Weekly archive
March 22 - March 28, 2009
Saturday, Mar. 28
Author and Slate blogger Mickey Kaus has several friends at the Los Angeles Times, but for years he has been advocating the demise of the paper — partly in the...
Friday, Mar. 27
Now just seems like the right time to upgrade the software that runs this place. So some links may not work this weekend. Then it will all be over. In...
Channel 4's Jennifer Bjorklund went to high school in the Bay Area with one of the four Oakland police officers killed in that shootout with a parolee. I'm told her...
The L.A. Times recently gave the Calendar section a later copy deadline, made possible by the killing of the California section. But when you axe too many copy editors, stuff...
Marisela Villar, daughter of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, gets paid $68,000 a year by state taxpayers to be a field representative for Speaker Karen Bass in Santa Ana. Yolie Flores...
Here's the memo: It is with great regret that as of the March 26, 2009 issue, Southland Publishing, Inc. has decided to discontinue publishing the Los Angeles CityBeat alternative weekly...
Thursday, Mar. 26
Essentially nobody voted anywhere in this week's special election to pick Mark Ridley-Thomas's successor in the 26th state Senate district. But in the precinct that covers the USC campus, the...
A new city proposed on the Tejon Ranch at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley — or viewed another way, on the northern edge of SoCal's sprawl —...
Chief Bratton endorses another candidate — this time in New York City. L.A. Now KPFK suspends "anti-Semitic hatefest" show "La Causa" for six weeks; its followers blame the Jews....
Hoy, the Spanish-language paper that reports to the marketing side of the Los Angeles Times, is switching from daily to weekly. The Times' Sunday magazine will narrow its circulation to...
All non-union employees at the New York Times are losing 5% of their pay for at least the rest of this year. Ten more personal days off are part of...
LA Observed is safe to visit -- readers coming in on IE are having zero trouble. But Google is being slow to update its alert about yesterday's malware script, which...
Most of the state ballot measures up for a publc vote in May are losing. LAT, Bee New PPIC poll finds Californians still just as divided as ever on...
Wednesday, Mar. 25
Sigh. The website for the L.A. Times' new weekly tabloid for light readers, called Brand X, is already dysfunctional. Word from an insider is that it was "blocked inside the...
Not Finke the reporter, but her website Deadline Hollywood Daily — though they are really one and the same. The Wrap's Sharon Waxman tries to figure out what the site...
Mayor Villaraigosa named attorney, philanthropist and former city commissioner David Fleming to the board of the Metropolitan Water District. (This gets Fleming off the MTA board, opening up a second...
Unfortunate choice of names, perhaps, but the L.A. Times is officially calling its new weekly tabloid Brand X. It's the latest grasping at straws down on Spring Street and replaces...
Zócalo and the New America Foundation are hosting the founder of craigslist at the Arclight tonight at 7:30. Reservations are only available for the waiting list (and the Zócalo website...
Google's security team got in touch to alert me that their scans have indeed found a malware script hidden in some LA Observed pages. They don't think it's infecting visitors,...
From what I hear, some Los Angeles Times newsroom reporters and editors are still discussing with higher-ups whether to leave and under what conditions. So it's a developing situation. Here...
Assemblyman Curren Price led the field in the 26th state Senate special election and will face Republican Nachum Shifren and Cindy V. Henderson of the Peace and Freedom Party...
Tuesday, Mar. 24
If you still have tickets to the Ahmanson for this weekend, you should be pleased to hear that Stacy Keach will return to the role of Richard Nixon for three...
Daily News top editor Carolina Garcia is out of the office this week on mandatory unpaid furlough. It's not just for hockey writers....
I asked Bruce Wallace, the L.A. Times' Foreign Editor, to detail the moves affecting his correspondents in the wake of today's announcement that the staff is combining with the Chicago...
This week's mix of voluntary departures and layoffs from the Los Angeles Times includes (in addition to those reported earlier) these staff veterans: William C. Rempel, a reporter and editor...
Editor Russ Stanton just sent the newsroom the word that the L.A. Times foreign staff will now be a Tribune operation, run out of Los Angeles with reporters from the...
Wall Street Journal reporters Sue Schmidt and Glenn Simpson are leaving the paper to launch SNS Global LLC, which Politico's Michael Calderone calls "a new company where they’ll do investigative...
Some people coming to LA Observed in the past day or so have received pop-up warnings, ostensibly from Google, saying the site is infected by malware. As far as we...
Nikki Finke reveals, in a post that discusses her relationships with other bloggers, that the owner of Variety has talked about buying her website and alleges that Peter Bart...
Monday, Mar. 23
Times film columnist and blogger Patrick Goldstein responds to Variety's weekend package on bloggers and says of Peter Bart: "He's launched his own blog, which you'd have to call...
The Roundup picks up that reporter Jordan Rau is leaving the L.A. Times Sacramento bureau, apparently not as part of today's layoffs. Presuming that Rau won't be replaced, the Sacto...
Cinny Kennard's position as head of NPR West won't be filled, plus there are cutbacks in travel, training, salary raises and discussions with the unions about further reductions. Here's the...
L.A. Times staffers affected by today's cuts began getting calls at home yesterday, with one of them transportation writer Steve Hymon. He posted confirmation of his layoff on his LAT...
Boutiques and other small shops are closing like mad on Montana Avenue and on West 3rd Street, Melrose Avenue and Robertson Boulevard, the L.A. Business Journal observes in a front-page...
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa plans to ask the MTA to reconsider its objections to AnsaldoBreda, the Italian rail car manufacturer whose cars have been flagged by the agency for significant...
Staffers in the Los Angeles Times newsroom expect the the next wave of forced departures to come down today, along with revelations of colleagues who choose this moment to retire...
Sunday, Mar. 22
An especially persnickety bunch of Escondido Canyon residents has won the fight to change the name of DeButts Terrace because, as Veronique de Turenne says at Here in Malibu, they...
Times media columnist James Rainey wrote over the weekend about how political pros love one unintended consequence of the wane of mainstream news outlets and the rise of blogs —...
Rick Orlov offers the L.A. politics obituary for City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo: "Could be remembered as the loneliest guy in City Hall." DN The 151 pages of sign regulations...
I missed this last week: Bon Appétit has four, count them four, nominations in the National Magazine Awards. The mostly L.A. staff is up in the categories of general excellence...
Former Los Angeles members of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense got together at the Lucy Florence Coffeehouse and Cultural Center in Leimert Park for a screening of "41st...
Morley Safer did a nice piece on the connection between L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers, with some reportage on the Downtown street musician's former life as a...
