...
Yes, I'm tired of Black Dahlia hype already too. But this is different. As part of a BD package in this week's L.A. Independent, editor Tony Castro runs the accompanying...
La Opinión and the Huntington Library announced today that the newspaper's archives are moving to San Marino. Photographs, newspapers, memorabilia, awards and original documents from the first eighty years of...
From the Los Angeles Times: Scandinavian fest: A listing in Sunday Calendar said hot dogs would not be allowed at the Scandinavian Autumn Fest and Marknad on Sept. 17 at...
Cindy Mosqueda at Loteria Chicana is tired of hearing race-baiters on the right demonize a group that she doesn't recognize. Her blog-rant was triggered by a YouTube video that she...
Yesterday it was lunch at the Getty, today it's doings at LACMA. Curbed LA got opinion-surveyed on whether the Wilshire institution's name should be changed from Los Angeles County Museum...
Along with the changes made by NPR at "News and Notes" reported here yesterday, Nicole Childers becomes Executive Producer and the show takes on more of a multimedia flavor. Memo...
Board to Antonio: Keep out The Board of Education told Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa that he can't use Roosevelt High School, or any other LAUSD campus, for the ceremony at...
September 12, 2006
Scriptland is billed as a weekly-on-Wednesday addition to Calendar by freelancer Jay A. Fernandez. For the first installment, he reads from James Vanderbilt's 200-page screenplay adaptation of Against All Enemies:...
What to do when you've endured more than your share of painful staff departures, investigative reporters and international prosecutors smell your blood in the virtual water and your boss exits...
John Catoe withdrew from consideration for the top job at the Atlanta metro transit agency. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution gave no reason for Catoe dropping out....
Eighteen members of the big and notorious 18th Street Gang were indicted on federal charges of "selling" streets in Koreatown and the MacArthur Park district to drug dealers. The ring...
On the same day that Time Inc. announced it will try to sell eighteen magazines — including Popular Science, Field & Stream, Outdoor Life and Parenting — the New York...
Christine Ziemba at LAist ponders the mystery that has puzzled generations of Angelenos who strike out across downtown on the impossible quest: why is there no good Mexican food to...
Expect an announcement later today that the ratings-challenged News & Notes, produced at NPR West in Culver City, will survive for now. Sources say, however, that New York-based host Ed...
The anonymous blogger at Los Angeles City Nerd says that Councilman Bernard Parks hosted a Monday Night Football viewing party starting at 4 pm yesterday in the "media room" at...
Dalai Lama in Pasadena He's teaching Tibetans and Mongolians at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium and nearby Westin. Fire near I-5 Smoke and flames from the Day fire has been...
Kitson, the Robertson Boulevard shop with an owner who is backing a tabloid photo agency, isn't getting mentioned in US Weekly as much as it did before. So now the...
September 11, 2006
The Wave reports that the civil rights attorney and former police commissioner died last night when her car plummeted down a slope near her home in the Hollywood Hills. Lomax...
Mack Reed's site is down temporarily due to a recurrence of hosting problems. 2:20 pm: They are back up....
The Los Angeles Times launched its California Politics website and blog today, four days after it was promised. There are links to today's LAT stories out of Sacramento, video of...
Authorities spent much of the night searching Pier 300 in the Port of Los Angeles after an anonymous bomb threat was called in. A man, reportedly with a Middle Eastern...
Creationist brain cramps DNA testing links the Chumash people of Malibu north to remains in Alaska and South America, strongly suggesting migration from Asia more than 10,000 years ago....
September 10, 2006
Here are some of the highlights from the past week of LA Observed posts, blog by blog. Click the links to catch up on anything you missed: Times politics blog...
September 08, 2006
The guest list for Sunday's NBC4 Newsconference might seem like a non sequitur, but there is a theme to it: "courage, fearlessness and leadership" for the fifth anniversary of the...
Once again a politician caught being himself in an unguarded moment says he has no idea how such words would ever come out of his mouth. Gov. Schwarzenegger apologized for...
The state's 2nd District Court of Appeals stayed a judge's order yesterday that the City Council's term limits measure should be taken off the November ballot. It stays on pending...
Forget the odd looking baby. Vanity Fair's October issue has the doubled-in-size VF 100, successor to the annual New Establishment roster. Rupert Murdoch tops the list, followed by Google founders...
Variety is changing Today's edition is a Fall Fashion issue — with some dishing on designers of movie clothing — AND a food issue with a lead piece on...
September 07, 2006
The governor of California, discussing the only Latina Republican in the state Legislature with chief of staff Susan Kennedy: "She seems to me like Cuban," Schwarzenegger says. "She's not Mexican,"...
Today's feature in the Times on the Silver Lake home where Rupert Pole lived with the writer Anais Nin is the best chance I'll ever get to link to this...
Changes are happening at LatinoLA.com. The site, billed as "your online guide to LatinoL.A.," gathers together a rich array of community links, articles and event listings each week and has...
At age 82, classical music critic Alan Rich could be expected to look down over his bifocals at the newbies who come along on his beat. And at that age,...
Don't go looking for the new Los Angeles Times blog that was supposed to launch today as part of a new website, California Politics, per managing editor Doug Frantz's memo...
Catching up with the day... Forget the term limits vote for November. Superior Court Judge Robert H. O'Brien took the City Council's measure off the ballot, ruling — as City...
On Tuesday, News and Chatter noted that James Ellroy's copies of the Steve Hodel book, Black Dahlia Avenger, appear to be for sale on eBay. In today's CityBeat, Ellroy elaborates...
Amy Scattergood is going full-time on the staff of the Los Angeles Times Food section. She might a be a trifle overqualified, judging by today's memo from Michalene Busico, the...
Posting at News and Chatter will resume this afternoon. New on LA Observed: LA Biz Observed: The cult of H&M, an update on Tower Records' financial problems, Redstone rejects Katzenberg...
September 06, 2006
After Steve Lopez's column today ragging on the New York Times for using La-La Land in a piece about Amy Wilentz — calling it a cliche favored by New Yorkers...
There'll be a whole lotta shakin' going on Thursday morning when Jerry Lee Lewis drops in on the KCRW studios. I'm told he will be the guest of Nic Harcourt...
At yesterday's Angelides and Villaraigosa rally in South Los Angeles, I sat for a time with Pilar Marrero, the political columnist and Features Editor for La Opinión. In today's paper...
I haven't checked back to compare his past talk, but it feels like LAPD Chief William Bratton has been cranking up the rhetoric. In his latest monthly missive on the...
Los Angeles Times metro columnist Steve Lopez just had to pen a column on the latest round of misplaced New York Times journalism on L.A. The recent William Bratton profile...
Santa Monica farmers market deaths Jury selection began in the manslaughter trial of George Weller, the elderly driver who killed ten people when he drove through barricades into the...
Don't ever engage Times reporter Kurt Streeter in a friendly tennis match. He trained as a teenager with 14-year-old Andre Agassi, and made the future champion cry. He writes in...
September 05, 2006
A New Republic piece critical of the County Human Relations Commission for honoring Maher Hathout of the Muslim Public Affairs Council has fueled opposition from the American Jewish Committee,...
Mayor Villaraigosa stumped for fading Democratic contender Phil Angelides today in San Francisco and in South Los Angeles, but it was the mayor's quick thinking this afternoon at Foshay Learning...
Over at LA Biz Observed, Mark Lacter serves up a full plate of morning-after-Labor Day headlines including the abrupt departure of Tom Freston from the big office at Viacom. Don't...
Arianna Huffington's new book, On Becoming Fearless...in Love, Work and Life, has morphed instantly into a new feature section at the Huffington Post: "...devoted to promoting fearlessness in all aspects...
Journalists at the Santa Barbara News-Press are holding another press conference outside the newspaper today, this time to complain that eleven staffers have been suspended for trying to present a...
LAPD chief William Bratton could be headed for Scotland Yard or the mayor's office — of New York City. Or he could stick around Los Angeles for another five-year term....
One of the surprising things about retired LAPD detective Steve Hodel's 2003 book arguing that his father killed Elizabeth Short was that James Ellroy endorsed the theory in his introduction...
Times profile of Jerry Vlasak The spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front and founder, with his wife, of the Animal Defense League of Los Angeles works as a trauma...
Nita Lelyveld gets the nod, replacing Washington-bound editor John Hoeffel. She became an editor in Metro last year. Yes, she is the offspring of retired New York Times executive editor...
September 01, 2006
We're joining the Labor Day rush to the exits and setting down our keyboards until Tuesday. We can never quit cold turkey, though, so there might be some update action...
