Archive by Date
November 30, 2006
Eli Broad didn't talk specifics about his bid with Ron Burkle to buy the Los Angeles Times, but in a wide-ranging interview circulated today by the Associated Press he said...
Ellen Barry of the Los Angeles Times' New York bureau confirmed for The Media Mob that she is switching to the NYT. She'll start her New York Times career in...
Channel 2 News is crowing about scoring its highest November ratings at 11 pm "in the key adults 25-54 demographic" since the 1997 sweeps series that led to letter...
Warren Price had been on the run for almost nine years since the 1997 murders of a man and pregnant woman in Kansas City who were innocents in a bungled...
To go with today's California section story on radiation testing at the Brentwood dog park and nearby sports field, the Times runs a staff photo of a technician using a...
If it seems as if State Sen. Richard Alarcon is always running for something, you aren't wrong. Last year he campaigned in the primary for mayor and lost, then immediately...
Melinda Henneberger, a Newsweek contributing editor who used to be at the New York Times, joins the Huffington Post as political editor and will hire reporters to cover Congress and...
Esquire: In the December "Best and Brightest" issue, Colby Buzzell takes on an unruly quest across Los Angeles "in search of things that make it good to be alive. In...
Council sustains veto of Pierce settlement Fire chief William Bamattre admits he can't get the department to see his way on pranks, and Villaraigosa won't say whether the chief...
Michael Dukakis, the Democratic candidate for president in 1988, lives in Westwood's North Village during his part-time teaching gigs at UCLA. For two years, the LAT says, he has been...
The Grill downstairs in USC's Commons was shut down by the county health department after an inspection turned up insects. After closure for 48 hours and fumigation, the dining area...
Juan Pierre tries on #9 (now with the names on the back), admits to a little fear of Los Angeles traffic and warily lines up with the Clippers as his...
November 29, 2006
Bobby is getting mixed reviews as a piece of drama, but this Los Angeles history buff liked it. Where the story line lagged, the sound track (even Demi Moore crooning...
LAist redesigns wider with biggified headlines and pictures. For more on the dustup at USC's Daily Trojan, check out blogger Brendan Loy's rant-like dissection. The food blog Amuse-Biatch (just...
Highway 1, the LAT's weekly two-page featurette on driving and vehicle buying, seems of split minds on motorcycle culture. On the one hand, they gave staff writer Susan Carpenter the...
Last night's showing of "Roy Orbison and Friends" on KCET — the concert was recorded live at the Cocoanut Grove in 1988 — prompted this anguished email from an LA...
Zach Fox edits the USC student paper this semester and was reelected by the staff to do it again in the spring, but he quit last night after the university...
Snoop Dogg arrested again — after doing Leno Burbank police pulled over Calvin Broadus outside the NBC studios and booked him on suspicion of weapon and drug violations. Police...
November 28, 2006
The Daily News' Mariel Garza emails that she was more than a bit surprised to read LAPD watch commander Vincent Neglia suggest that she advised her students to be arrested...
District Attorney Steve Cooley says no charges are warranted in the shooting death of toddler Suzie Peña since the SWAT officers who fired were defending themselves against her father. One...
Lennie LaGuire moves a couple of bodies in the Calendar section: From: LaGuire, Lennie Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 11:33 AM Subject: staff moves Just to keep things interesting around...
An email floating around Democratic circles suggests more turnover is in store for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's media operation. Press Secretary Joe Ramallo recently moved up 1st Street to run communications...
In a column at Slate, Michael Kinsley remembers his shock when a Washington colleague put up a personal website for the first time. Now it all makes sense, he writes:...
Country moving to AM 1260 Saul Levine's KKGO starts imitating the old KZLA on Friday. Steve Hochman explains in the Times. LAT Dunleavy staying awhile Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy...
November 27, 2006
Two more items today on the LAPD blog take issue with stories in the Daily News. First, a watch commander in the Valley continues the department's high-level bristling at Mariel...
So many bullets were fired during last year's shootout with the toddler's father that the LAPD can't determine which officer fired the shot that killed her, the Times reports chief...
The L.A. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has chosen its four "distinguished journalists" for the year. To be honored at a banquet in the spring are: * George...
Bebe Moore Campbell, a best-selling novelist "known for her empathetic treatment of the difficult, intertwined and occasionally surprising relationship between the races," has died at home in Los Angeles, the...
No, not that wall: the whims of owner Wendy McCaw and her boyfriend still influence news coverage at the Santa Barbara News-Press. But outside the paper's beautiful Spanish Colonial Revival...
Have you noticed a definite uptick in journalistic ambition in the L.A. Times? Credit the annual rush to squeeze in big projects while papers are fat with holiday ads and...
Item: A big rig rig on the northbound I-5 struck and killed a pedestrian this afternoon near Zoo Drive in the Griffith Park area. Two lanes are blocked. Item: A...
Departures from the increasingly Tribunized L.A. Times are beginning. Tim Brown, the national baseball writer since leaving the NBA beat, is jumping to Yahoo! Sports, where the former #2 at...
Dockweiler State Beach and the northern half of Manhattan Beach — from Ballona Creek south to the Manhattan Beach Pier — will be posted with closed signs Tuesday though Thursday,...
Inventing Lonelygirl15: Wired's December issue goes inside the Los Angeles apartment where the wildly popular web tale of Bree and Danny was hatched and taped. Writer Joshua Davis met creator...
Father of the Prius dies in plane crash Toyota engineer David Hermance "championed hybrid gasoline-electric cars years before global warming entered the popular conversation." His experimental plane went down...
Jenny Price's detailed directions on how to find and get into Malibu's less-well-marked beaches pretty much nixes any chance that David Geffen would give up his quixotic quest to buy...
November 26, 2006
It may have been a short holiday week, but news didn't take a breather. There was plenty happening around LA Observed: Michael Richards commits career suicide at the Laugh Factory,...
November 24, 2006
Best Black Friday coverage: Metroblogging's Koga observing the 5 am chaos and LAPD presence at the Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch. blogging.LA EAA strike: City Hall's most rancorous union plans a...
November 22, 2006
Angelenos older than about 40 probably remember signs for Brew 102 as a downtown L.A. landmark off the Hollywood Freeway. Next to the brewery were some giant tanks that as...
John Shannon's literary private detective Jack Liffey has lived in Redondo Beach and (lovely) Mar Vista and I think even wandered up Highway 395 to the Eastern Sierra. But he's...
Caitlin Flanagan told the New York Observer a year ago that "You’d never, never, never leave The New Yorker," but now she has. Flanagan has left the magazine's staff to...
Times Hollywood columnist Patrick Goldstein is given a page in today's print version of The Envelope to deliver his take on four of the bloggers who occupy his space in...
Andrew Gumbel is The Independent's man in Los Angeles and a Huffington Post blogger. He's been watching the response to Michael Richards' outburst and finds "there's something about the sheer...
It's Buzz Lite for the pre-holiday. Look for the regular Morning Buzz to return Monday. Alarcon makes it official State Sen. Richard Alarcon said he definitely is running for the...
November 21, 2006
Remember last month when videographer Jacob Soboroff was trying out his new camera at the Cornfield park near Chinatown and ran into Huell Howser — and they videoed each other?...
Bob Baker envisions Michael Richards' next apology, exclusively at Native Intelligence: November 21, 2006 From: Elliot Forget, senior partner, Dodge & Retreat Consulting To: Michael Richards Re: Your follow-up apology...
Brian Stelter is 21, attends Towson University near Baltimore, and through his blog has the ear of just about everyone who matters in television news. Now he also has a...
Juan Pierre's agent says the slap hitter has OK'd a deal with the Dodgers, but while it has yet to be announced fans online are hoping it falls through...
Lennie LaGuire has clearly emerged as a favorite of Times features czar John Montorio. Fifteen months ago he put her in charge of Daily Calendar, with the awkward title of...
City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, through chief deputy Rich Llewellyn, has asked the City Council to waive its attorney-client privilege and divulge what it was told about the hazing case involving...
The Getty Museum said today it will return 26 looted antiquities to Italy, but broke off negotiations over twenty other pieces that Italian officials had sought. Not going back, the...
After presumably watching Michael Richards' halting, disjointed and not terribly convincing mea culpa on David Letterman last night, Blair H. Taylor — president and CEO of the Los Angeles Urban...
L.A. Times op-ed and Current editor Nick Goldberg e-mailed to elaborate on his terse response to historian Mike Davis in yesterday's post, and also to correct my notion that Davis...
The director died last night in an undisclosed Los Angeles hospital. His production company hasn't yet released the cause of death. Altman directed critical favorites such as M-A-S-H, Nashville, The...
The Daily News' new columnist, writer of the weekend piece about Mayor Villaraigosa's childhood and personal exaggerations, has been around Los Angeles journalism since he landed a column at the...
Poll worker died with ballots in car Dorothy Ridlespriger's body was found in her apartment the day after the election. The ballots were from the Koreatown area. LAT UCLA...
November 20, 2006
Mayor Villaraigosa used his veto power for the first time and killed the $2.7 million payout to firefighter Tennie Pierce that was negotiated by City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo and approved...
After UC Irvine historian and controversial Los Angeles chronicler Mike Davis was called a "Marxist apocalypticist" by Gregory Rodriguez in the LAT's Current section on Sunday, he fired off an...
Does Nissan's new serialized commercial for the Sentra rip off artist Matt Johnson's sculpture Breadface, which was seen all over Los Angeles on banners for the UCLA Hammer Museum's Thing...
Mayor Villaraigosa wants to say something about the City Council's $2.7 million settlement with firefighter and hazing victim Tennie Pierce and has summoned the media at 4 pm. Talk radio...
Rupert Murdoch pulls the plug on the Judith Regan book and the Fox TV special. "We are sorry for any pain that his has caused the families of Ron Goldman...
Germany recognizes 648 valid traffic symbols, but all that instruction can leave drivers confused or, perversely, encourage them to drive unsafely. Now seven cities in Europe are going naked —...
Elderly driver George Weller was given five years probation, fined $20,000 and ordered to pay $24,000 in penalties plus restitution to the families of some of his victims for killing...
TMZ.com is getting a lot of attention (again) — managing editor Harvey Levin is live on CNN right now — for video of comedian Michael Richards throwing around the n-word...
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Paul Conrad occupied the prime spot on the Los Angeles Times op-ed page from 1964 to 1993, and I know from signing books next to him that...
They bill Anthony Pellicano's scribbles as a Web exclusive guest column, but it's really a pick-up from a book of legal writing on the concept of reasonable doubt. The imprisoned...
Tony Castro's piece on Antonio's father, the Monday political columns, the TMZ and Perez Hilton juggernauts and a letters-to-the-editor machine — all that and more inside. Were you offline last...
Item: The Los Angeles Times makes a 20% annual profit and wins Pulitzers, but is considered in decline as a business. Instead of investing in delivering more to readers, Tribune...
Daily News owner MediaNews and six other newspaper publishing groups, including Hearst and Belo, announced a new partnership with Yahoo on Sunday. The papers and Yahoo will share job ads,...
November 19, 2006
Twelve of the best from the past week of LA Observed posts, plus a few freebies... When a UCLA student is Tasered on video in the library, students protest. Where...
Record temps: Thermometers rose over ninety in many parts of Los Angeles on Sunday. Channel 2 weatherman Johnny Mountain calls it "extreme heat," I just call it very nice for...
Myths of Antonio: In a big blow-out on the Daily News front page, Tony Castro uses psychiatrists and psychologists to analyze Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's exaggerations about his past. Attempts to...
November 17, 2006
The team headed by San Francisco-based Hargreaves Associates was selected to design the Los Angeles State Historic Park on the 32-acre site near Chinatown sometimes called The Cornfield. The...
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky says he's actively looking for support to put a county executive initiative on next year's ballot. Voters have rejected the idea of an elected county exec before,...
This month's American Journalism Review reconstructs the abrupt decline of the Santa Barbara News-Press under owner Wendy McCaw and her boyfriend, now calling himself the Baron Arthur von Wiesenberger but...
UCLA student says Taser got him five times Speaks through attorney Stephen Yagman, who plans to file a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing the UCLA police of using "brutal...
A Halloween night attack on three white women by 20 to 40 blacks (according to the Press-Telegram) is causing a lot of community upset in Long Beach. One woman suffered...
November 16, 2006
L.A. Times legal affairs writer Henry Weinstein, in New York to pick up his John Chancellor Award, dropped in on lefty Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now" for a chat with hosts...
Columnist Mariel Garza's recent column about the LAPD prompted Chief William Bratton to reply on the department news and PR blog. Her column described the trouble Garza's Cal State Northridge...
Jason Calacanis made a ton of money selling Santa Monica-based Weblogs, Inc. to AOL and for the past year has been working there and running Netscape. Yesterday his mentor at...
A bunch of Times readers have emailed to say how jarring they found this morning's front page. Not because the news stories above the fold were all local, but that...
In 1999 contractor Dillingham-Ray Wilson filed a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles for withholding payment for work done at the massive Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant on the coast...
L.A. to impose living wage on LAX hotels The City Council voted 11-3 to require hotels to pay $10.64 an hour in wages and benefits, with lots of lobbying...
This shouldn't happen at the Los Angeles Times. In the staff-written web story about the UCLA student who got the stun gun, the Times says the incident has prompted "outrage...
November 15, 2006
A shouting student inside Powell Library at UCLA was shot with a stun gun at least twice last night, once after resisting police orders to "stop fighting us" when they...
This time it's not Vernon, B.C. but our own city of Vernon. Mayor Leonis Malburg, who has ruled the industrial city for fifty years — that's five-oh — was charged...
New logo, typeface, departments and architecture to the magazine, which celebrates 45 years in December. It's the Power Issue, hitting newstands now with pieces by me on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa,...
In the alley behind Nicole's Bundy Drive condo, two months after Simpson was acquitted....
Olmert still here Mayor Villaraigosa meets with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert at the Century Plaza at 11:30 am. Pool coverage only. LAT on yesterday's visit. Catoe takes the...
November 14, 2006
The Orange County Register has found its replacement for Mark Katches, who announced in September that he was leaving his post as Senior Team Leader/Watchdog Journalism — and leaving the...
After today's Ethics Commission meeting, the panel's vice president writes, "Give me a cynical old pol who at least keeps his or her word...We voted 4-1 to send a public...
Veronique de Turenne gives bicyclists their space on Pacific Coast Highway, but asks the same in return. "Share the road, you arrogant cyclists. Sure, it's narrow, sure it's scenic, sure...
If you want to be technical, The Knife is "a blog about restaurants favored by the entertainment industry. Monday through Thursday, The Knife is where to eat and drink in...
Just last September John Catoe withdrew from consideration for the top transit job in Atlanta to remain with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Now today's Washington Post reports that Catoe has...
LATimes.com has posted ten minutes of video showing new editor Jim O'Shea's address to the newsroom yesterday. He says in it that he told his Tribune bosses that the Times...
What would you do if you were camped in the woods with a hundred Girl Scouts, you were drinking a beer in the dark and you came eyeball to eyeball...
Israeli PM in town Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gives the keynote address at the United Jewish Communities General Assembly this afternoon at the Convention Center. Heads of state are...
It has come to this: James O'Shea's first address to the staff as editor of the Los Angeles Times was considered newsworthy enough to be reported on in today's paper....
Locals did darn well in the first awarding of these journalism prizes. The banquet is tonight in Washington, D.C. Selected winners: * Dennis Romero, staff writer at Tu Ciudad, best...
November 13, 2006
I was wrong earlier today (Eastward ho) when I mentioned that the Times' associate editor, John Montorio, had stayed mum about his future with the post-Baquet paper. Actually, he had...
Programming note: I'm supposed to talk about the Times with Suzi Weissman on Beneath the Surface live on KPFK (90.7 FM) at 5:15 pm. I'm not sure what the folks...
Legendary Texas journalist Molly Ivins, in Editor & Publisher via Yahoo. What may ultimately happen, she believes, is that "we settle into some form of prestige papers, a bit like...
Remember a couple of weeks back when police recovered the stolen car of Ramona Hahn, mother of councilman Janice and former mayor Jim? A box containing dishes from a church...
The federal Centers for Disease Control have moved a team of epidemiology specialists into Los Angeles to investigate what's up with Morgellons disease. Many doctors say the disorder flatly doesn't...
For the fifth year in a row the University of Southern California has more international students than any school in the United States. The Open Doors report says the 6,881...
Safe to say the trend of New York Times staffers leaving the gray lady for brighter, more optimistic futures at the Los Angeles Times is over. As ex-editor Dean Baquet...
There's been a bunch of analyzing, fretting and free advice-giving by staffers at the Times the past couple of days (not to mention Metro reporter Sam Quinones' cheeky email to...
Former LAPD sergeant and Fox 11 reporter Rod Bernsen was arraigned today in federal court and said he will fight the charges that he touched two boys inappropriately on a...
"Day to Day" contributor Jennifer Sharpe has a good piece today on the history and future of the laser light show that opened to huge popularity at Griffith Observatory on...
No challengers filed against City Council members Wendy Greuel, Tom LaBonge and Greig Smith by Saturday's deadline. Minor rivals tentatively filed their intentions to run against Herb Wesson, Bernard Parks...
KB Home CEO Bruce Karatz axed Backdated his stock options to increase his take, an internal investigation found. They're calling it retirement, but he leaves immediately and forfeits $13...
November 12, 2006
Remember Times publisher David Hiller's email plea on Friday for staffers to think about the newspaper's future? Metro reporter Sam Quinones emailed the entire newsroom his reply, which could be...
Bill Boyarsky, the newest LA Observed contributor, used to be city editor of the Los Angeles Times, wrote a local column called "The Spin" for many years, and created the...
Harry B. Chandler actually worked at the Los Angeles Times, unlike most of his relatives who own shares in Tribune. He was an early proponent of an ambitious Internet strategy,...
David Hiller, the new L.A. Times publisher who pushed out editor Dean Baquet last week, gave $1,000 to the Republican National Committee as recently as 2003. Since 2000, while an...
While I've been away, the Native Intelligence contributors have been doing what they do best: 4-ever X-mas Perpetual Christmas has come to Los Angeles supermarkets, leap-frogging right over that silly...
Highlights from the past week of News & Chatter and the rest of LA Observed: Times publisher lays out the future, invites Dean Baquet out of it. National buzz ensues,...
November 10, 2006
No Morning Buzz today....
New L.A. Times publisher David Hiller read the paper's story on itself this mornng and emailed a missive to the staff asking them to devote time thinking about the paper's...
The Journal's Sarah Ellison does a good job explaining how the culture clash between Tribune and the Times has escalated to the point that two Los Angeles publishers and two...
Those sex charges against former FOX 11 reporter, KFI host and LAPD spokesman Rod Bernsen aren't going away. He was indicted Thursday on two federal felony counts of "abusive sexual...
Steve Harvey, the Only in L.A. columnist for the Times, was in West Los Angeles when he heard a voice from the past. A panel truck stopped and the driver...
The Times is all over the running story of its future. Along with a piece breaking the news that Tribune is offering KTLA to potential buyers, James Rainey reports that...
November 09, 2006
Former L.A Times and New York Times reporter Anita Busch, in an amendment this week to a civil suit, names onetime Hollywood power Michael Ovitz as one of the figures...
The feds have an opened an investigation into the latest videotaped incident involving what looks to be excessive force by LAPD officers. The suspect, gang member William Cardenas, had run...
Most public offices and schools will close on Friday for Veterans Day. It's a normal trash collection day in Los Angeles, however....
Expect more video on LATimes.com and sharing of video between the paper and Channel 5, with KTLA producing local news segments for the website through the day. Here's this afternoon's...
Those LAPD officers videotaped slugging a suspect in Hollywood are now under investigation. The video is on YouTube and at CopWatchLA.org. NBC 4 will air an Ana Garcia investigation...
Longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Ed Bradley died today of complications from leukemia. The first black White House correspondent for CBS News, he reported on the network's Sunday night news franchise...
The last minutes aboard the yacht Well Deserved before Thomas and Jackie Hawks were tied to the anchor and tossed overboard alive makes for a chilling read. The testimony, from...
Colen reviewed restaurants for Los Angeles magazine for 21 years during the era when the city and figures like Wolfgang Puck emerged as culinary forces. He also had been an...
Finally, some meaty if unattributed info out of the billionaires trying to buy the Los Angeles Times. LA Weekly columnist Nikki Finke has been sounding confident for months about her...
Overbilling's other shoe The Lee Andrews Group and politically connected owner Donna Andrews will repay $1 million to the Department of Water and Power for overbilling on consulting and...
November 08, 2006
At James O'Shea's going away party today in the Chicago Tribune newsroom, his ovation came with a gag gift of a plastic shield and body armor — a comment by...
A disgruntled Times reader sent new publisher David Hiller a heated email yesterday afternoon after the Baquet news broke. She got back a personal (perhaps defensive?) response pointing out that...
Eli Broad and Ron Burkle have together offered to buy the Tribune Company, the Times' James Rainey reports on the paper's website. Details about the offer and the price that...
Ah, the rich cultural history, snow-capped mountains and sun-kissed beaches. Sounds lovely — too bad the Vernon link on Supervisor Gloria Molina's county website doesn't point to the strange little...
Here are the some of the best observations and news culled from the next-day coverage about the ouster of Dean Baquet as editor of the L.A. Times. Managing editors Doug...
Up-to-the-minute results for selected races Click for the latest: Measure H (L.A. housing bond) — needed 2/3 to pass. Measure R (term limits/ethics) — surprise runaway. Rest of L.A....
November 07, 2006
I will be on live talking with Warren Olney about LA Observed's coverage of Dean Baquet's ouster tonight between 7:20 and 7:30 pm. Wall Street Journal reporter Sarah Ellison, who...
Contrary to speculation just about everywhere, The Hollywood Reporter's Ray Richmond blogs that Aaron Sorkin's show will run its full 22-episode season on NBC. The deal isn't official yet, Richmond...
Dean Baquet was forced out as editor in chief of the Los Angeles Times after just more than a year and replaced by the #2 editor at the Chicago Tribune....
TMZ.com went down to the Los Angeles County courthouse, pulled the papers and has them posted exclusively. Spears is using celebrity divorce lawyer Laura Wasser, whose clients have included Angelina...
A For Sale sign went up today in front of the Daily Breeze building — yes, literally. Management says it doesn't mean the paper's pending sale by Copley is done,...
Jamie Court, president of the Santa Monica-based Foundation For Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and a founder of ArnoldWatch.org, posts somewhat bizarrely that today's ouster of Dean Baquet "pulled a page...
Times publisher David Hiller just emailed the newsroom his version of this afternoon's events. Basically, he wanted his guy: From: Hiller, David Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2006 2:40 PM Subject:...
Updated repeatedly with new information Times editor Dean Baquet "is stepping down under pressure from Tribune Company," the Wall Street Journal says in an online story citing "people familiar with...
Even before seeing these dozen graphs at NewsDesigner.com, you knew that the odds of the L.A. Times' front page redesign helping stem the circulation slide were long. As someone asks...
Wendy Werris worked at some of the most cherished and long-vanished Los Angeles bookstores, starting at Pickwick Bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard, where Susan Sontag developed her love for books on...
Around the grassier neighborhoods of Los Angeles, November means the unpleasant aroma of lawns being fertilized, Native Intelligence contributor Denise Hamilton writes on today's Times op-ed page. It's a rite...
I should have noted this yesterday, but when rookie Los Angeles Times publisher David Hiller announced a new emphasis on "serving our Hispanic audience" he defied his paper's 25-year preference...
Patt and Jill Jill Stewart, who doesn't actually take over at the LA Weekly until next Monday, will talk about her new gig and changes at the paper on...
November 06, 2006
This was the warmest November 6 in downtown Los Angeles since 1898. It was 91 by the ocean at LAX and 90 in Westwood — remember, in these kind of...
You can check out the reopened Griffith Observatory now while the queues are long, the exhibits aren't working very well and you have to pay $8 a person for a...
On the same day that his publisher calls for a new Hispanic business strategy, Bob Sipchen's education column in the Times runs in both Spanish and English on his School...
David Willis returns this week to his day job as a reporter in the BBC bureau in Los Angeles, after a six-month sabbatical to try his hand at Hollywood. He...
New Los Angeles Times publisher David Hiller just sent out a call for change across the paper to deal with plunging circulation and other threats to the future. He stresses...
Sharon Stone's appearance last week at the International Women's Media Foundation banquet in Beverly Hills. Stone presented the group's Courage in Journalism award to the mother of Christian Science Monitor...
Thick, soupy fog used to cover parts of Los Angeles a few dozen times a year and interfere with traffic at LAX. Not so much anymore, and a Cal State...
USC professor David Carter is the media's go-to guy on the business of sports. More than an academic, he also has a private equity firm operating in the sports, well,...
Welcome to the new week... King of the Amphitheatre Pistol-packing Vicente Fernández is back in L.A. for his annual packed run at Universal City, this time for seven nights. Mariachi...
The Downtown News steps out of character with an 1,100-word editorial defending the LA Weekly's decision to run a story reporting that labor leader Miguel Contreras died in a botanica...
November 05, 2006
Looks like Lloyd Grove isn't coming to the L.A. Times. A Liz Smith item in the New York Post says the gossip columnist has landed at Vanity Fair. The...
Today's T Style magazine in the New York Times surveys the L.A. breakfast scene through the eyes of assorted anointed cultural observers, from actor Jeff Garlin and chef Suzanne Goin...
Relatives of the deceased interred (they hope) at Grand View Memorial Park in Glendale have been upset for about a year since investigators found 4,000 cremated remains — some dating...
November 04, 2006
Highlights from the super-busy past week here at LA Observed... LA Weekly opens its tent to Jill Stewart: first the scoop, then the scene, the dismay, the notice and the...
November 03, 2006
Mixed in among the nine-hour parking meters on Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, TJ Sullivan found a stretch of nine-minute signs. It pays to check the details twice. At Native...
The L.A. Times is shifting around some correspondents. All sides of the Israel issue get a new name to accuse of favoring their enemy: Richard Boudreaux, the paper's most senior...
Jasper Johns' "Flag" hangs over a fireplace in Eli Broad's Brentwood home, we learn in Bob Colacello's profile of the art collector and would-be Los Angeles media mogul in the...
Jurors in the grand theft trial of Swedish bad boy Bo Stefan Eriksson could not reach a verdict and the judge just declared a mistrial. Prosecutors said they will try...
Among all the election roundups and wrapups that will come your way before Tuesday, this one sounds different. Saturday's "Deadline L.A." on KPFK will extend to an hour and preview...
If you are queued up for a Guadalajara Dog at Pink's tonight about 8:15 and notice a faintly familiar, wonkish-looking man trying to cut the line, don't worry. It's just...
Beadle's Cafeteria in Pasadena has shut its doors for good. Don't believe the taped-up sign in the window saying it's just closed for remodeling. Not going to happen, the landlord...
Friday's Times carries the obit on the paper's long-time and respected classical music reviewer, Daniel Cariaga, who died on Wednesday at age 71. His life path was not typical of...
When the FBI and Santa Monica police served search warrants at the home of Animal Liberation Front supporters Jerry Vlasak and Pamelyn Ferdin this week, they gained entry through a...
November 02, 2006
Frenchman Lionel Bringuier, who just turned 20, has been named assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic beginning in 2007. Ken Layne, formerly of LA Examiner.com and Sploid, is...
The editor's office at the LA Weekly sent over this letter from Mike Lacey, executive editor of Village Voice Media, taking issue with my coverage (and with ex-Weeklyite Harold Meyerson)...
This is the Jackson Pollock painting that David Geffen has reportedly sold for $140 million — should I say that again? $140 million — to Mexican financier David Martinez. It's...
When the final clearance sale began yesterday at Cooke's Family Market, "if there was a friend or neighbor or movie star you hadn't run into in a couple of weeks,...
Tom Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner have inked a deal to take over MGM's dormant United Artists film label, Anne Thompson reports at the Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz...
Filming for Live Free or Die Hard has been postponed a couple of days, so the production won't be shutting down Imperial Highway beside LAX until the weekend. Previously: Vengeance...
Jill Stewart mailed out her own announcement today about shutting down her syndicated column to assume a key editing position at the LA Weekly. She emails: Hi all, Some news:...
The Times' Susan Spano is heading to Asia for a month and turning over Postcards from Paris to a guest blogger, new-to-Paris author Elliott Hester. Spano critic Amy Alkon, writing...
That car allegedly stolen by Joel Campos of San Pedro? It belonged to Ramona Hahn, mother of the former mayor and the current city councilwoman. That LoJack system? It worked....
Christopher Hawthorne's architectural review in the Times of the reinvented Griffith Observatory says "the new underground spaces are for the most part more serviceable than inspiring, never matching the expansive...
Times flubs its sell-out to Hollywood It's bad enough that the L.A. Times drinks the Oscar Kool-Aid for many months before anyone not employed in Hollywood is even thirsty....
Yesterday's upheaval at the LA Weekly — first detailed here — sent observers of the paper and staffers buzzing into the night about what the future holds. At the afternoon...
November 01, 2006
Daniel Cariaga was the longtime classical music reviewer for the Los Angeles Times Calendar section. A note sent to the staff this afternoon said that he had been hospitalized with...
News editor Alan Mittelstaedt is out and controversial columnist Jill Stewart is coming in to edit local news coverage. Mittelstaedt pushed the recent story on Miguel Contreras's death and has...
The Wall Street Journal has moved a story (subscribers only) saying that since private-equity bids for the whole company came in so low, Tribune has given noticed that "it will...
This weekend — apparently for the first time ever — both L.A. pro football teams play in the Bay Area on the same day: USC at Stanford and UCLA at...
Fox News shouter Bill O'Reilly is back on his Times kick, this time alleging that the real circulation is about half of what the ABC said it was this week....
Chief William Bratton opens his latest newsletter with praise for the Glocks and Tasers that LAPD officers are starting to carry, and lists some of the more high-tech tools that...
Wilshire & Washington is designed to "highlight the enduring relationship between entertainment and politics. More than a mere curiosity, the intersection of these worlds play out daily in fund raising,...
Fifth firefighter dies Pablo Cerda had been the only one of a five-man crew to survive being overrun during the Esperanza wildfire in Riverside County. Janitor strike today Some...
