Courts spokesman Parachini fired, perhaps over TMZ

Allan Parachini, the former journalist who has been spokesman for the Los Angeles County Superior Court for eight years, says he was fired because his bosses wanted him to block the media from getting access to salary and spending information. The pretext they gave, he says, is that he had leaked court information to TMZ. Parachini denied having any inappropriate relationship with the gossip site and offered to let authorities see his financial records. The backstory is that Parachini in 2008 hired Vania Stuelp, a former TMZ reporter, as his deputy. She returned to TMZ earlier this year after losing being laid off. "From the beginning, a lot of people in the media thought Vania was a TMZ plant," Parachini told the L.A. Times.