New year's notes

Happy 2008! Clearing the decks from 2007:

Times-basher Patterico is out with his fifth annual Dog Trainer Year in Review, "documenting omissions, distortions, and misrepresentations" by the Los Angeles Times.
Editor Jim Newton's friendly conversation with Kenneth Starr in the LAT Opinion section ruffles feathers at the blog Crooks and Liars.
Amy Wilentz knew Benazir Bhutto in college and spoke to her in Dubai shortly before Bhutto returned to Pakistan from exile. LAT Op-Ed
Superior Court Judge Dzintra I. Janavs, 71, will retire from the bench March 4. She's the judge who was defeated at the polls by a weak challenger, perhaps due to her name, then reappointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Met-News
In his L.A. Sniper column in CityBeat, Alan Mittelstaedt rails that subway progress is moving too slow and says Times City Hall reporter Steve Hymon caved in to the mayor.
New DWP general manager H. David Nahai talks the environment with Judith Lewis in the LA Weekly: "I wouldn�t have given up a highly lucrative business and all my other involvements if I didn�t think I could do it."
Times managing editor John Arthur distributes a send-off memo on veteran writer Rick Meyer, headed (as we told you) to Los Angeles magazine. Guess Editor Jim O'Shea didn't care, or maybe he didn't know Meyer was leaving.
Manuel Mollinedo, director of the San Francisco Zoo where a tiger escaped and killed a zoo patron, was head of the Los Angeles Zoo in 2001 when that Komodo dragon bit Phil Bronstein, the San Francisco newspaper editor who used to be married to Sharon Stone. Opinion LA
A close encounter with sea turtles at San Pedro's Cabrillo Beach.
Hope Frazier, former executive editor of the San Gabriel Newspaper Group, died at age 60 of colon cancer. "She saw the local newspapers in global terms, seeing connections between world and national events and the daily life experiences of local readers," said current editor Steve O'Sullivan. Star-News
Daily News sports columnist and blogger Tom Hoffarth was honored by Sports Illustrated as one of three "mainstream sports media bloggers of the year." Says SI: "More and more newspapers will eventually follow the path forged by [Newsday's Neil] Best and Hoffarth."
Three of the Golden Mikes that KCET recently won were for pieces on Life and Times, the series just cancelled by the station.
The L.A. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists elected a new board and officers. Retired CBS News correspondent David Dow is the chapter's new president.

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