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Bob Hertzberg is also sniffing around a challenge to Mayor Villaraigosa — or a run for city attorney against Jack Weiss — the former Villaraigosa friend and foe tells...
LA Observed archive
for May 2008
If you don't find what you want here, check another month or search below.
Book launch 2.0, the video: LA Observed channel on YouTube NOTES: Marketplace ran a nice piece on Skylight Books expanding, featuring owner Kerry Slattery...BEA party roundup from the New York...
I'm happy for Times Publisher David Hiller that on June 5 he'll live his dream and sing the national anthem before the Cubs game at Dodger Stadium. (Back in February...
Yesterday it was a freelancer who argues that District Attorney Steve Cooley has gone easy on Jessica's Law. Today it's Doug Dowie, who worked with Kaye at the Daily News...
Lindsey cleared of influencing LAX contract Remember that ruckus a month ago over whether airports chief Gina Marie Lindsey intervened to steer a contract toward DMJM? Controller Laura Chick looked...
They run away from the Spurs in the fourth period and win 100-92. Kobe scores 39. Next up: the Celtics or Pistons starting June 5....
Sallie Hofmeister is the new business editor at the Los Angeles Times, reporting to the managing editor. LA Biz Observed Scary forecast about the financial future of newspapers, also...
Shopping-mall mogul and former Jim Hahn commissioner Rick Caruso says he's considering a challenge to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa next year. He tells the Times' Tina Daunt, for her Cause Celebre...
Andrew Malcolm, the former New York Times correspondent and Laura Bush press secretary (as well as part-time Karl Rove assistant), talks about his conversion from L.A. Times editorial writer to...
Let's see, what's new: Cornel West, the author and Princeton professor of religion, will address campaign workers at the Ridley-Thomas headquarters at 6:30 pm. Both candidates replied to LAT questions...
California Hall of Famers Gov. Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver announce the latest honorees: Dave Brubeck, Quincy Jones, Alice Waters, Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, Theodor Geisel, Linus Pauling, Robert Graham, Jack...
"Moguls, Millionaires & Movie Stars: Hollywood Between the Wars, 1920-1940" will be at the Huntington Library in San Marino on Friday and Saturday. Panels will explore the rise of the...
Christopher Page killed himself three weeks after losing his job as a theater critic and editor at the at the East Valley Tribune in Phoenix. He was 29. Sasha Anawalt,...
Los Angeles this month has Mark Lacter's profile of Gina Marie Lindsey, the head of Los Angeles World Airports. Another LA Observed contributor, David Davis, has a piece on U.S....
Laura Lane tells USA Today that she pulled her Blogspot site offline on her own. "I saw it was getting a lot of crazy attention," she says of her post...
A federal judge has denied the National Labor Relations Board's request for an injunction ordering Wendy McCaw to immediately reinstate eight staffers fired during the big purge at her News-Mess....
Jon Thurber, the LAT's obits editor, gets some ink on Claire Hoffman's religion blog for Newsweek and the Washington Post. To me, one of the most desirable jobs in newspapers...
Megan McArdle blogs at The Atlantic's website about life in Dean Singleton's declining SoCal empire. (Update: It's her blog, but ex-Singletonian Conor Friedersdorf wrote the post.) As a former employee...
Working through the pile on my desk in advance of this week's BookExpo America at the Downtown Convention Center. Sascha Rothchild's piece on ending her starter marriage ran in the...
After Tuesday's Los Angeles Times endorsement of Bernard Parks, a tip came in claiming that the members of the Times editorial board actually preferred Mark Ridley-Thomas in the race for...
Villaraigosa heading to Israel The mayor's third out-of-country trip is scheduled for June 11-18. City Hall types tagging along include Councilmen Jack Weiss and Dennis Zine, DWP CEO David Nahai...
Andy Fiscella owns industry bars the Dime and Winston's, recently added Crown Bar, and is known for banning Britney Spears at one of his clubs. In today's Hollywood, that all...
Nikki Finke points a chiding finger at Defamer, Variety columnist Anne Thompson, LAT columnist Patrick Goldstein and Slate's Kim Masters for posting an erroneous item that she says began...
Veronica Villafañe at Media Moves reports that Azteca América Channel 54 is dropping its Los Angeles production and will host the Spanish-language newscasts in Mexico. Layoffs of 29 staffers came...
Spurs don't get the foul call in the final second — even though Derek Fisher definitely made contact with Brent Barry's head — and the Lakers will come home to...
New week, new pearls of official innovation-ness from Tribune's chief research scientist. The graduate of the FM radio school of higher thinking sent out 1,238 words this time. Before I...
Hmm, ESPN.com blogger Laura Lane's blog item where she calls the wife of Kobe Bryant insane — and talks about rumors of an affair — has gone off the air....
A huge chunk of the book world will be here this week for BookExpo America, which opens Thursday at the Convention Center and runs through the weekend. BEA, last here...
Bad crash on Crenshaw Five people, including two children, died when a red-light runner sped through the intersection of Crenshaw and Florence. Two of the victims burned to death inside...
Deanne Stillman, author of the forthcoming "Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West," posts a Memorial Day paean to Buffalo Bill Cody and one of his...
Cancer claimed Oscar winning director, producer and actor Sydney Pollack Monday at his home in Pacific Palisades. Pollack won his Academy Awards for best director and best picture for "Out...
The L.A. Times did an analysis and found the Californians who have died so far in the two wars included 208 who were married and 160 who were parents, leaving...
Laura Lane covers the Lakers for ESPN.com. She wrote a mildly invasive item about that weird purple tutu thing that Vanessa Bryant wore on the floor the night Kobe picked...
Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria packed them in at the Central Library's ALOUD series last week and his new book, "The Post-American World," is getting mostly good reviews. His argument that...
Alan Mittelstaedt sent his freelancers the news LAO reported yesterday — that he was canned by CityBeat. Under the subject line "Fired--again!," it contains the details that he got the...
They were pretty happy out at JPL today after scientists guided the Phoenix lander to a spot near the north pole of Mars, just one degree of tilt off perfect...
Spurs win 103-84, making the series 2-1 in favor of the Lakers. If you're San Antonio, you have to think, hmm, twice we've built up 20-point leads on these guys....
Lucia Navarro is out as anchor at Telemundo-52 after seven years, according to Media Moves, a blog that charts the movement of Latinos in the media business. Navarro was on...
Alan Mittelstaedt, CityBeat's news editor and number two, was let go on Friday by Acting Editor Rebecca Schoenkopf. Something about the money being used for columns and freelancers. That's one...
Old interview with SportItalia, but I know of at least one babe who fell in lust watching Kobe be so relaxed here in Italian. For that matter, Bryant was pretty...
Daily News columnist Steve Dilbeck leads the paper today with a column about learning that his 14-year-old son had Type 1 diabetes. We took him out of school and when...
David Willis' story was about Los Angeles commuters switching to the tube, if we can call it that, because of the high price of gas. This week I did something...
Business and tribal interests located far from the open Inglewood-Compton area Senate district have spent more than $715,000 in independent expenditures to elect ex-assemblyman Rod Wright over rival Mervyn Dymally,...
Those were tornadoes yesterday in Riverside County Blamed for flipping freight cars off the tracks. LAT Most Californians oppose gay marriage They favor the constitutional amendment that would outlaw same-sex...
Sorry, LA Observed was down for several hours last night and today. Little domain registration issue... If you can see this, all is well. Thanks for everybody's concern. And check...
Linda Douglass, the former television reporter here who is now a contributor editor at National Journal, will join the Barack Obama presidential campaign as a senior strategist and "senior campaign...
At yesterday's unveiling of a plaque for UCLA legend John Wooden at the Coliseum, Vin Scully told a fun story about how Wooden was one of the first people he...
Jennifer Lerew, an animation artist who blogs at The Blackwing Diaries, has posted some photos of women who worked during the Depression at Disney's old Hyperion studio. in what I...
LAX rated average — and that's good It's the highest score ever earned by LAX in the J.D. Power and Associates airport satisfaction study. Breeze Police commission wonders about union...
Lots of people have gotten caught in the foreclosure vise — but Rep. Laura Richardson? The Democrat won last year's special election in the Long Beach-Compton area, loaning her campaign...
The former chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America — and target of the Napster generation's ire — was named political director and Washington editor-at-large for the...
I'm told that staffers at Channel 5 were gathered together for two all-hands meetings yesterday and told that ND Rich Goldner would exit today for that new job in San...
Officials at the California Science Center in Exposition Park are reportedly miffed about an email from a top doctor at the UCLA Medical School, putting down the museum's skills as...
Mayor promotes Janelle Erickson She becomes deputy mayor for communications (from senior press secretary) and Sean Clegg leaves the Villaraigosa Administration to become a partner at Brunswick Group LLC in...
I had no idea you could do this. Author Aimee Bender reserved the Mount Wilson Observatory's historic 60-inch telescope for the evening and took along two dozen writer friends and...
Steve Harvey debunked some of author James Frey's so-called quirky facts about Los Angeles in his Only in L.A. column on Saturday. Author Frances Dinkelspiel picks up the cause and...
LiveNewsCameras.com offers a wall of live news video from dozens of U.S. cities, and a "moderator" who monitors the hottest stories of that minute. At least, she's there during the...
KPFK wants to broadcast "your big fat gay wedding," as the OC Weekly's Gustavo Arellano puts it. Navel Gazing Catch a photo of FishbowlLA bloggers Mayrav Saar (on the...
My favorite part of Lee Abrams' latest pearls of wordiness emailed to Tribune's weary innovators is this, from Romenesko: Using my favorite music analogies--Imagine Newspaper CONTENT is a major artist....
Jewish Journal God-blogger Brad Greenberg suspects the new Stuff God Hates blog is from the same Culver City writer who posts the very popular Stuff White People Like, just not...
Messy police shooting in Long Beach Police say that Roketi Su'e attacked officers, was not subdued by Tasering and was grabbing at a baton when he was shot and killed....
Most of the tickets issued off cameras in the city of Los Angeles — 80% — are for rolling right turns. Still legitimate violations, but not the super-dangerous red light...
D. J. Waldie rides the bus around Los Angeles by necessity but enjoys it less. The price of gas is pushing more people onto buses at the same time the...
California Supreme Court chief justice Ronald George gives a two-hour interview to the LAT's Maura Dolan and talks about the court's milestone same-sex marriage ruling: "I think there are...
A 19-point lead shrank to three in the final minute, but the Lakers hung on to win 108-105 in Utah and go to the next round. Starts Wednesday at Staples,...
Former Dodgers general manager Paul DePodesta, now with the Padres in San Diego, has started an interesting blog — he knows a lot more about baseball than the sportswriters who...
Appropos of not much, when my daughter was about nine months old Robert Mondavi stopped by our table at Mustard's, beside his winery in the Napa Valley, and offered to...
This week's first wave of ten-minute pieces with guests talking about musical passions with a KCRW on-air host includes Conan O'Brien, John Cusack, Saffron Burrows, Garth Jennings and Jason Reitman....
Longtime Los Angeles reporter Mandalit Del Barco is getting a raise. The memo at National Public Radio: From South Central Los Angeles to Central America, she's been telling stories with...
Crews this morning began cutting down the disputed ficus trees on 2nd Street near Wilshire. Activists lost a court bid to block the city from removing the trees, which it...
LAPD looking at those movie location motor 'cops' They don't actually work for the police, even though the look like they do. The LAPD wants to provide its own off-duty...
In an interview with Patterico blogger Patrick Frey, the victim of the dead-fish incident that helped spur the Anthony Pellicano prosecution voices concerns about ties between the convicted private eye...
Tidbits from the print world... The Daily News continues to lose journalists to other pursuits. But Councilman Jose Huizar gains a press deputy. Today's newsroom missives from Managing Editor Melissa...
The Dodgers won today in Milwaukee, 7-2, and got home runs from Andruw Jones, Jeff Kent and Gary Bennett (with minor league veteran Luis Maza collecting his first hit in...
Cal State Los Angeles journalism students and faculty have been awarded a New Voices grant intended to support creative new citizen media projects. The team will "partner with community groups...
California's Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that the voter-approved prohibition against same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Mayor Villaraigosa praised the ruling as the "right thing to do," and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said...
Verdicts are still being read, but former Hollywood private eye and muscle Anthony Pellicano has been convicted of all but one count of racketeering and conspiracy. (So much for being...
Stories planted this morning in the Times, Daily News and Wall Street Journal unveil Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's billion-dollar agenda to re-invent Los Angeles' relationship to water. Villaraigosa and DWP chief...
Profiled this year are, among others, Charles Phoenix, Pat Kingsley, Jill Leovy, Ben Goldhirsh, Karen Ocamb, Brooks Melchior, J. Michael Walker, Pau Gasol and Jordan Elgrably, co-founder of the Levantine...
NYT bureau chief Jennifer Steinhauer talks to the father of slain teenager Jamiel Shaw Jr. about the hole in his life and his crusade to amend Special Order 40: “I...
Variety calls Cowan the "father of Hollywood press agents" and his firm, Rogers and Cowan, at one time "the biggest entertainment PR firm in the world, with a list of...
Under fire for his ties to lobbyists Arnie Berghoff and Harvey Englander, former Villaraigosa deputy Marcus Allen withdrew his name from consideration for the job of city administrative officer. He...
Imagine the mayor of Los Angeles, walking shoeless through Venice at night, kidnapped by a blackmailer who has compromising photos of the mayor and his honey. Then imagine the mayor...
It was close until the final seconds, but they never trailed in the game. The Lakers go back to Utah with a chance to end the series in game 6....
Every year the L.A. Times throws a party for the newsroom staff and hands out some cash prizes. In past years, these were overflow banquets held at the Beverly Hills...
Anthony Pesce, next year's editor in chief of the student newspaper at UCLA, and photo editor/columnist Dharmishta Rood won a Knight News Challenge award to "create online publishing software geared...
What says Los Angeles better than a non-native jacaranda in full bloom and non-native water being spilled on the street to flow into the storm drains and out to sea?...
I'm still tied up on a deadline, but here are some items in the news this morning: The Breeze's Gene Maddaus examines the Fox 11 report alleging Councilwoman Janice Hahn...
For the past few months Kareem Abdul-Jabbar posted to a blog on LATimes.com. As of Monday, it has moved to Abdul-Jabbar's own website (with sound, so turn down your speakers.)...
Vandals even got the tires on the local tow trucks, forcing delays in the Auto Club's response the next morning. Residents in several neighborhoods discovered they had all been victimized...
Busy day and a deadline week, so posting will be lighter than usual. Check our Mark Lacter's Morning Headlines at LA Biz Observed. This was also Mark's morning to make...
Actually it's just one book, the new novel set in Los Angeles by fabulist James Frey. But look at how differently it's being read. LAT Book Editor David Ulin holds...
Jay Fernandez will join THR as a senior film reporter to concentrate on breaking news, says Hollywood Wiretap. He has written the "Scriptland" column in the L.A. Times Calendar section...
Proposition 98 is sold to voters as an anti-eminent domain measure, "but really carries the long-standing agenda of interests that want to extinguish rent control and block water and air...
We're getting back on the bus in honor LA Observed's fifth (!) anniversary. There have been a couple of thousand posts since the last time we teamed up with the...
With its television revenue down $2.8 million already this year, Playboy Enterprises plans to offer 20 hours of softcore gay male programming to Time Warner Cable subscribers, XBIZ.com reports. The...
The Lakers made up a 12-point deficit in the last four minutes to even make it into overtime, but the Jazz rolled to a 123-115 win in Utah. Kobe shot...
Jamiel Shaw, the high school athlete whose murder has provided a new rallying cry for the right in the immigration wars, may have been killed because of his association with...
Councilwoman Hahn responds on her blog to the Fox 11 report that sided with two cops suing the city and tied Hahn to the mother of a Grape Street gang...
Lunchtime brawls at Locke High in South Los Angeles involved hundreds of students and led to four arrests, as well as a campus lockdown. Overwhelmed school officials called in...
"In fact, we made no errors," John T. O'Loughlin, President/Targeted Media and SVP/Marketing for Los Angeles Times Media Group, writes to the head of the Southern California Broadcasters Assn. Here's...
The Planning Report, the monthly about Los Angeles and So Cal planning and development published by David Abel, is letting its readers vote online on which of the following "in-progress...
The president of the Southern California Broadcasters Association has a bone to pick with a recent L.A. Times house ad claiming the paper has more reach to offer advertisers than...
Jimmy Fallon to take over for Conan O'Brien The SNL alum will slide in when O'Brien comes out here to take over for Jay Leno, Kim Masters says in a...
Regarding yesterday's item from the Daily Mail about LAPD Chief William Bratton advising the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, Bratton says there has been no contact between them: I have...
I never know what to really make of this data, but Scarborough Research has released its 2008 Newspaper Audience Ratings Report. It aims to estimate, based on telephone surveys, how...
Cal State Long Beach psychology professor Kevin MacDonald is a hero of the anti-Semitic crowd for writing that Jews have evolved as a tribal elite that conspires against the interests...
Former KPCC reporter Doualy Xaykaothao showed up today reporting for National Public Radio from Thailand on the Myanmar relief efforts. Before joining KPCC last year, the Laotian-born Xaykaothao had reported...
The seaside city has asked Ken Starr, dean of the Pepperdine Law School, to convene media and legal experts to help draft an ordinance that would control paparazzi swarms around...
Looks like LAPD chief William Bratton could be traveling out of the city more than ever. The mayor of London just announced that he has signed Bratton to help advise...
Council happy with Lindsey Councilwoman Janice Hahn says, "We have great confidence in Gina Marie Lindsey," but acknowledges the way contracts are issued at LAX could be better. LAT, DN...
In our developing L.A. noir story to beat them all, Mayor Russell Napolitano was snatched off the sand beneath Santa Monica Pier and thrown in a motorboat. He tried fighting...
Perhaps Sam Zell realized his troubled new company needs a full-time boss, or maybe he just tired of his newspaper toys after a few months in charge. Whatever, executive VP...
They go up 2-0 in their playoff series with the Utah Jazz, winning 120-110 at Staples Center. ESPN, DN/Inside the Lakers, LAT...
An add to yesterday's item on the tale of two ex-editors: current Times editor Russ Stanton also gets out on the town Thursday night, appearing as the featured guest at...
"We are not going to discuss numbers or the details of the staff reduction, nor will we be releasing a list of names," says editor Bill Keller. "All of those...
The host of the long-running "Connie Martinson Talks Books" gave nearly 3,000 tapes of her cable show to Claremont Graduate University. "It's a pretty extraordinary gift," said Rick Wartzman, director...
L.A. limits McMansions Homes in the flats, but not in the hills, would now be limited to around half the square footage of the lot. The City Council also voted...
BongHwan Kim moved up from assistant to become interim general manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment after last November's death of Carol Baker Tharp. On Tuesday, Mayor Villaraigosa put...
Never thought I'd see this disclaimer on an invitation in my email box: Views and opinions expressed by the Consulate General of Azerbaijan are not necessarily shared by the Ronald...
You could say that former Dodger and product of Los Angeles Darryl Strawberry had the book thrown at him so often he should write one. Well, now he is. According...
As an amateur admirer of mariachi, I enjoyed CityBeat's feature on the female ensemble Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles. But I was stopped by the byline: Kamren Curiel, who I...
Take your pick: on Thursday, USC Annenberg fetes Michael Parks, the outgoing director of the Annenberg School of Journalism. He is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times. Later...
The pundits pretty much agree that Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has reached the realistic end, after she lost big today in North Carolina and perhaps won by only a...
Nice photo by Lawrence K. Ho of the Los Angeles Times, to go with a story today about Westwood Village merchants hoping that the opening of the new Palazzo complex...
Limbaugh mistakes Villaraigosa for 'shoeshine guy' Rush Limbaugh gives his side of the restaurant meeting last year, where Bill Clinton brought over the mayor for an introduction: "I thought it...
For a campaign strategist, does Ace Smith get a lot of coverage or what? In the LAT over the weekend, the consultant for Antonio Villaraigosa's mayoral campaign — and before...
Tribune innovation czar Lee Abrams blogs that before coming to Los Angeles, "For years I have heard the Industry dirt on the Los Angeles Times. Got a lot of 'good...
The city of Los Angeles has to complete a thorough environmental impact study before resetting the traffic lights to make parts of Olympic and Pico boulevards function as something like...
Ryan Oliver is leaving the Los Angeles Daily Journal for public relations. He'll work on the Police Protective League and U.S. Army accounts for Weber Shandwick Worldwide's Los Angeles office....
Mark Sarvas is often biting in his reviews and commentaries at The Elegant Variation, a point that Scott Timberg makes up front in his Q&A with Sarvas in today's LAT...
Eric Stone coaxed novelist Christa Faust to leave the keyboard long enough to hit a few Eastside taco trucks the other night. He writes that "the woman can write. But...
Film financier Ryan Kavanaugh's company, Relativity Media, backed Columbia Pictures’ “Catch and Release.” Today's NYT uses that connection to lead into a story about Kavanaugh's lawyer trying to use connections...
Latest media Latest politics Villaraigosa as L.A.'s Nero Urban scholar Joel Kotkin, no fan of the mayor anyway, writes that "As the city has continued to lose thousands of middle-class...
The May issue of W (with Cameron Diaz on the cover) proclaims Arianna Huffington more influential than ever, with her new book doing well and the Huffington Post "arguably the...
On Saturday, candidates Bernard Parks and Mark Ridley-Thomas squared off over what makes them different in the race to succeed Yvonne Burke on the county Board of Supervisors. Here's the...
The Times is moving California political writer Phil Willon onto the Los Angeles City Hall beat. The memo from California Editor David Lauter waxes on a bit about the importance...
He actually sounds pretty forgiving about that whole Tupac Shakur business, while talking to Associated Press about getting his star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame and house-hunting in Los Angeles:...
Nice Q&A by Deanne Stillman over at Native Intelligence with Larry McMurtry, the author and screenwriter who was in town this week to receive the Los Angeles Public Library Award...
Ramon Cortines assumes de-facto control of LAUSD The mayor's advisor, not Supt. David Brewer, now has all responsibility for day-to-day operations of the district, says Naush Boghossian. "Brewer would have...
Writers who couldn't get enough of the Times' Birds of Paradise contest still have a place to strut their stuff. A better place even, since the LA Observed Script Project...
E.J. Bavasi was the last general manager of the Dodgers in Brooklyn (and their first in Los Angeles), then created the San Diego Padres and later presided over the California...
Blogger Craig Smith has details of the latest convulsion at Wendy McCaw's Santa Barbara News-Press: 16 staffers, including the sports editor and life section editor. Sample: A memo from co-publishers...
There are four weeks weeks and change left until the June 3 primary showdown to decide who inherits the black seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. It's...
I've heard more grumbling than usual from the features side of the L.A. Times newsroom about the time and money devoted to this week's touchy-feely innovation session, facilitated by a...
Louis Sahagun reports for the Times that "thousands of dockworkers at all 29 West Coast ports, including Los Angeles and Long Beach, took the day off work today in what...
Yesterday's story in the Daily News about a Valley church that contributed money for the L.A. Archdiocese's sexual abuse settlement contained a line that made my ears perk up and...
It wasn't just the Daily News that failed to come out in full this morning. All the Singleton papers except for the Breeze and Press-Telegram [nope, them too] appear to...
It's May Day and you know what that means Three separate immigrant marches through Downtown starting at 11 am are due to converge in the late afternoon at Broadway and...
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.
