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Jim O'Shea, the Times' reluctant editor, has moved to a Manhattan Beach condo and taken to commuting downtown via Lexus. He has done an LAPD ride-along in South Los Angeles...
LA Observed archive
for January 2007
If you don't find what you want here, check another month or search below.
The three white female victims of the Halloween beating in Long Beach testified tearfully in court today and asked that the black defendants, in jail since then, get the...
Bill Boyarsky directed the Times reporters covering the county Board of Supervisors for more than ten years. He doesn't blame Thomas Mauk for fleeing from the CAO job before he...
The Chandler Trusts, which own a 20% stake in Tribune, are continuing talks with the special committee reviewing offers for Tribune, a source tells Chicago Business. The deadline had been...
The City Council just voted 14-0 to rescind the living wage ordinance it imposed last year on LAX-area hotels. If the council had not caved, a referendum qualified by business...
Long Beach city hall and the city's main library were shut down for the day after a worker reportedly drilled through a main power line, causing a power outage. About...
Time Warner will begin carrying KCAL 9 HD on Friday with the 5:30 pm broadcast in high-definition of the Lakers game at Indiana. It's channel 409 in the new Time...
“It became clearer and clearer to me that The New York Times was the place where I belonged now,” ex-LAT editor Dean Baquet told the New York Observer. He said...
Looks like there's a deal on the living wage controversy at LAX hotels. And sexual predators in Long Beach? Click for the whole neatly arranged and hidden-away Morning Buzz....
Sidney Sheldon had won a screenwriting Oscar (The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer), a Tony ("Redhead") and created TV sitcoms ("I Dream of Jeannie" and "Patty Duke") before beginning to write...
Village Voice Media executive editor Mike Lacey showed up yesterday at the OC Weekly offices and created some ruffled feelings. Lacey brought along VVM executive managing editor Christine Brennan and...
FBI investigators have contacted current and former city officials in Monrovia and Fontana about Rep. Gary Miller's land sales, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported this morning. The Brea Republican,...
Doug Dowie insisted he was innocent in a three-minute speech to the court before sentencing. John Stodder gets 15 months. The Times web story doesn't say where they will serve...
A small gas explosion slightly injured three at the Century City headquarters of Creative Artists Agency. The building has been emptied as a precaution. * Updated: Nine injured, including three...
KFWB and City News Service are reporting that Thomas Mauk, who the Board of Supervisors announced yesterday had accepted the job of chief administrative officer of Los Angeles County, has...
Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, bucks up the troops with a go-get-em memo. Posted at Romenesko: From: McManus, Doyle Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 11:29...
Former LAT editor on high Dean Baquet is returning to the New York Times as Washington bureau chief. He'll also be an assistant managing editor and instantly a potential contender...
Bob Carroll Jr. worked with writing partner Madelyn Pugh Davis for more than 60 years, including on all the television series that Lucille Ball starred in. Carroll and and Pugh...
Mayor Villaraigosa got heckled a bit for using Spanish last night — and also got an ovation. Details and the rest of the Morning Buzz inside....
During the readers survey, someone asked for the Los Angeles County health department's restaurant closures list that used to run in the Times. Here it is, after the jump: all...
James F. Goldstein is described in today's Daily Breeze as the National Basketball Association's "favorite eccentric...he attends at least 110 games every year. He sits courtside and wears broad-brimmed hats,...
They run it by collective, call it make/shift — subtitle "feminism in motion" — and plan to launch in March. One of the Los Angeles-based regulars caught my eye: Times...
Catching up to a Rick Orlov story from the weekend (and Steve Hymon's in the Times), Controller Laura Chick says she is considering a return to the City Council when...
As a clicks-generating tactic, LATimes.com could do worse than having op-ed columnist Joel Stein chat live with visitors again. Last week's chat brought in a few readers and some attention....
Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, was asked by Market Watch's Jon Friedman if ex-LAT editor Dean Baquet would be returning to the NYT. Friedman writes: "Lately,...
KFWB and KPCC-FM each won six Golden Mikes to lead the pack at Saturday night's banquet of the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California. Channel 4's 5pm newscast...
Thomas G. Mauk, the executive officer of Orange County since 2004, will start March 12 as chief administrative officer of Los Angeles County. The Board of Supervisors offered him the...
Michael Dukakis's campaign to free Westwood of the plague of apron parking — parking in driveways so as to obstruct sidewalks, for the uninitiated — has hit a snag. City...
Today's Buzz incorporates some shorts from the weekend and a whole lot of Monday news. Just click to venture inside....
Last week's News & Chatter post on the death of Danny Finegood, who first altered the Hollywood sign in 1976, spurred a lot of response. It also seems to have...
Some of the most talked-about posts from the past week at LA Observed: Black teens guilty in Long Beach assault KTLA's star makes news — on KTLA's "news" Times editor...
Mark Saylor is leaving the entertainment practice at Sitrick & Company to launch his own crisis PR firm, Saylor Company. Saylor, the former entertainment desk editor in the L.A. Times...
Mayor Villaraigosa gave the Democratic Party radio address this morning and said, with regard to the war in Iraq, "it's time for a new direction." Bipartisanship was the bigger theme,...
LA Weekly editor Laurie Ochoa corrects one of our posts from yesterday. Wall Street Journal showbiz reporter Kate Kelly is returning to New York to cover Wall Street. Deadline...
More findings from last week's LA Observed reader survey: → Half of the 804 respondents live in the city of Los Angeles (so half live outside — duh.) Half are...
Protesters against the Iraq war will assemble at noon tomorrow in front of the Democratic Party headquarters at 9th and Figueroa, then march to the federal building via this route:...
Allegations of felony assault against nine juveniles are found to be true, not true for the youngest accused. The hate crime allegations are also found true against eight of the...
Flickr user unsure shot posted this photo from Ohio Avenue in West Los Angeles. There's speculation at Flickr that it's connected to the Fiesta de San Pablo Apóstol, which is...
The lumber has arrived, demolition has begun, and Veronique de Turenne is off on the home remodeling ride of her life. She tries at Here in Malibu to take it...
Kim Masters writes in Slate that the I.M. Pei-designed former Creative Artists Agency home on Wilshire is nothing but trouble. First, co-owners Michael Ovitz and former partner Ron Meyer are...
Children who grow up close to busy highways "have significant impairments in the development of their lungs that can lead to respiratory problems for the rest of their lives," the...
Cathy Warner, who is 63, announced her diagnosis at Tuesday's meeting of the Whittier City Council. "It's a responsibility as elected folks to make sure that our constituents know that...
More than 500 LA Observed readers put their media savvy credentials on the line and offered predictions on the top Los Angeles media stories of the coming year. The news...
We filter, you decide. Come on inside for a neat and orderly start on the day's news and observations....
Thanks again to everyone who answered last week's LA Observed reader survey. I closed it at 800 responses, blown away by the wealth of insight and suggestions that came in....
The former editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press will provide adult supervision for the UCSB student paper, the Daily Nexus. Roberts' various travails covered here....
Local bloggers and web entrepreneurs placed well on the Forbes Web Celeb 25, called "the biggest, brightest and most influential people on the Internet [and]...famous primarily for creating or appearing...
An alert LA Observed reader noticed a discrepancy between the Times' online version of yesterday's web shake-up and today's print version. The James Rainey story that ran on the web...
Will Swaim, founding editor of the OC Weekly, told the staff today that he's leaving. He didn't specifically address the New Times ownership, but he's thought to have tired of...
She actually calls it La-La Land on her Today Show blog. Later, the host fills in fans on a trip to Universal Studios and guest shots on Jay Leno and...
Channel 5's Morning Show had some fun today with the photo that ran in the Washington Post of Mayor Villaraigosa, uh, deeply in thought during the state of the union...
Later in life, Daniel Finegood became a husband, father, art lover and longtime member of the board of the Oakwood School. But on January 1, 1976, the Cal State Northridge...
L.A. Times editors are busily trying to come up with a new beat attractive enough to keep Business section rising star Claire Hoffman away from the New York Times. The...
Politico, the new politics website, has a nice early scoop. The site posted the full 140-page battle plan for the Rudy W. Giuliani presidential campaign that was reportedly lost in...
The law firm of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges raised its salary for new associates to $160,000 a year, following the lead of a top New York City firm,...
I watched Channel 5's "Prime News" at 10 pm to see how long they would go with real news before veering away to report on this morning's star ceremony on...
Tom Plate has a singular L.A. media distinction. He was the editorial page editor at the Los Angeles Times toward the end of the Chandler ownership era and, previously, at...
LA Observed contributor Jacob Soboroff caught up with local TV news legend Stan Chambers in Hollywood at KTLA's 60th anniversary bash. Click on the pic to watch the short video...
James Rainey's staff story on today's shakeup at the Times website reveals some behind-the-scenes details on the internal tension over how best to move the LAT toward a higher and...
This is the big reinvention that publisher David Hiller promised. Joel Sappell is out as Assistant Managing Editor for Interactive, and current Business Editor Russ Stanton will get the new...
The Sacramento Bee today announced a big new risky online gamble: a premium politics website called CapitolAlert that costs a whopping $499 a year and gives subscribers early access to...
Thousands of Los Angeles news makers, breakers and shapers have clicked on the Morning Buzz already this week. Join the rush and come on in. All neatly arranged just beyond...
By day Susan Patron is a senior librarian in the Los Angeles Public Library system, where she has worked for thirty-five years. She is also an accomplished author of children's...
Denise Hamilton writes that Barbara Seranella, who died this week, was the rare mystery author who didn't have to rely on second-hand observations to create gritty, realistic characters and scenes....
Sheriff's deputies are "relatively sure" they have the guy who spilled mercury in the Pershing Square Metro station last month. Armando Bustamante Miranda, 27, was being held on an...
Manhattan's 92nd Street Y is hosting a night this week with three L.A. literary types who happen to be ex-New Yorkers. In advance of Thursday's event, artist/writer/standup Beth Lapides answers...
The PR industry anony-blog Strumpette is making fun today of Villaraigosa press deputy Matt Szabo. He came up in Steve Lopez's recent Los Angeles Times column on Hummer-driving transportation aide...
Issue number three of Swink — the "bi-coastal, biannual print magazine dedicated to identifying and promoting literary talent in both established and emerging writers," edited by Leelila Strogov — will...
Oscar nominations and the State of the Union. Go figure. It's also Mark Lacter's morning to talk biz on KPCC. Click for today's helping of Buzz....
After a four-year run, the creator of LA Voice says he has too much going on in his professional and personal life to keep going. He announces in an open...
They threw a big party down at Staples Center Saturday night for the city's most popular hockey player, so naturally LA Observed had to tag along. There were laughs and...
The suspect killed this morning by police was handcuffed at the time he was shot, but had managed to reach a gun in his pants and open fire on officer...
Two themes, really: Latino-black relations and Daniel Hernandez. (Both came up prominently in the Morning Buzz.) Hernandez, the LA Weekly staff writer and recent blogger, had a commentary on black-brown...
Mayor Villaraigosa and LAPD chief Bratton were booed and taunted by homeless advocates at the groundbreaking for the new LAPD headquarters, Rick Orlov reports in the Daily News. Andy...
Aficionados of the Santa Barbara coast, as well the neighbors in Montecito, still mourn the demise of the Miramar. The motel squeezed between the 101 freeway and the Amtrak tracks...
→ The Times' Robin Abcarian is filing video updates (left) from Sundance on LATimes.com. → Variety's Gabriel Snyder is jumping to the Los Angeles bureau of W. He will be...
The best-selling mystery author from Laguna Beach died yesterday in Cleveland while awaiting a liver transplant. She had received two livers in 2005 and spent much time since at USC's...
The shooting in the Westlake district occurred as officers climbed the stairs of an apartment building at 4:55 am to answer an assault with a deadly weapon call. The 12-year...
Click for the whole big rich cup of Monday news and observations. It's a good one....
Hussein Mohammed Aidid, an ex-Marine who graduated from Covina High School and worked as a clerk in the West Covina planning department, is now the interior minister of Somalia's transitional...
PIO Brian Humphrey's blog account of Saturday's action log for the Los Angeles Fire Department's helicopters makes a good read. The day began with high-rise fire on Wilshire Boulevard caused...
No sonorous hard sell by Ruth Seymour or endless loops of Roy Orbison at the Cocoanut Grove. Just a simple pitch. We all love putting LA Observed on the web,...
The current New Yorker takes its turn with the tale of Adam Gadahn, the Southern California kid from a hippie family who converted to Islam and who now is thought...
Doherty (next to Mama Cass at this 1966 performance in L.A.) was one quarter of the 1960s hitmakers the Mamas and Papas. His death today of kidney disease near Toronto...
Hey, please don't forget to take a couple of minutes and give me your opinions on LA Observed. Along with some basic survey questions, you can let me have it...
What's in Los Angeles: Helen Mirren grabs the cover of the annual Oscars-targeted Movie Issue. There are pieces on the making of Blade Runner and on how David Poland and...
Correction to yesterday's item: it was a homeless woman who jumped to her death from the L.A. Times parking garage yesterday while staffers were arriving at work. Brief memo today...
Sordid stuff out of the Santa Barbara News-Mess never stops. Now owner Wendy McCaw has hit her former editor Jerry Roberts with a claim for $25 million. Let's see, he...
Govindi Murty, co-founder of the Liberty Film Festival, sits in the guest chair this weekend on "Ebert and Roeper." She joins a lineup that has included Jay Leno, director Kevin...
Last chance to take the reader survey and let me know what you think of the site and want more of — or less of. More than 600 of your...
Borat has been out since November and has grossed more than $100 million. The DVD release must be in sight. So some attendees at Wednesday night's members-only screening for the...
Martin had been chief of staff to Mayor Richard Riordan back in the day. A fellow Riordan Administration alum, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, today named her general counsel for Los...
Forget the condo towers. A 120-room Waldorf-Astoria hotel now is planned for the high-profile crossing of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards in Beverly Hills. In the project, the adjacent Beverly...
Free today at WSJ.com, economists Peter Gordon of USC and Matthew Kahn of UCLA discuss the costs of traffic congestion: "the problem it poses -- or doesn't pose -- for...
Authorities now are actively looking for the man shown in surveillance video pouring or spilling liquid mercury onto the platform of the Pershing Square Metro station the night of Dec....
Eric at Blogdowntown has posted a heat map showing where the homeless population is concentrated, based on LAPD counts. You can see distinct nodes of where people are sleeping on...
The New York Sun has turned its critics and reporters loose to ruminate on the Los Angeles they don't know very well. Some of the pieces are interesting, even if...
Time magazine is shuttering its Los Angeles bureau (and those in Chicago and Atlanta) as part of today's layoffs, Ad Age says. People magazine will close its Washington, Miami, Chicago...
Mark Lacter applies his veteran business editor acumen to figuring out what the heck is going on at Times-Tribune. He was also on KPCC this morning as an analyst. LA...
Syndicated columnist Art Buchwald, who died last night, taped his own "obituary video" for the New York Times. It's up on the front page of their site and includes the...
Back in the middle of last week I received a prophetic email from Beverly Hills lawyer Eric Spiegelman. From: Eric Spiegelman Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 4:49 PM To: 'Kevin...
Finally, Jonathan Gold weighs in on the great Du-Par's debate. Plus Villaraigosa, Zahniser, Boyarsky and even Lindsay Lohan — click past the jump for your daily dose of Morning Buzz....
In a revision to her first story for today's paper, Sarah Ellison of the Wall Street Journal says that three proposals were submitted to Tribune by yesterday's deadline: one of...
Twice Updated: Eli Broad and Ron Burkle and the Chandlers are readying competing bids for all or part of the Tribune, Jim Rainey reports in the LAT He essentially confirms...
Not just a little bit either. There was a snow plow working on Kanan-Dume Road this afternoon, and lots of school kids at play beside the road. Also, Channel 4's...
Eli Broad has opened up a bigger lead on David Geffen as LA Observed readers' most likely (or preferred?) buyer of the L.A. Times. Ron Burkle runs a distant third;...
Blogger Andrew Hurvitz at Here in Van Nuys sounds exasperated, or worse, at the way the onetime downtown of the Valley has gone. He writes in a post called Columbus...
While L.A. Times publisher David Hiller struggles to make the paper more local, his business side has decided to out-source the in-house computer help desk — to India. This function...
Curbed LA turns up a real estate listing for a remodeled postwar home in the Valley flats that has an aquarium embedded in the floor. And a big one. The...
HuffIt is a new beta-test section of The Huffington Post where readers can indicate (Digg-style) which news stories of the moment interest them. Those stories will then get priority play...
There's been some in the Santa Clarita area, apparently. (SCVTalk says it's hail.) The National Weather Service at 9:30 issued a winter weather advisory for the local mountains and the...
Will the sad bookstore news never stop? Dutton's Brentwood Books on San Vicente "may soon succumb to its landlord's plans to redevelop the site," the Times' Scott Timberg and Martha...
L.A.'s Latino vs. black gang violence lands on the front page of the NYT, with a web slide show of photos. The county's choice for CAO bolts, Steve Lopez embraces...
If you enjoy remembering old local restaurants and already exhausted Jonathon Foerstel's Los Angeles Time Machines, writer Mark Evanier's POVOnline is an entertaining place to spend some time. His pages...
In a recent interview with FilmStew, Aaron Sorkin complained about the less-than-cheerleading coverage of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" by writers at the Times' Calendar section. He named Maria...
What do you get when you put together art and radio? Not much, frankly. But what if you add visuals? ArtScene magazine is doing just that with the newly launched...
Less than twelve hours into Pledge Week and the number of replies to the LA Observed Visitor Survey is fast approaching 200. Thank you for helping. I'd like to crack...
The Washington Post's Frank Ahrens looks into a Southern California tale of a disgruntled newspaper family selling to private equity buyers and the cutbacks that followed — but his subject...
You might remember that after losing Tim Brown to Yahoo last November, LAT sports editor Randy Harvey put out the call (second item) for a Spanish-speaking writer to work general...
PI Anthony Pellicano's client isn't as much a fool as he seemed. A week after receiving court permission to represent himself against charges of racketeering and wiretapping, the Daily Journal...
The re-incarnation of Du-Par's at Farmers Market hasn't been panned by everybody, but enough to get your attention. Now comes the flackage for the Jan. 22 "official" reopening, with a...
This is the day to sit down with the Column One story in the Times. Surprise and touching L.A. slice of life that begins with reporter Hector Becerra grappling with...
Hi all. My traditional State of the Blog message was delayed a bit while I got my head around what has to happen in 2007. If you've been here much,...
Full list of winners and nominees at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association website....
Some lovely holiday finds around the LA Observed blogs: On old Mulholland: Veronique de Turenne ventured into the hills above Malibu in search of The Old Place, a mythical spot...
California Connected, produced at KCET, received the Alfred I. duPont award from Columbia University for "War Stories from Ward 7-D," called a "sobering report on the range of brain injuries...
You don't have to shiver at the top of Maui's Haleakela volcano to spot Comet McNaught. Clifford V. Johnson has detailed local tips and links at his Asymptotia blog. Not...
Government, schools, most banks and the U.S. Postal Service are closed for the Martin Luther King holiday. News, of course, continues. A scaled back but still pretty rich Morning Buzz...
Rick Orlov gives a sneak peek at tomorrow's Tipoff column in the Daily News to LA Observed video blogger Jacob Soboroff — psst, there's a good item about City Attorney...
Merrill Lynch analyst Lauren Rich Fine thinks the most likely outcome of the Tribune Company's dance with potential buyers is no outcome -- that no sale will take place, Editor...
Steven Garcia, the LAPD officer who shot and killed 13-year-old suspect Devin Brown, today released the finding of the confidential Board of Rights proceeding that cleared him of wrongdoing. The...
Regarding the bad smell on Wilshire, an employee of KNX NewsRadio emails that it's definitely coming from the excavation at Wilshire and Hauser. In this Google Earth pic from before...
Sure, it's chilly out there. But that's not all. Lots of other news to talk about on a (somewhat late) Friday morning. What's the greatest word in the dictionary? Where...
"Potentially record-setting cold conditions," the National Weather Service says in a special weather statement for the Los Angeles area — and not just in the mountains. "Widespread hard freeze possible...
Judge Dzintra Janavs denied a motion by the mayor's lawyers to delay enforcement of her December ruling that AB 1381 is unconstitutional. The whole issue is headed to the state...
Variety and the other occupants of 5700 Wilshire Boulevard have been alerted to a funky odor in the neighborhood almost across from the La Brea Tar Pits: The building management...
Sure, in Europe he's just a bench warmer on Real Madrid who got dropped from the English national team. But here, David Beckham will do as a new media face...
Jerry Roberts' 2006 included leaving as editor of the Santa Barbara News-Press, gaining unwanted national media attention, paying lawyers to defend himself against Wendy McCaw and being operated on to...
The PBS series "Edens Lost and Found" does Los Angeles tonight at 10 pm on KCET. Jimmy Smits hosts the episode, which features TreePeople's Andy Lipkis and his crusade to...
Elinor Shields leaves the BBC to become managing editor of the Huffington Post, based in New York. She will oversee day-to-day editorial operations, including the site's expanding ambitions toward original...
→ Los Angeles magazine executive editor Mary Melton had a scare on the Santa Monica freeway: her left rear window exploded, spraying safety glass bits over her thankfully unoccupied child...
How times have changed. The FBI filled a room at the Westwood federal building yesterday with screenwriters invited in for a seminar on how to realistically portray anti-terrorist efforts. Special...
What do you do if you're Frank McCourt and the Dodgers just sold 3.6 million tickets? Raise prices by a minimum of 11%, that's what. That and more inside the...
Mogul Kirk Kerkorian got briefings from his high-powered attorney on what P.I. Anthony Pellicano was learning from illegal wiretaps of Kerkorian's ex-wife in their child-custody and support case, the New...
Never a dull moment on the Wendy McCaw/Santa Barbara News-Press beat. Today the American Journalism Review posted its response to her lawyers' complaint about the recent AJR story on the...
They're billing it as the First Annual L.A. Weekly Film Critics Poll, gathering votes from 72 critics "who span the spectrum of print, broadcast and online journalism." They include all...
The Engineers and Architects Association at City Hall has voted to accept the recent contract deal negotiated with the city. Website....
Franklin Avenue has posted a fun find: the drawings for a late 1950s plan to redevelop the Ambassador Hotel site with skyscrapers and rebrand it as the Ambassador International. At...
The suspect was reaching for his waistband as he exited a disturbance at a South Los Angeles Masonic lodge early this morning, the sergeant who shot him told investigators. After...
Times columnist Steve Lopez isn't the only one keeping a literal eye on construction of the new LAPD headquarters on the downtown block where a civic park should be instead....
The Los Angeles Newspaper Group has posted an opening for an executive sports editor to oversee the sports coverage at all nine papers in Southern California. The papers already share...
Dutton's Beverly Hills closed December 31, but the hard feelings continue. At a city council meeting last night the city manager of Beverly Hills apparently made a report blaming the...
Another independent bookstore is on the ropes. Tia Chucha's Cafe & Cultural Center in Sylmar lost its lease and has to move. Co-founder Luis J. Rodriguez writes on the website:...
The LAPD officer who shot and killed 13-year-old Devin Brown was cleared — in secret. There's a new Rampart reforms watch group, plus items on Gail Berman, Steve Lopez, Seth...
They got their man. Jorge Arroyo-Garcia, better known as Armando “Chato” Garcia, was extradited from Mexico and turned over to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigators before dawn at the...
Items of L.A. note from today's Slate.com: → The John Lennon FBI files that Jon Wiener (of UC Irvine, The Nation and KPFK) finally wrested out of government hands last...
Tyler Green's blog-jabs about the high cost of L.A. art seem to have gotten the goat of the folks at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Last week, you...
Veronique de Turenne runs the media gauntlet near Suzanne Somers' house on Old Malibu Road and posts some photos of the scene. Would the torching of four homes anywhere else...
Have you seen the Times spots where fisheyed faces peer into a newsbox and consider whether to drag out a copy of the paper? Advertising Age reviewer Bob Garfield has,...
Let's see — some more details on City Hall's alleged Red Light Bandits, reports from the jam-packed Dowie-Stodder sentencing hearing, a KNX anchor returns and a couple of L.A. obituaries....
The Associated Press bureau on Figueroa threw a party this afternoon for special correspondent Linda Deutsch, celebrating her 40 years with the wire service. She signed on in 1967 to...
Wrap: Four homes and a guest house destroyed, four other structures damaged. Full containment by 8 pm. The blog Code 6 Charles monitored the scanners and pros checked the fire's...
Former Fleishman-Hillard executives Doug Dowie and John Stodder received a sentencing reprieve until January 30. They were convicted last May of federal charges in the overbilling of the city Department...
Kevin Bronson's Buzz Bands column in Calendar Weekend is now a blog. He's been doing it quietly since New Year's Eve, but the news just filtered down. Bronson writes of...
Finally stumbled outside after shaking off a couple of days of chest cold and, wham, it's 80-something degrees at the beach. The plants are gasping for water. What month is...
Jay Levin founded the LA Weekly more than 25 years ago. Lately he has been busy trying to recruit staff and writers around Los Angeles for a new magazine: RealTalk...
There's one California newspaper in bigger turmoil than the Times: the San Jose Mercury-News. After being taken over by the Dean Singleton crowd last year, the Mercury has been downsizing...
Word swept through local preservation ranks yesterday that a crew began demolishing Downey's historic Johnie's Broiler about 3 pm — on a Sunday. No permit had been issued, activists say,...
One of the traffic engineers being arraigned today for shutting down four intersections on the day that EAA went out on strike was featured last January in a Downtown News...
Can't remember the last time we posted so much on the weekend, including Mark Lacter's exclusive memo from LAT publisher David Hiller on rethinking the Times website. The menu for...
Regular readers of Kevin Drum's Political Animal blog, successor to CalPundit, are used to his frequent diversions about his cats. So it's not surprising that his Jan. 4 post, Final...
Tim Rutten's Saturday LAT column about the online-vs-print future of newspapers exemplified by the redesigned Wall Street reached at least one influential reader. Times Publisher David Hiller, shaking off that...
Jacob Soboroff has video up now with Times employees celebrating their success at bringing a union into the paper's downtown and Orange County pressrooms....
My favorite posts, or just the newsiest, from the first week of 2007. The lost Hollywood tape of Dr. Martin Luther King. Jim Lampley and El Cucuy get arrested, but...
General Otis (and Otis Chandler) must be rolling in their graves. For the first time in a long while, workers at the Los Angeles Times have voted to affiliate with...
Slate's Jack Shafer identifies the Los Angeles Times newsroom stars he says are vulnerable to poaching by other media outlets if the Tribune-induced fear and loathing doesn't settle down soon....
What a story. Two high-ranking city traffic engineers, Gabriel Murillo and Kartik Patel, were charged Friday with breaking into the city's automated traffic system and disabling the lights at four...
The newly re-designed and re-conceived Wall Street Journal got a thoughtful review from Mark Lacter on Wednesday at LA Biz Observed. Today it's Tim Rutten's turn in the Times. He...
Anthony Pellicano can represent himself at his racketeering and wiretapping trial, a federal judge rules. Better than paying a lawyer, the PI figures. CBS2Ed Boks' official city blog has gotten...
If you live in Los Angeles and don't want to chop up your Christmas tree so it fits in the green trash barrel — or abandon it on the sidewalk...
Remember when South Bay bagel shop owner Lynn Diane Olson shocked the legal establishment by getting elected last June to the Superior Court? Although rated not qualified by the county...
Not everyone gets or appreciates Gustavo Arellano's satirical and increasingly popular ¡Ask a Mexican! column in OC Weekly. Now reading it can be dangerous to a person's livelihood, at least...
Climatologists say the odds are that this year will be the hottest on record, based on a resurgent El Niño in the Pacific and global warming. Considering that a new...
Noted, since it hasn't been included in the mentions here of Jim Lampley's arrest: "I am innocent of the charge of domestic abuse that has been leveled against me and...
Examining a plan to inject the city's daily mountain of sludge into the ground under Terminal Island, CityWatch's Marc Haefele revisits past schemes to dispose of the treated (but still...
I won't repeat my rantlet (and here) about casual abuse of the word 'gridlock' by local media and pols. Just check out this photo of the real thing from Xiamen,...
Mayor Villaraigosa picks up another tribute from People en español, a strange phone call to Channel 2 about Jim Lampley's arrest, Pellicano's day in court and a flock of other...
Posters at Chowhound L.A. only voted 94 times, so consider the very small sample of Los Angeles foodies. But among those who cast ballots, Providence topped the Ultimate Los Angeles...
Now this is cool. The Jewish Journal has turned up and posted on its website an audio recording of the Rev. Martin Luther King giving a sermon on Feb. 26,...
Michael Goodwin was convicted of murdering his former business partner, Mickey Thompson, and the racing legend's wife in 1988. Prosecutors will not seek the death penalty. CBS2 Alleged details...
Not good, blogs Colleen Cuisine. She didn't go in looking for a gourmet experience but "just hearty good food:" After shuttering its doors for remodeling nearly two years ago, Du-par's...
Symbolic little twist to the news that Home Depot's departing CEO Robert Nardelli leaves with an exit package worth $210 million. In an ad on page A11 of today's Times,...
By last night's web stats run, more than 2,200 visitors had found their way to LA Observed by searching on Google for Stephanie Edwards. That's in just the first three...
The difference between the news side of the L.A. Times and the newly and earnestly irreverent opinion side was on display in the handling of this photo from the Gerald...
There's a full helping of media items after the jump today, leading with the arrests of El Cucuy and Jim Lampley, the dropping of Jamie White's morning radio show, and...
There was yesterday's piece in the Christian Science Monitor (which prompted some email), now outgoing chief administrative officer David Janssen says Los Angeles County needs a powerful executive to make...
The Times' Pressmens Club blog has photos up of all the anti-union banners and placards placed around the Olympic plant (and presumably in Costa Mesa too) in preparation for today's...
Ax falls at Channel 2/9: veteran reporter Paul Dandridge has been taken off the bio page, though his blog remains — last updated in August. Newsroom sources say that Inland...
All that bravado about making the party scene on crutches is so last week. Gov. Schwarzenegger's office just announced that his broken femur will keep him away from tomorrow's inauguration...
Meant to re-post this oldie but goodie from 2004 for New Year's. On Dec. 31, 1897, a cameraman for Thomas Edison shot movie footage of the street scene in the...
Workers in the L.A Times press room on Olympic Boulevard downtown begin voting tomorrow whether to bring in a union. The paper, of course, has long been anti-union within its...
A study at Central Connecticut State University ranks the most literate cities in the U.S. based on "newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and...
Eat the Press analyzes how Technorati's somewhat-incestuous Top 100 (which measures not readers or popularity, just inbound links from other blogs) looks different now than it did a year ago....
Twenty gray whales have been spotted traveling south across Santa Monica Bay this week, one has been poking its head up at the Redondo Beach pier, and "Immense pods of Common Dolphins are also being spotted offshore, feeding on the abundant bait fish (probably anchovies)."
Arts blogger Tyler Green lives on the East Coast but covers Los Angeles like a glove — all but one of his ten favorite shows of the year were here,...
Today's Christian Science Monitor takes up the question of whether Los Angeles County should have its own elected executive. Reporter Daniel Wood takes off from Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky's remarks at...
City news junkies will soon start hearing more about the "912 Commission." More formally called the Neighborhood Council Review Commission, it is required by the City Charter revamp that created...
Tucked away neatly after the jump are items on the Getty's threatened Aphrodite statue, Chief Bratton's future with the LAPD, scant details on Lydia Kennard's departure as airports chief and...
→ Los Angeles magazine's January Restaurant Awards issue proclaims Hatfield's the best new place in town, Bottle Rock the best new wine bar, Square One the standout breakfast spot, Swinging...
Last-chance talks between Dutton's management and the city of Beverly Hills failed to stave off the Dec. 31 closure of the Canon Drive bookstore. The doors did not reopen today...
We urged City Hall reporters to make the calls last week. Nobody got a story out of it, and now the news breaks on its own: Lydia Kennard is stepping...
Judith Regan's upcoming fight for her honor with Rupert Murdoch's empire inspires the NYT's Sharon Waxman to muse on Hollywood court battles of yore: think Bette Davis meets Joan Crawford...
Laura Mecoy looked at the Sacramento Bee's offer of recall to the home office and decided it wasn't for her. Instead, the paper's soon-to-be-ex Los Angeles correspondent takes a page...
Time magazine credits convicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff with one of the quotes of the year: "God sent me 1,000 hints that he didn't want me to keep doing what...
An unsigned editorial in the Columbia Journalism Review calls on Chicago's Tribune company not just to sell off the Los Angeles Times, but to quit the newspaper business entirely. After...
In his Times column today, Joel Stein drums up web traffic and blogosphere chatter by throwing down with his readers. Don't email him, Stein writes, because he doesn't care what...
Karen Grigsby Bates, who interviewed me last year for NPR's "Day to Day," gets the Q-and-A treatment from Kate Coe at Mediabistro.com. Bates is an L.A. correspondent for the show...
Federal courts and post offices are closed for the national day of mourning for former President Gerald Ford. County and city offices and public transit in Los Angeles are keeping...
Right blogger Patterico's fourth annual review of a year in the life of the Los Angeles Times is up. It has become kind of a yearly event for the conservative...
One last look at the year just past, through the lens of the subjects and posts that LA Observed readers devoured, forwarded and talked about the most. In order, from...
KTLA's own viewer forum filled up today with more comments about the Rose Parade broadcast than on any other topic in months. Most are strongly pro-Stephanie Edwards and vent at...
Before we get to the Most Clicked On stories of 2006, here are some personal favorites that don't fit anywhere else. Most interesting car wreck in years: Take an Enzo...
You can't make this stuff up. Some gems from the archive: Antonio and the schools: Mayor Villaraigosa began the year talking tough about taking over LAUSD, compromised in the Legislature...
Here are some of the top local media items from LA Observed that won't quite make the Most Clicked On list for 2006: Mel Gibson: TMZ got the scoop on...
Clinton fundraises in LA
Jim Henson Studios on La Brea became a presidential campaign stop on Thursday.
Brown declares disaster area
The natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Performing arts with cheer
Donna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
