Weekly archive
February 24 - March 1, 2008
Friday, Feb. 29
The former California insurance commissioner, who resigned in 2000 amid corruption allegations, is now a deputy sheriff in Florida. And he just shot somebody: a domestic violence suspect with a...
I'm told by a staffer that the positions of publisher and managing editor were eliminated today at the Long Beach Press-Telegram, along with the copy desk and most of the...
* Rewritten at 2:40 pm with better info Brent Hopkins, the Daily News reporter who has been keeping everybody informed about pending cuts via his blog, took the buyout and...
Doug Davis broke in as the Downtown News editorial cartoonist by lampooning the insular concerns of downtown bloggers. He ruffled feathers, but "when I saw that reaction, I said, 'I...
Yesterday: New Line is historyDN alumni speak upSave Beyond Baroque? Naked girl on the Promenade Past 24 hours in brief City Hall sacred cows Everybody is talking about them with...
Thursday, Feb. 28
Staffers who contacted me say nine positions at the Singleton-owned Daily Breeze were eliminated today, including four reporters, a web editor and a newsroom receptionist who were laid off. More...
Tonight on The Paper Trail, the blog by Daily News reporter and union steward Brent Hopkins: In the morning and again in the afternoon, Kerry [Cavanaugh] and I met with...
Novelist Maxine Hong Kingston wins this year's Robert Kirsch Award. Nominees in the nine categories, announced tonight in New York, include Ron Brownstein, Naomi Klein and Tim Weiner. Winners are...
I've been hearing today from graduates of the Daily News who are concerned about the scythe being taken to what remains of the paper where they worked. (Some also are...
Kazuyoshi Miura never should have posted on his blog that he would be visiting the Pacific island of Saipan. That's where U.S. immigation officers grabbed him. They were tipped by...
How often can the people who actually have to run the L.A. Times cover for Sam Zell's...Zelliousnness? This time, Publisher David Hiller sent the Washington bureau a valentine assuring the...
Writer and blogger Tom Teicholz was on the Santa Monica Promenade this afternoon when he spotted a woman strolling naked and preening for a video camera and still photographer. "This...
Metromix profiles women who are rising through the club scene. Shereen Arazm, a petite, bubbly brunette, could easily be mistaken for a Hollywood clubber at trendy venues such as Central,...
Eight shot at South L.A. bus stop If you missed it:Tears flow at Daily NewsBass to become SpeakerScript Project news Past 24 hours in brief Five children and three adults...
The eminent domain measure on the June ballot would also phase out some rent control laws, potentially resulting in a $15 million windfall for Sam Zell's Equity Lifestyle Properties Inc.,...
Interesting lineup at noon today at the Loyola Law School Entertainment & Sports Law Society symposium. Topic: "The Paparazzi, Celebrity Bloggers...and the Lawyers Who Represent Them." Speakers: Michael Amir, legal...
Wednesday, Feb. 27
Everyone I talked with agrees. And the actual layoffs won't be announced until Friday. Editor Ron Kaye gathered everybody around this afternoon, said he was sorry, and confirmed that 22...
Not too many musicians follow this particular career arc. Buddy Miles, who died yesterday in Austin of congestive heart failure, began as a session player with the Delfonics and on...
Los Angeles assemblywoman Karen Bass has the votes to become Speaker, the Sacramento Bee reports. Fiona Ma, the San Francisco Democrat who tried to get the job, conceded that Bass...
Pages 4-6 of Right of Way have been posted at the LA Observed Script Project. In the emerging L.A. noir tale, Mayor Russell Napolitano has left the abandoned tunnel mouth...
David Gershwin has been chief of staff to Council President Eric Garcetti since 2005. He is leaving to be a vice president of Cerrell and Associates. Ana Guerrero moves up...
The newly completed Mid-Wilshire Signal Sync System, bounded by Hollywood Boulevard, Western Avenue, La Cienega Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard, synchronizes a total of 256 traffic signals and spans 12-square miles...
OK, more loot than treasure. But when cops followed the map scrawled by burglar Roberto Caveda and dug where the X was marked near White Oak Avenue and the Reagan...
Michael Tackett, who runs the Chicago Tribune's side of the big bureau in Washington that the LAT dominates, tells Editor & Publisher that his people are ready to work with...
Just a quickie today. Lopez can't get interview with the mayor Times columnist Steve Lopez says the Villaraigosa press office won't even return his calls. By the way, on "Charlie...
Chicago Tribune media columnist Phil Rosenthal covers yesterday's Sam Zell attack on the LAT Washington bureau, and it goes beyond the psychic bloodbath I picked up. Zell wants the Times...
Tuesday, Feb. 26
Amid signs that the severest cuts yet are coming this week at the Daily News, tonight's latest word to the newsroom staff from union steward Brent Hopkins: The rollercoaster continues....
Would you believe 93.6 percent of 4,060 votes cast by Writers Guild of America members in Los Angeles and New York OK'd the new contracts, which runs through May 1,...
Staff editor-blogger Don Frederick plays it a little coy but says the latest Times/Bloomberg national poll, due to post about 4 pm our time, will show "Obama has erased the...
Murray was in the Assembly for four terms, ran a slate mailer in South L.A. with Mervyn Dymally and spawned ex-legislator Kevin Murray. Willard's name figures prominently today in a...
The Forward interviews Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and calls him "something of an honorary member of the tribe." “He’s basically treated as if he’s a Sephardic Jew,” said Jack Weiss, an...
I'm told Sam Zell just informed the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau that there's way too many people there and they should start acting like a wire service for the...
Nick Schou* thinks so and posts some intriguing evidence from a Singleton paper up north — how about a joint Media News Staff byline that includes a Register reporter's name?...
Quarter of younger viewers dropped Oscars this year The total of 32 million national viewers did not include a whole bunch of 18-to-49s who watched last year. In that key...
Monday, Feb. 25
Charlie Munger, who owns and wants to redevelop the Brentwood block that includes Dutton's Books, promised to pay all of the bookstore's debts — and forgive the rent — in...
Channel 4's Ana Garcia began an undercover investigation tonight on veterinarians who take advantage of distraught pet owners to order unnecessary procedures and "hundreds of dollars in unnecessary expenses." Kind...
Last week Joshua Micah Marshall wins journalism's George Polk Award. This week the New York Times feigns surprise that he doesn't blog in his pajamas and has an office. To...
Poet T.S. Kerrigan lives in Burbank, so not precisely L.A.. And OK, it was Friday, not today. But some verse of his was the selection of the day at Best...
Even poli sci professors, columnists and all-around political pundits are doing it. Raphael Sonenshein, who's all three and the author of books about Los Angeles politics, is writing the Jews...
Media gossip blogger Maggie Shnayerson was let go at Gawker after less than six months. It's all about the ratings, per this item at Radar: An e-mail from Gawker Media...
A lot of sites and media are reacting to the sad news — first posted here at LA Observed early this morning — that Dutton's Books in Brentwood will be...
Jacket Copy, the blog written by the staff of the L.A. Times' books section, today added a new voice: Carolyn Kellogg's. She is the former editor of LAist who left...
Mickey Cohen was L.A.'s best-known and most media-savvy mobster in 1958, the year that USC's library focuses on in an exhibit of photos from the old Los Angeles Examiner. USC...
The words "speculative sports fiction" caught my eye and made me go: huh? But that's the genre that covers the anthology edited by Tujunga author Karen A. Romanko. She emails...
Initial numbers from Nielsen look like a 20% drop in TV viewers from last year. About two-thirds of the people watching TV during the show watched something else in Nielsen's...
In another of those generic magazine roundups claiming to know the best of something, but really an exercise in geographic diversity, Details includes Square One Dining on its top ten...
High waves are pounding the coast and rip currents are making the sea more treacherous than usual. Piers at Manhattan Beach and Seal Beach were closed yesterday due to the...
Dutton's Brentwood Books will close April 30 after a tough year. A clientele like Dustin Hoffman, Diane Keaton and half the authors in the city isn't enough to keep a...
Another Oscars comes and goes Deserved new reputations for Marion Cotillard, French winner of the best actress statue for channeling Edith Piaf, and Gary Busey, who freaked out Ryan Seacrest...
Sunday, Feb. 24
The winter fruit of the gods has been fingered, crushed and tossed aside at my Westside supermarkets. But I found some yesterday in Little Tokyo, at the Mitsuwa Marketplace, that...
Heather and Jessica got a gig live-blogging the red carpet for New York magazine's website, starting at 3 pm Hollywood and Highland time....
Councilman Herb Wesson entertained a lunch crowd at the Current Affairs Forum the other day with some fairly open comments about his political decision making. He didn't run for the...
With seven residential projects containing 900 units already under construction — and another two dozen projects approved — the most upscale shopping street across the Valley is evolving. But the...
