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For the newsroom at the L.A. Times, the most upsetting parts of last night's "Frontline" episode on the paper's future were remarks by the vice chairman of Ariel Capital Management,...
LA Observed archive
for February 2007
If you don't find what you want here, check another month or search below.
Today's Times Op-Ed column by Erin Aubry Kaplan will be one of her last. She has been told that her services will no longer be required come April, along with...
Were you watching TV ten years ago this morning? Chances are you were. Click for the Morning Buzz....
L.A. freelancer Janelle Brown has sold her debut novel, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything — "about a woman and her two daughters coming together after their lives are dramatically...
The latest installment of "News Wars: What's Happening to the News" airs tonight on PBS — and Times publisher David Hiller sounds concerned about how his paper will be treated....
Bunch of new correspondent assignments were just posted for L.A. Times foreign bureaus, with Baghdad the most affected. There's also a new chiefs of bureau for Moscow and Cairo and...
A worker at the Wolfgang Puck Catering Company in Hollywood has been diagnosed with acute hepatitis A, causing the county health department to begin contacting attendees at catered events held...
A local panel formed by the White House has recommended Thomas O'Brien, chief of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney's office here, and Sidley Austin partner Kimberly A. Dunne...
Times political reporter-columnist Ron Brownstein is taking his act to the opinion side, writing a weekly Op-Ed page column and longer pieces for Current. He'll also have a presence online....
Santa Monica teenager Cory Kennedy, and her mother, come across as less than stable in Shawn Hubler's profile (The Secret Life of Cory Kennedy) in Sunday's West magazine. Still, Kennedy...
Click to enter the neatly organized, nicely hidden away Morning Buzz for today....
Chris Ayres, Los Angeles correspondent of the Times of London, liveblogged the Oscars and found Her Majesty Gwyneth Paltrow's vocal stylings a tad odd. For a Crossroads girl, anyway: "My...
Gov. Schwarzenegger took his vision of post-partisan love to the National Press Club in Washington and invoked the image of his cigar-sharing refuge back home in Sacramento: "In the courtyard...
Squeaky wheels do get the grease, it turns out. The state transportation commission rethought its earlier decision to leave the freeway out of the spending plan. Also: The day's headlines...
The mayor today also nominated his new top people to run the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. Carol Baker Tharp, the former executive director of Coro Southern California, gets the general...
Larry Kline, a former Times marketing exec, takes over as publisher of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star-News and Whittier Daily News. Last week it was the Press-Telegram that...
Bud Ovrom moves over to the newly created post of Deputy Mayor for Commercial and Residential Development and Helmi Hisserich, the top CRA official in Hollywood and former Riordan adviser,...
LA-ClergyCases.com was started in 2005 by by the law firm (Hennigan, Bennett & Dorman) that represents the Archdiocese over sexual abuse allegations against priests and defends Cardinal Mahony against accusations...
Welcome to the new (post-Oscar) week. Last week's Editor's Dozen of posts is here. Click below for today's Buzz....
Chicago real estate developer Sam Zell has proposed to take over Tribune Company and Trib is listening, the New York Times reports on its website. Zell's late-hour play has put...
LA Observed joined a full and enthusiastic house at last night's performance of Wicked. Afterward, intern Sean mugged with Elphaba's freshly de-greened Eden Espinosa, who emerged from the Pantages stage...
From Roy Rivenburg in Sunday's LAT: When a vampire expert allegedly seduced a tipsy UC Irvine student four years ago, he inadvertently set off a chain of events that now...
Jay Babcock, the founder of music and culture zine Arthur, emails a friend that the run has ended at #25 (cover shown.) He posts a symbolic gesture on the website....
The Amgen Tour of California arrived in Santa Clarita on Saturday. SCVTalk has pictures of the "tens of thousands" of spectators on hand. The race ends today in Long Beach....
Bit of a short week due to the holiday, but things are never slow around here. Some of the most review-worthy LA Observed posts of the past week: Sen. Barack...
With the Times launching a new travel website to go with Sunday's redesigned Travel section, newsroom staffers were encouraged Friday to contribute their own experiences so the cupboard doesn't look...
K-Mozart at FM 105.1, the area's last commercial classical music station — and one of the few left in the U.S. — switches Monday morning to country music. It's actually...
The L.A. Times will send all of its staff bloggers, current and aspiring, to blogging "boot camp" on March 12. The idea, according to a memo from Innovation Editor Russ...
It's in New York, not here, but I thought you'd want to see this video....
I had to skip Radar's Wednesday night "launch" party (does a third time around really count as a launch?) at The Standard for a media panel discussion at UCLA, but...
Dave Kuta, publisher and president of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, was moved across the Los Angeles News Group seating chart and just announced down in Long Beach as publisher...
David Zahniser in the LA Weekly ferrets out the story behind 4903 La Calandria Way, an El Sereno home where City Councilman Jose Huizar may or may not have lived...
We all now know more than we ever wanted to about the love lives of the UCLA psychiatric residents. But a jury gets the final say. That and more inside....
Excerpt at the Rip Post: Co-Anchor Michaela “Free Home Makeover” Pereira: This girl clearly needs help. I mean, she is not exactly de-icing the cool bus! Kriski: De-ice the cool...
Watching this YouTube video of new Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department hires reporting for training last July — assuming it's the real thing — made me wonder about claims that...
In emails flitting around Hollywood today, Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez take offense at a passage in yesterday's Times by Susan King. It ran in The Envelope and read: "Demander...
Dennis Johnson grew up in Compton and played basketball for Pepperdine before winning NBA championships with the Seattle Supersonics and Boston Celtics. He collapsed today at a practice in Austin,...
In the new issue of Los Angeles magazine, media columnist RJ Smith offers several suggestions to help the Times survive — "for rescuing a newspaper that deserves to be." He...
Joel Sappell, who gave up the title of Assistant Managing Editor for Interactive at the LAT in last month's shakeup, gets a new gig as Special Projects Editor. The memo...
The New York Times has created the new position of Deputy Culture Editor for Online Journalism and moved Ariel Kaminer over from Arts and Leisure to fill it. Memo from...
Terry Teachout, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal and music critic for Commentary, hits cleanup in the lineup at one of my favorite multi-blog cultural websites, ArtsJournal. Somehow he...
Newsroom sources at the Times expect the Sunday Book Review will be folded into a new hybrid opinion section and delivered in Saturday papers. The new section that some staffers...
Mark Lacter wonders if too much attention is paid to the 29,000 people who live downtown, in a city of four million. It's one of the smaller communities in Los...
Drugs, sex and a couple of authors sell their books — you might as well click and come on in for the Morning Buzz....
Amid resurgent newsroom talk of personnel cuts by the end of the quarter — that's March 31 for you civilians — the Times this afternoon undermined staff morale a bit...
Hollywood location meister Harry Medved, co-author of Hollywood Escapes, has a piece on MSN about the locations used in this year's Oscar-nominated movies. If the beach in Letters from Iwo...
When former Assemblywoman Cindy Montañez made like the good Democrat and dropped out of the race for City Council to make way for State Sen. Richard Alarcon, you just knew...
Mickey Meyer, the goalie for the USC ice hockey team, was ejected from a weekend game against Brigham Young — and ticketed for lewdness by the North Logan, Utah police...
Come on in. Just click the link below....
LA Observed's Jacob Soboroff took his video camera behind the scenes at today's crowded Barack Obama rally at Rancho Cienega Rec Center and chatted with Councilwoman Janice Hahn, Channel 4...
Meredith Artley, named earlier this month to be executive editor of the Times website, tells the Online Journalism Review that her focus will be on strengthening the local impact of...
Downtown's residential population has grown 21% in two years, is mostly single and has a median age of 31, according to a study by the local Business Improvement District....
A memo just sent around the New York Times newsroom by executive editor Bill Keller announces a new political editor and greater attention to covering the 2008 campaign on the...
Former Orange County Superior Court judge Ronald C. Kline — who pleaded guilty to possessing child porn — heard that he was headed to federal prison for 27 months and...
Designer and blogger Marc Grobman (the guy campaigning to de-uglify Donald Sterling's Times ads) became so curious about the crows invading his Santa Monica neighborhood each winter that he went...
Xeni Jardin reported on NPR's Day to Day about one of my favorite unofficial Wilshire Boulevard landmarks. One Wilshire, once a prestigious office tower, was converted long ago into a...
The U.K.'s Guardian has a music blogger who asks readers to suggest songs based on themes. This week it is tunes about California. I haven't counted, but many dozens have...
Pasadena keeps the Rose Parade route open to the public pretty much until show time. Ditto for the Los Angeles Marathon. But for some reason, busy Hollywood Boulevard has to...
A 20-foot-long sign criticizing President Bush was purloined from a building facade on Abbot Kinney Sunday night. Venice Paper reports that "to steal the sign, thieves broke into [a] private...
Sen. Barack Obama will separate Hollywood types from a cool million tonight at the Beverly Hilton. That and the rest of the Morning Buzz after the jump. Programming note: Catch...
Nemesis of Evil posted tonight at 9:01 pm that the bomb squad was outside the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at Weyburn and Gayley in Westwood Village. Then came the...
The press release for this evening's Occidental College rally for former student Barack Obama uses the familiar nickname Oxy just like the locals do — but spells it Occi as...
Schools, government offices, post offices and most banks and libraries will be closed for the President's Day holiday. If you live in Los Angeles, regular Monday trash pickup should occur....
Here are some of last week's best and most talked-about posts. If you prefer the unabridged version, here's the archive of the entire week here on News & Chatter. L.A's...
Jerry Roberts, the top editor who resigned rather than doctor the news for Wendy McCaw at the News-Press, is asking for donations to help fight a $25 million arbitration claim...
Today's Jewish Journal of Greater L.A. surveys the trend toward high-end kosher restaurant kitchens. Shilo's and The Prime Grill get the prime attention, with a nod to Pat's, longtime anchor...
Portfolio is calling Claire Hoffman a contributing editor, starting immediately. Hoffman's jump from the L.A. Times was reported last month, shortly after she danced briefly with the New York Times....
Not so elitist after all? The most searched-for keywords on New York Times.com the past seven days are Anna Nicole Smith. Click for the rest of the Morning Buzz....
When the March issue of Los Angeles hits in a few days, media columnist RJ Smith will offer his suggestions for saving the Times after talking with publisher David Hiller...
CityBeat columnist Andrew Gumbel enjoys spending time at The Talking Stick on Ocean Park Boulevard in lower Santa Monica. It's "pretty close to the perfect coffee shop, not only a...
Dean Baquet, erstwhile editor of the Los Angeles Times, talks about his future at the NYT Washington bureau and the state of newspapering in a Q-and-A at the Poynter Online...
I'm a week late in noticing Hugh Hewitt's blog essay, but the talk show host and author offers a bunch of tips under the provocative rubric of "the Los Angeles...
David Geffen can keep his deck in Malibu. That and more inside......
Fishbowl LA co-editor Mayrav Saar has gotten a bit too graphic for some readers of her Orange County Register column — again. On Tuesday she wrote about bringing a photo...
Jeffrey Harrison, 50, lives in his RV near Venice and makes by his admission a "meager living." In the '80s he earned $400 a month as a much-requested sperm donor...
National editor Suzanne Daley wishes the former L.A. staff correspondent well in a newsroom note posted at Romenesko: Charlie was part of the team that won the Pulitzer for the...
Throttle Jockey columnist Susan Carpenter walks, talks and rides on her video reviews on the Times website. Today's installment covers three-wheeled bikes and scooters and shows Carpenter whizzing around downtown,...
TJ Sullivan catches it over Century City last evening. Full size here. Photo: TJ Sullivan...
Step inside for a bit of morning news......
For the first time in 57 years a Los Angeles jury has handed down a death sentence in a federal case, tomorrow's Daily Journal reports. Two Russian mafia associates from...
Hey, thanks. More than 75 caption ideas came in for the photo of Mayor Villaraigosa and Paris Hilton visiting at a Grammy party. Some cutlines were wittier than others, some...
An internal memo at the Santa Barbara News-Press lays out owner Wendy McCaw's version that everything that has happened to her paper — the mass resignations, complaints about her ethics,...
The City Council vote was 13-0 for the new high-rise and shopping district to surround Disney Hall. "This is a historic day for Los Angeles," said Eli Broad, who has...
Jill Leovy's LAT homicide blog now takes note of 99 killings across Los Angeles county so far this year, about three a day. That's lower than last year's daily average,...
Vernon Loeb, wooed off the CIA beat at the Washington Post in 2004 to run the Times' investigative team in Metro, is returning to the Philadelphia Inquirer as Metro Editor....
Marc Germain and KABC could not come to agreement on a new deal so the popular night-time talk show host has left. LA Radio.com says the network wants KABC to...
Jonah at la.foodblogging got invited to the private club on a corner of the Caltech campus in Pasadena. The first formal dinner at The Athenaeum, in February 1931, celebrated the...
Still time to email your captions for the best Grammys picture ever — I'll post the cleaner ones this afternoon and read the best of the lot toward the end...
This YouTube video from Charlotte, North Carolina shows that we aren't alone in having regulars who amuse at city council sessions and other government meetings. He looks meek, but give...
On the same day that the editor was given a better parking spot in the Times garage, Hoy was forced to run a "to our readers" editorial sheepishly doing the...
Mayor Villaraigosa and his good pal Paris Hilton at Universal Music's Grammy party last night. Oh what are they talking about? Email your caption suggestions. See it BIG at Hollywoodrag.com....
Richard Kline, head of the Los Angeles Fleishman-Hillard PR office who had to clean up the mess from the City Hall billing scandals, is leaving himself. The Holmes Report says...
Still salmon in color, but tabloid in form and with shorter thumb suckers. Here's a photo at Eat the Press....
On the same day that Tribune announced it is selling the New York edition of Hoy to La Opinión's parent, the Los Angeles version of the Spanish-language newspaper gets a...
First there was "Jack Dunphy" opining anonymously at the National Review Online. Now there is Sgt. Sunil Dutta writing in the latest issue of The Nation, under his real name,...
Thomas Mauk, the man who wouldn't be L.A. County CAO, wasn't the first to reject a deal with the Board of Supervisors. Dr. Joshua Perper, the Broward County (Fla.) Medical...
Welcome to the new week. Click to venture inside......
Twelve of the best from last week, in case you weren't paying attention. If you prefer to scan the entire week of News & Chatter, here's every headline. Details of...
Five Grammys for the trio that Bushies love to hate, including best album, record and song of the year. Online coverage: The Envelope, Red Carpet blog, Variety. Photo: Anne Cusack...
Times columnist Steve Lopez has issues with expending tax dollars and perhaps the last chance to make a citywide community of downtown on Eli Broad's vision to create essentially a...
Forest Whitaker picked up the British Academy of Film and Television Arts' best actor award tonight at the Royal Opera House in London, for portraying Idi Amin in Last King...
The Times plans to launch its long-discussed Image section on March 18, the first day of Los Angeles Fashion Week, WWD.com says. Rose Apodaca, the former West Coast bureau chief...
Staffing issues blamed, Brian Humphrey posts: "We hope to return to regular postings of significant Los Angeles Fire Department incidents, events and issues soon."...
Is this city sick or what? Let the Times lede tell the story: A paraplegic man wearing a soiled hospital gown and a broken colostomy bag was found crawling in...
Results are in for The History Channel’s City of the Future design competition. On-line voters selected Chicago the winner. New York came in second. The Eric Owen Moss design for...
Jacob Soboroff took his LA Observed video camera to the Clippers' morning shoot around at Madison Square Garden and chatted with New York native Elton Brand about coming home —...
Politics in the small cities spread across Los Angeles County are often more colorful and vicious than those downtown. (Witness today's LA Weekly piece on threats against a citizen in...
Her lawyer says that the TV celebrity and former model has died. AP moved a news alert, and TMZ reports that she was found collapsed in her room at the...
Davan Maharaj was being recruited hard by the New York Times, according to reliable newsroom gossip. Instead, he will stay at the L.A. Times as the top editor in the...
Ganging up on gangs — a bunch of politics. After the jump......
Aaron Gross, the deputy chief of staff to Councilman Bill Rosendahl, is moving down to the third floor to be the City Council liaison for Mayor Villaraigosa. Taking Gross's place...
TV and magazine writer Michael Sonnenschein, the erstwhile Fishbowl LA blogger for the Mediabistro empire, is getting back in the game. He is sitting in as guest editor of the...
While debating the war at National Review Online two years ago, Times op-ed columnist from the right Jonah Goldberg offered the following wager: Let's make a bet. I predict that...
Variety buries the lede: the trade's paywall has been dropped, so now "every story, article or item is available for free." Well not quite everything. The news is tucked onto...
Take a look after the jump at a big, thick, juicy side of news....
Ryan Knoll and Scott Schmidt, the Republican political and communication consultants behind RSC Partners, are the new landlords at LA Voice.org. Creator Mack Reed made it official tonight that he...
Police in riot gear arrived in force tonight at the Ramona Gardens housing project where tensions are running high over the death in custody of Mauricio Cornejo, a 31-year-old parolee...
Convicted and sentenced former Fleishman-Hillard exec Doug Dowie has optioned a screenplay to Jonathan Sanger, a producer on The Elephant Man, The Producers and Vanilla Sky. "It's kind of an...
For a couple of weeks the Times has been promoting one of its staff blogs more prominently than the others — with a daily box on the California section cover...
While the English-language media has largely given Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a pass for his latest musings on ethnicity, Daniel Hernandez blogs that today's La Opinión went with a headline that...
City News Service has moved an advisory saying the Board of Supervisors rehired David Janssen, luring him out of retirement with a promise of new powers....
Daniel Olivas, the author of Devil Talk, writes at California Authors.com about trying to make the transition to novelist while also finding time to be a father, husband and full-time...
The now-18-year-old girl got probation and community service like the others, but did not receive sixty days of house arrest. She told the judge she was "truly saddened" by the...
From the LAT: L.A. Fashion Week: An article and headline in Saturday's Calendar section about making L.A. Fashion Week a more exclusive event incorrectly quoted Fern Mallis, vice president of...
Still only moderate by the way the National Drought Mitigation Center classifies things, but that darker brown shade to the east and south of us marks "severe drought." Yellow on...
Dawn Hobbs, Barney McManigal, and Rob Kuznia had participated in a Friday rally in which current and former employees hung a banner from a bridge over U.S. 101 saying "Cancel...
Meredith Artley, digital development director of the International Herald Tribune, is moving from Paris to be executive editor of latimes.com. She began at the New York Times website. Memo after...
Sasha Stone has run OscarWatch.com for seven years, but suddenly the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has hit her with a cease-and-desist letter over the name. She posts...
Good day of items, including a new concept at county jail — those who are sentenced to 90 days have to stay more than a few hours. Click below for...
Covering murder and mayhem in Los Angeles for the Times, Jill Leovy has been driven crazy knowing that for every homicide that captures the media eye there are others that...
TMZ has the 911 tape from Ryan O'Neal's home the night police came and arrested him for firing a shot during a ruckus with his son. O'Neal says his son...
The TypePad service is "currently unavailable," knocking thousands of blogs — including those at the LAT — off-line for the moment. Update: I noticed them back at 2 pm....
Judge Gibson Lee gave four more girls convicted in the Halloween attack the same sentence as those juveniles he sent home last week: probation, 60 days house arrest, 250 hours...
Premiere magazine has been put up for sale by Hachette Filipacchi Media, Keith J. Kelly reports in the New York Post. No details, but Kelly says it's a sign of...
Eli Broad's bid to save the Los Angeles Times from Tribune's culture of declining ambitions and his quest to create a new center of civic life downtown get big play...
Plenty of blogosphere reports from 4th and Broadway, where a fire that erupted about 5 am destroyed the shops on the northeast corner. Kind of hard to sleep when your...
Click below to come in and see what we have for today. Remember, all of the recent Morning Buzz postings can be found here....
If you need to catch up or just feel a hankering to review, these are some bests from the past week at LA Observed: Business, labor and the City Council...
The New York Times received a partial transcript of O.J. Simpson's never-televised Fox interview with Judith Regan describing how the 1994 murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman might have...
This will be the week that Jeff Zucker ascends to the top job at NBC Universal, bumping aside longtime CEO Bob Wright, the LAT reports citing inside sources. Times/LA...
Don Barrett is giving test drives at his subscriber-only LA Radio.com, the best website around about local radio....
Artist Jeff Koons and LACMA director Michael Govan on Thursday night unveiled their vision of the museum's new, more welcoming entryway off Wilshire — and the centerpiece is big and...
Four of the African American juveniles found guilty of attacking three white women in a Halloween mob were sentenced to probation and house arrest for 60 days. They are the...
A crane that fell onto the northbound San Diego Freeway just before the Ventura Freeway in Sherman Oaks about 1 pm has the area a big Friday afternoon mess. The...
Considering that Controller Laura Chick billed Karen Sisson last night (and in a Jan. 16 press release) as the new City Administrative Officer, this announcement has a tinge of anti-climax...
Former USC gene therapy scientist William French Anderson, one of the world's most acclaimed scientists, received 14 years in prison today for sexually abusing the young daughter of his number...
Most entertaining blog promo for a friend's project that I've seen in awhile — and nicely retro too — from Mickey Kaus at Slate: In 1969, as a senior in...
Guess they mean it. Training classes begin Feb. 12 for Los Angeles Times editors to learn how to post to the website — and in some cases to just learn...
Ahmed Rashed, a third-year resident at King/Drew Medical Center, pleaded guilty to stealing a hand from a cadaver at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark. That's not the...
Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald got some attention in today's Washington Post, but not the kind she orders her press aides to go get. The paper's Lois Romano says that Millender-McDonald, whose...
One by one, the gigantic USC Trojans linemen would knock on doors at Trade Tech and ask for Señora Ross. She was the easy-grading Spanish teacher who would help them...
Apparently responding to blogger Luke Ford's allegation that the Villaraigosas had split up, the mayor told the Times last night that the entire family — himself, Corina and the two...
The Los Angeles River Revitalization Master Plan will be detailed today — a $2 billion program to de-concrete much of the river and transform it from a giant flood control...
If you are waiting for some big rain to come along and deep-soak your trees, don't. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just cancelled its forecast of a majorly wet...
"Mozza's Pizza is NOT Pizza!," a new Chowhound poster shouts. "Mozza serves bread." With that, the discussion of Nancy Silverton's hot new place on Highland and Melrose was off and...
The City Elf blog went out to Controller Laura Chick's panel on "Women at the Top" last night and posted a report. On the panel were some of the highest-powered...
We told you yesterday afternoon that Rebecca Schoenkopf became the third exit in a week from the OC Weekly, and said her farewell "Commie Girl" column would run today. Well...
Tu Ciudad's first almost-monthly issue (there will now be ten a year) leads with a piece on the offspring of mixed marriages "transforming what it means to be Latino in...
Lawyers for Phil Anschutz say the stinker of a movie lost $105 million because Clive Cussler lied about his book sales. Cussler says that's, uh, ridiculous. All I want to...
Aaron Curtiss, the tech editor in the Business section, gets the title of Deputy Innovation Editor at the Times. He was on the Spring Street Project, has experience on the...
Using low-experience freelancers paid by the item. Job posting: Tribune Interactive is looking for a limited number of experienced freelance writers in Los Angeles to generate listings for a new...
In San Francisco, that is. Mayor Gavin Newsom's former deputy chief of staff and current re-election campaign manager, Alex Tourk, resigned Wednesday after confronting his boss about an affair Newsom...
The Texas-based political humorist and syndicated columnist died Wednesday in Austin after a long and sometimes public battle with cancer. Ivins' death was announced by the Texas Observer, where she...
Whoa, Mayor Villaraigosa raised a lot of unrestricted cash for his schools crusade. That plus Jonathan Gold, the rising cost of parking and a city hall for East L.A. All...
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.
