Friday media roundup: Kushner, Rutten, Prop Zero, Alycia Lane

The Register's intriguing new owner, Aaron Kushner, is the subject of this week's cover story in the OC Weekly. "Kushner and his team have launched an expansion spree not only unprecedented in 21st-century print journalism, but also almost unfathomable. Orange County's paper of record has hired at least 45 reporters and editors, with intentions to hire at least 30 more."

• Tim Rutten, the longtime LA Times writer and editor who was laid off by the paper in 2011, joins the Los Angeles News Group opinion pages with a column that starts Sunday in the papers. "In his new column...the veteran news analyst will put the issues that matter most to Southern Californians into focus for our readers." Rutten is co-author with the late lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. of the New York Times best-seller "Journey to Justice." Daily News

  Rutten's departure from the Times after 40 years inspired an LA Observed column by Bill Boyarsky, an appearance on Which Way, LA? and a mention by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.



• Prop Zero, the politics blog by NBC stations in California, has shut down. The link at NBC 4 redirects to a roundup of national politics stories. Contributor Joe Mathews posts on Facebook that he will be devoting more time to Zocalo Public Square: "I felt that after the November elections, Prop Zero had run its course....But I'm very proud of the work Prop Zero and its terrific contributors (Sherry Jeffe, Kevin Riggs, Larry Gerston & Conan Nolan) did in explaining California's very complicated governing system and its sometimes bizarre politics, and in offering thinking on solutions to the state's problems."


• A Philadelphia judge dismissed NBC 4 morning anchor Alycia Lane's lawsuit against CBS over her firing there several years ago. She's still suing the former Philly co-anchor who hacked her computer and distributed her private emails, but the judge had strong words for Lane's story about the fate of a computer sought as evidence in the case: "The ...invented story is a wholesale fabrication, and therefore places [Lane’s] conduct at the highest degree of fault." NY Post