Media

LA Observed Notes: Daylight time edition

By Kevin Roderick | March 13, 2017 2:04 AM

menschonthebench.jpgCody Decker, the UCLA and Santa Monica High alum whose witty tweets have made him perhaps the best known journeyman minor league baseball player, is leading Team Israel in the World Baseball Classic. He came up with the team's Mensch on the Bench mascot and has been having a Twitter exchange this weekend with William Shatner.


Our occasional roundup on media, politics and place from multiple sources. For more join 24,284 followers @LAObserved on Twitter.

Daylight Saving Time is back. Soon it will be spring, then baseball, then those long summer evenings when the LA light is just right...


At the top

Media and Trump: WashPost media columnist Margaret Sullivan opines Sunday on ways the real news media can stand above the right-wing partisan media that makes up story after story to build up Donald Trump. "The traditional press has allowed right-wing media to flourish — by moving too far to the left itself."

Trumpcare: Trump voters would be among the biggest losers in Republicans' Obamacare replacement plan, the LA Times found in an analysis.

Notable lawyer: William J. Genego, a lawyer who successfully fought to overturn the wrongful murder convictions of at least five people — including Bruce Lisker — died of cancer in his Santa Monica home. He was 66. LA Times obit

Having the last word: Ex-New York Times obits writer Bruce Weber wrote the advance obituary for Shirley MacLaine, so he was an obvious choice to write a story about MacLaine's new movie, "The Last Word," in which an advance obit figures in the plot. "People who see this movie unawares should be told that it’s fake news, and that it’s the obits themselves that are real news." NYT

Noted: Former Angels infielder Doug DeCinces is on trial in Orange County on insider trading charges. Hall of Fame player Eddie Murray, the former Dodger, is expected to testify. Register


Media notes

CNN's Jake Tapper, who has been pointing out a lot of the Trump Administration lies and diversions, observes that suddenly RT "Russia's government funded propaganda channel is targeting me. Why would that be?"... How the Indianapolis Star navigated a public records minefield to break its Pence email story. CJR... Breitbart's Stephen Bannon had an LA base of operations but no fixed address as he followed "a mysterious, peripatetic path to the White House." WashPost... Trump's Twitter account has apparently unfollowed Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC... Time for reporters to start encrypting everything they do online. Wired... The $1-billion deal to sell Dick Clark Productions to China’s Dalian Wanda Group has collapsed, "marking one of the biggest of many deals between China and Hollywood to fall by the wayside." LAT... Up close with Amy Astley, the new editor of Architectural Digest, which has been repackaged as AD. NYT...Catherine Opie, the LA artist and UCLA professor, gets a big profile in The New Yorker... Fox News columnist Greg Gutfeld remembered Andrew Breitbart on the fifth anniversary of his death in Los Angeles.

Noted: Jen Chung & Jake Dobkin, the co-founders 14 years ago of the Gothamist blog empire, the parent company of LAist, have sold to DNAinfo. They explain.


Around the Troncosphere

Analyst Ken Doctor says that Tronc's latest financial reports show $2.7 million in leased jet charges, enough expense to eat up the entire increase in national retail ad revenue at Michael Ferro's papers for 2016 — or it could pay for "25 high-end journalists." He dubs it Air Ferro.... Ferro is also said to be close to buying US Weekly for around $85 million.... Shares of major Tronc stakeholder Patrick Soon-Shiong’s biotech firm plunged after a news report raised questions of whether the LA billionaire had used a donation to the University of Utah to artificially inflate the outlook for the company’s operations. Axios, LA Times story... LAT staff photographer Marcus Yam has arrived in Northern Iraq to cover the war there alongside reporter Molly Hennessey-Fiske... The Times revisited an old perennial story — conservatives in Hollywood — and says they have a harder time with Trump in... The schedule for this year's Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is due out on Thursday... The LA Times had a South Korean political ad on A1 one day last week:

lat-a1ad-korea.jpg


Media people doing stuff

ESPN senior writer Ramona Shelburne had great inside details on the Lakers front-office turmoil and the move by Jeanie Buss to install Magic Johnson... J.A. Adande, now director of sports journalism at Medill School of Journalism, talks at Mashable about The Players Tribune after two years... Sam Quinones suggests in Foreign Policy that Donald Trump Is the Opportunity Mexico Has Been Waiting for... Ex-KNBC reporter Doug Kriegel did a 30-minute freelance piece for KPFK titled California vs Trump... Terry Anzur has left KFI's Saturday "Handel on the Law" program... AP's John Rogers wrote the wire's story on the (long) retirement of LA photographer Nick Ut... Justin Tinsley at The Undefeated talks with some ex-Lakers about March 9, 1997, the night Biggie Smalls was murdered outside the Peterson Museum... Zocalo columnist Joe Mathews urges Los Angeles to drop its 2024 Olympics bid "before it gets chosen"... Ryan Bradley and Jamie Lauren Kelles are among the Los Angeles-based contributors to this weekend's New York Times Magazine special issue on 25 songs that tell us where music is going... KPCC mobility reporter Meghan McCarty has a new on-air byline: Meghan McCarty Carino... Snopes.com co-founder David Mikkelson works from his home office in Calabasas... Former Alaska TV reporter Charlo Greene, who notoriously resigned by saying “Fuck it, I quit” live on the air, now hosts a show about pot in Los Angeles... Australian photojournalist Daniel Berehulak is the winner of the 2017 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism from the LA Press Club... NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker gets married... Fox 11 News in LA has openings posted for executive producer, assistant news director and more... Confessions of a Gazzarri Dancer: an interview with De De Mollner. Previously at LA Observed here and here, and toying with the Turtles' Howard Kaylan below.



Also: LA Times food editor Amy Scattergood is "LA’s Secret Food Media Gatekeeper," says Farley Elliott at Eater LA. "If you spend any time reading about the restaurant industry in Los Angeles you have, at some level, Amy Scattergood to thank... She still keeps Jonathan Gold on track, and still checks in Wednesdays at the Santa Monica Farmers Market with the chefs she has come to know over the course of her career."

ICYMI: Campoverdi-Obama-2011-wh.jpgAlejandra Campoverdi, the former LA Times editor and Obama White House aide who is running in the crowded field to succeed Attorney General Xavier Becerra in Congress, got a Style feature in the Washington Post in which she discusses her plans to have a double mastectomy in two years because of the cancer in her family. Post, LA Times

Politics and governing

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain called Sunday for President Trump to either prove his claim that President Barack Obama tapped the phones in Trump Tower or recant it. WashPost... House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says she would have retired if Hillary Clinton had won the White House... California Supreme Court Justice Kathryn Werdegar said she will retire on Aug. 31. If Gov. Jerry Brown appoints a successor, it will be his fourth nominee this time around... Arnold Schwarzenegger posts a statement saying he won't be running for the U.S. Senate and will focus his political efforts against gerrymandering... California's election future is rooted in the old-fashioned absentee ballot, says John Myers of the LAT.


measure-s-map-lat.jpgMeasure S, the development moratorium measure that lost 69 percent to 31 percent in last week's LA election, won a majority of votes in only small scattered pockets of the city and lost big in Hollywood and the Valley, the LA Times analysis shows. They mapped Measure S (right) and also the Measure H vote, which is still clinging to the two-thirds majority needed to pass. The marijuana regulation measure, Measure M, got 79 percent.... Mayor Eric Garcetti's total is still over 80 percent of the votes vast, with the count of provisional ballots continuing. The registrar says by the time all votes are tabulated, Los Angeles may just miss having its lower voter turnout in modern history... The crushing defeat of Measure S is a defining moment for Los Angeles, the LA Weekly says.

ICYMI: Former congressman and state lawmaker Anthony Beilenson, a Democrat from the Westside, died last week at home in Westwood. He was 84. Beilenson sponsored the 1978 legislation that created the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. LA Times, NY Times... Beth Woo, the mother of former City Councilman Mike Woo and LA-based Washington Post obits writer Elaine Woo, died March 2 at home in Monterey Park at age 101. Quite a life story.


Place

• Violent street robberies are up in downtown, especially targeting people leaving nightlife venues. LA Weekly

• A medfly quarantine for San Fernando Valley citrus is preventing at least 100,000 pounds of backyard oranges and other fruit from being harvested for needy residents. Daily News

• On March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam collapse killed more than 400 people in the deadliest Southern California disaster ever and ended the career of Los Angeles water legend William Mulholland. Recent books: UC Press/Huntington, Jon Wilkman

• Americans save an average $9,000 a year living in the suburbs compared with nearby cities — but not in Los Angeles. Suburban Angelenos pay slightly more — an extra $400 annually — for housing and child care, according to a report. LA Weekly

• The state's San Luis Reservoir, once a symbol of the drought, is full for the first time in six years. San Jose Mercury

• An interview with Joan McNamara of Joan's on Third, "the badass behind West Third Street's renaissance." Eater LA

• 18 women on the LA restaurant scene. Zagat

• Richard Simmons' time in LA began at a long-ago celebrity haunt on Wilshire called Derrick's. Fishbowl

• Ballet dancer Misty Copeland's early LA life. The Guardian (LA Observed in 2012 and Native Intelligence)

• A fake but attractive map with many LA streets renamed as movie titles, for no obvious reason. Wired

• 12 Really Quirky Staycation Rentals in LA. LA Weekly

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