Weekly archive
April 11 - April 17, 2010
Friday, Apr. 16
In a visiting blogger post for LA Observed, Pulitzer winner David Cay Johnston recalls his LAT stories that uncovered an international spying operation run by Gates that spied on L.A. leaders and political groups, infiltrated groups using sex and undercover operatives, incited violent acts and tried to intimidate reporters such as Johnston. He also writes about the seven times his car was burglarized, including in the LAPD garage, and the story that the L.A. Times wouldn't run.
Who knew opera could be so contentious? Fan Rip Rense reams LAT critic Mark Swed for not reporting on loud booing, while a heckler who interrupted a lecture on the Ring Festival was almost evicted by Zev Yaroslavsky.
Los Angeles Daily Journal editor David Houston clearly has a thing about his reporters being at their desks by 9 a.m. He has memoed on it at least twice that...
Gates was chief of police in Los Angeles from 1978 to 1992, his tenure ending shortly after the riots that followed the jury verdicts exonerating officers in the Rodney King...
Did Jimmy Hahn, the future mayor, design the Dodgers' LA logo as a 9-year-old? Or is the style decades older? We delve into the mystery.
Santa Barbara writer David Freed is scheduled to be on NBC's "Today" show this morning to talk about his May profile in the Atlantic of Steven Hatfill, the virologist who the FBI mistakenly targeted as an anthrax suspect.
Starting next year,
Zócalo Public Square will award an annual $5,000 book prize to "the U.S.-published book that most enhances our understanding of community the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion be it locally, regionally, nationally or globally."
A long piece in USC's student-run Neon Tommy (by senior editor Hillel Aron) follows Ron Kaye on his crusade to foment, as he calls it, "the birth of democracy in L.A." The story captures Kaye as a 68-year-old white ex-newspaperman from the far west end of the Valley who wants to create a "new revolution" that goes beyond the early-2000s secession campaign he stage-managed as managing editor of the Daily News.
Thursday, Apr. 15
It's the 4.8% increase the City Council wanted, not the higher rate that Mayor Villaraigosa originally sought and that the DWP commission tried to force through last time. For the...
The Wall Street Journal's Hannah Karp informs the global audience that, with the Los Angeles Kings in the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in eight years, "there's a...
Diana Nyad, my more accomplished colleague in commentary at KCRW, talks in today's segment about being sexually abused by her swim coach.
City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana came back to work today, less than three weeks after his March 26 DUI arrest and subsequent announcement that he would seek treatment....
Last night's Dodgers score didn't make it into this morning's Los Angeles Times Sports section, at least the printed version that many subscribers get — just as predicted when the...
Inventing the tea party express, Whitman's video reports, Jill Stewart on City Hall, Capitol Weekly's lower Top 100 and more — inside after the jump.
Wednesday, Apr. 14
The City Council went ahead today and approved the same level of electricity rate hike it offered two weeks ago, but this time the increase — of 0.6 of a...
Remember that video I
posted the other day by a fan devoted to KCBS weathercaster Jackie Johnson? She tweeted just now that it's going to be featured tonight on sister station KCAL (Channel 9.)
Janice Hahn and Gavin Newsom both officially crowed this afternoon that she (or he, respectively) won the endorsement of the California Labor Federation in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor. While technically true, they both left out a key part.
Mandalit del Barco of NPR's Los Angeles bureau has the latest story, airing today on "All Things Considered," on the mixed bag you get with red light cameras.
The Dodgers and the LAPD decided to crack down on parking lot partiers at yesterday's home opener. L.A. Times staff writer Carla Hall commits the story to video:...
LAPD funeral traffic, saving teachers at LAUSD, Gatto gets to runoff in AD 43 and Villaraigosa's gift report for the year. Plus more.
Tuesday, Apr. 13
KPCC-FM has posted a job opening for a journalist-blogger to cover what the station calls emerging communities.
Eric Spiegelman was at Disneyland checking out an old map of California mounted in the Main Street railroad station when he spotted an unexpected geographic feature. "There are like a...
The news blog of the Glendale News-Press and its sister papers has
a story up about a local car reaching 500,000 miles — and it's the car driven by the husband of the managing editor of the La Cañada Flintridge paper.
Illogical as it sounds, a panel of experts convened by the city has
concluded that last year's siege of water main breaks was triggered by the DWP's Monday-Thursday watering restrictions creating higher pressures on aging pipes.
Jamie McCourt will be staying away from Dodger Stadium today, though she claims to be part owner. David Kipen has a fun Op-Ed piece on the origins of the interlaced...
Big Downtown funeral for officer Robert Cottle, crackdown on tailgaters at Dodger Stadium, a possible LAPD hiring freeze and more.
TJ Sullivan was standing in line at a warehouse store when he called out a couple of his fellow shoppers for strategically staking out spots in two lines, waiting to see which moved faster. OK, so they took umbrage at TJ's umbrage, then things got racial.
Monday, Apr. 12
Charles McNulty's
public rant about the Pulitzer Prize awarded today in drama is unusually interesting, not because he's the L.A. Times theater critic but because he was chair of the official jury of drama critics and playwrights that recommended a different prize winner
The 2010 Pulitzer Prizes (for 2009 work) are being announced right now. The Washington Post has won four, the New York Times three. Self-syndicated cartoonist Mark Fiore won for cartoons...
What had been expected for the past few months is now official, says the blog LGBT POV: "The measure to repeal Prop 8 in 2010 failed to collect the nearly...
Five people, possibly four of them children, died in the crash during a rain downpour just after midnight where I-5 and the 14 meet in the Newhall Pass entrance to...
Riordan makes L.A. bankruptcy sound like a good idea, squeezing homicide detectives, a shorter school year, Susan Estrich and Justice Stevens, Angela Markel and more catching up for a Monday.
Sunday, Apr. 11
In honor of the rain blowing into Los Angeles tonight, here's YouTube songster Parry Gripp's recent ditty devoted to Channel 2/9 weathercaster Jackie Johnson.
Going on five years since it closed, the news is that there's no news on the reopening of the much-loved Tail o' the Pup hot dog (and more) stand.
