Don Shirley: Pianists make history
Iris Schneider on Annie Leibovitz
The dean of newspaper science writers is apparently retiring at age 98. Slacker! Plus a ransomware attack at KQED and CalBuzz calls it quits for now.
Archive: California
The dean of newspaper science writers is apparently retiring at age 98. Slacker! Plus a ransomware attack at KQED and CalBuzz calls it quits for now.
Walters says his politics column, around since 1981, will live on in a new home.
An estimated 188,000 people fled areas downstream from Lake Oroville after a hole was spotted Sunday in the giant dam's emergency spillway. LA swift-water rescue teams are headed north.
The top contender for the title of preeminent observer of our state "chronicled the history of California as no one else," Gov. Jerry Brown said.
There's no surprise that Attorney General Kamala Harris was elected to succeed Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate. The news is that California voters also approved legal marijuana, kept the...
Minor league baseball is leaving the city where Don Drysdale and Mike Piazza perfected their games.
California Today has news from the NYT, the LA Times and other media outlets and is written by Ian Lovett of the LA bureau.
President Obama and his family spent Fathers Day weekend in Yosemite Valley and appeared to be appropriately blown away.
Cherry picking of some results that stand out from the others.
The Chronicle, KQED and 28 other media outlets will do stories the same day to push for a solution.
The state's population is officially nudging 40 million and Los Angeles has gone over four million.
The California primary on June 7 is very much in play for Republicans.
The former LA Times book editor takes over for the retired Malcolm Margolin.
It's a bit of a stretch, but why not? The spider and the singer both dress in black.
I love the California history behind this story of fruits and nuts.
Majestic Yosemite Hotel and Half Dome Village just don't sound like Yosemite. Fix it.
The writer of On the Public Record.com sat down with Peter H. King of the LA Times after seven years of anonymity.
The first media op of the season was today. Water content across the range is at 108 percent of normal.
"For the right candidate, this presents an amazing opportunity to lead a nonprofit book publishing company in a period of growth."
Jim Romenesko reports the staff was told this morning that the magazine is closing effective immediately.
Hundreds of homes were lost on Saturday night. For generations of hot springs soakers and New Age followers, there is more bad news.
California and the lore of LA are rife with Basque immigrants. A new study thinks it can finally answer: who are these people with their odd language?
The net loss to domestic migration is closer to one million. Which destination state was (again) the most popular?
Trail cameras have picked up a pack of two adult gray wolves with five pups in Siskiyou County — they call it the Shasta Pack.
Dave Lesher named to run start-up CalMatters. News from City Hall and the county, and much more.
For the first time anyone has noticed, the giant trees in Sequoia National Park are showing signs of drought distress. Scientists go for a climb.
This new endangered wolf, in a state that supposedly hasn't had native wolves since the 1920s, is untagged. But there is a trail camera photo.
Jim Newton will write the next book on Jerry Brown "and the creation of modern California." Plus Diana Wagman, Holly Madison, William Mulholland, Josh Kun and more.
King had been reporter, columnist and city editor before leaving in 2009 for the University of California communications staff. He comes back to bolster California coverage.
Sanchez is running. Brown and Napolitano make up. A good point about almonds and water. Another LATimesman leaves for political PR. And more.
Tim Egan, Dana Goodyear, Mark Arax, Grace Peng and others weigh in on the drought and California's future, while the New York Times style editors again give Angelenos something to wag their tongues about.
First came the almond farmers, then the cantaloupes, then the golf courses — and so on.
Gov. Brown orders the state's first-ever 25% cut in water use as the winter ends with essentially no snowpack. "This is the new normal,” Brown says. “We will learn how to cope with this.”
Roughly half of California's fresh water arrives in this quirkily engineered, mis-named place, writes Emily Green. 25 million Californians depend on freshwater from the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta.
With this drought year starting to look like the worst yet, the Metropolitan Water District is offering rich deals and Northern California rice farmers are selling.
Sarah Holland-Batt, an Australian poet, has a poem of California in this issue of the New Yorker.
Will the former mayor aim for governor in 2018 — or have we seen the last of Antonio Villaraigosa the candidate? Who will dare run against Kamala Harris?
Not only is there not much snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, we're setting winter records for warmth -- again -- and the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge has returned.
A new Field Poll finds that would be Republican Condoleeza Rice. Villaraigosa doesn't stand out.
We are more than a little offended, says the Sacramento Bee in an editorial.
Billionaire environmentalist says it was a hard decision, but climate change is his key fight -- it "will define the success or failure of our generation."
The former mayor sups with Eric Garcetti and Kamala Harris as he tests his prospects for 2016. Many links inside.
Sacramento journalist Anthony York calls the site a passion project to chronicle the changing state.
The state attorney general will make it official, via online post, that she's running for the Barbara Boxer seat in the Senate.
Newsom's exit makes the path more open to Attorney General Kamala Harris, but don't forget Democrats Antonio Villaraigosa and Tom Steyer.
The former mayor said he might run for Boxer's Senate seat and scored a lot of coverage — some even favorable.
Sen. Barbara Boxer announced today that she will not seek another term in 2016. "I want to come home."
An old-fashioned Pacific winter storm that slammed into Northern California has flooded streets and highways, registered some astonishing wind speeds and forced some schools to close. Surfing on Lake Tahoe!
Heavy rain and snowfall, blizzards above 6,000 feet and more are expected this week -- in Northern California. But that's good enough for us in the south. The Ridiculously Resilient Ridge has moved out of the way for now.
As the drought deepens, a new study finds, the year 2014 has been the worst single year since 800 AD — and rising temperatures mean it could yet get worse.
Three of the iconic Yosemite waterfalls have awakened from the drought — enjoy. Also, the rainfall totals from three nice days of cleansing rain in the Los Angeles area.
Joe Mathews writes that the airline that once made getting around the state so easy is becoming a big disappointment -- and making him rethink Gov. Brown's favorite rail project.
The big rain should arrive Tuesday. In the meantime, Northern California is getting a reminder of what "normal" looks like.
Daum writes that her recovery from a near-death illness has brought a responsibility she didn't expect. Plus: Joe Mathews sees a generation gap in California.
Bob Sipchen returns to the LA Times as senior editor in the California section. He has been communications director for the Sierra Club and editor of the advocacy group's magazine.
Part two of the Times will go back to being the California section starting tomorrow. It's part of focusing on local news, says publisher Austin Beutner: "LATExtra only means something to those who work in the printing plant."
It's still a crapshoot, but NOAA's seasonal outlook sees a good chance of at least a normal precipitation winter in California.
To celebrate its 40th anniversary, Heyday just published a collection of oral histories: "The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin: The Damn Good Times of a Fiercely Independent Publisher."
Scientists observed the sailing stones of Racetrack Playa moving this past winter and think they have finally figured out the mechanism that moves heavy rocks across a dry lake bed.
The surf club organized a sunset paddle out last night off Isla Vista. Thousands were on the beach or in the water, the student newspaper says.
Oregon's roaming gray wolf was observed by a remote camera in the south Cascades. Another camera spotted a female the next day -- uncollared and previously unknown to trackers.
Credit for the headline to the High Country News, which notes that "with each passing day it seems more certain: 2014 is going to be an El Niño year, and probably a big one."
Today on the weekly KCRW segment they asked me to talk about John Muir. Can do!
The president introduced the new Diego Luna film but didn't stay to watch — he said he'll watch on DVD soon. He also told Luna he loved "Y Tu Mama Tambien," though acknowledged it could not be screened at the White House.
Chronicle columnist Carl Nolte really knows his city, and he explains how the local sound of San Francisco is going away.
This story seems a bit too perfect to be what it is, but here ya go. The location and the names of the couple who found the coins are being kept private.
The blocking ridge of high pressure over the Pacific Ocean off North America couldn't last forever. It just seemed that way. An explanation.
He gets that "the whole fantasy of modern California has long been dependent on an audacious feat of engineering." This time is different, he argues.
Even after last week's heavy rainfall up north, the drought maps are still a dry sea of red. And oh by the way, it looks as if the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge may be re-forming out in the Pacific.
The California Highway Patrol announced today that Officer Juan Gonzalez, 33, and Officer Brian Law, 34, died this morning when their cruiser came upon a crash on state route 99 near Kingsburg, south of Fresno in the San Joaquin Valley.
Shirley Temple Black had a lot to do with the farmworker leader making one of his most famous speeches. They bonded over lunch before the speech at the Commonwealth Club of California.
Folsom Lake is six feet higher, but that only means the reservoir is at 19% of capacity instead of 17%. Nice graphic shows how water use differs around the state.
As much as 6-7 inches of rain could fall as the ridiculously resilient ridge retreats. SoCal won't be part of the big event, at least so far.
The California Sunday Magazine will exist in several digital formats and be delivered on dead trees in the Los Angeles Times and other papers. It's coming out of the Bay Area — and they are hiring.
Weather models show California's historically dry weather is expected to continue. Gov. Brown today declared a drought emergency. The Obama Administration named 27 counties as disaster areas.
Check out to the NOAA satellite pictures and a release from Mono County. Plus: Olympic hopefuls like Lindsey Jacobellis (video) are in Mammoth this weekend.
Dana Goodyear's latest piece for the New Yorker from Los Angeles is about Valley Fever, which is caused by a toxic fungus found in the California soil.
Dave McCoy, the former city of Los Angeles hydrographer in the Sierras who founded the Mammoth Mountain ski area, is now 98 years old.
State hydrologists report today they found more bare ground than snow in the first Sierra snowpack measurement of the year. That's bad. Here's why no storms are getting through to California.
The director of USC’s Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics quit the Republican Party a few years ago and plans to run as an independent. Alex Padilla is already in the race.
Sacramento Bee opinion page columnist and senior editor Dan Morain is moving up to editor of the editorial pages. Morain, 58, previously worked at the Los Angeles Times and the Herald Examiner.
Near Aberdeen, CA in the Eastern Sierra's Inyo County.
David Allen, the columnist for the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, recently went on vacation in Northern California. For him, nine days on the road means stops at record stores and bookstores.
A tentative deal between the Bay Area Rapid Transit agency and its two largest unions will end the latest transit strike there after four days.
You won't be able to go between the Eastern Sierra and Yosemite Valley starting at noon Wednesday. Fire suppression efforts will be going on along the high country road. The fire has now burned across 184,481 acres.
Anyone making the flights up and down California this morning could not fail to be impressed and awed by the monster smoke cloud being sent up over the Sierra from the Rim Fire. Check out the view inside.
There's no evidence that it would be cheaper than the California high-speed train, and plenty of reason to believe it would cost more. And besides, why spend $68 billion to subsidize the transport of the few who need to get from the East Bay to the West Valley in half an hour?
Financial Times calls the Hyperloop "a marvellously bonkers idea that has been embraced by the tech community but politely dismissed by some California politicians."
One of the state's top water journalists until he joined the Brown Administration, Taugher was spokesman for the Department of Fish and Wildlife. He died while snorkeling off Maui.
In the opening of a piece that is mostly about Silicon Valley techheads venturing into politics, the New Yorker's George Packer describes the changes being wrought in San Francisco and the peninsula communities south of the city by the new wealth of Silicon Valley's current occupants. Interesting, stark contrasts observed by a local.
We have a new example of Vin Scully showing why he's a Los Angeles treasure. Plus: LA Observed takes a trip to the ballpark in San Francisco.
CNN posted video of the Asiana crash at San Francisco Airport provided by a man who was recording the landing from about a mile across the bay. It shows the flight from Korea approaching too low with its nose in the air, then the tail hitting the ground and the plane careening out of control in a cloud of smoke. Plus: Stupid (at best) Chicago headline.
In the current issue of Boom, Lynell George explores the civic and online phenomenon that is Hidden LA. Plus some observations about Boom, the journal from UC Press that wants to be the California magazine we never had.
Kevin Martin, the blogging weatherman who took his mother (and her car) to Death Valley on Sunday, said he found temperatures a few degrees higher than the official reading of 129 degrees recognized by the National Weather Service. His thermometer read 135.5 degrees at Badwater Basin, the low point of North America. But there's no official NWS station there.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today abruptly lifted its injunction that barred same-sex marriages while Proposition 8 finished its course through the legal system. Soon after, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa married Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo in a ceremony at Los Angeles City Hall.
The newest orbiting Landsat satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the Central Coast on Feb. 11. It flew back over home base in March and took this photo. The resolution is so good you can zoom in on the Santa Barbara coast, kelp beds and the Pismo Dunes.
As the Center for Investigative Reporting, the newsroom in Berkeley will take a more national focus and cut back on the number of stories it undertakes. California Watch has been one of the most successful nonprofit journalism startups in the country.
In the new interactive map of pollution effects analyzed by zip code, the darker colors represent the worst cases. Notice the line of dark blue running the whole length of the Central Valley. America's breadbasket, as they say.
Padilla, the former president of the Los Angeles City Council, says that "last November, more than 10 MILLION Californians did not vote. I’m running for Secretary of State to change that."
The Supreme Court this morning took up California's Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage in preparation for what is being widely anticipated as a sweeping ruling on marriage and gay rights, but even the presumed swing justice asked why the court was getting involved now. “I just wonder if this case was properly granted,” said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.
The LAT is moving politics reporter Robin Abcarian over to be an online California columnist. Editor Davan Maharaj says, "Some of Robin’s columns will appear in print, but her primary mission is driving the digital conversation."
We know about the deal we make with earthquakes, but the biggest catastrophes through time in California have actually been storms. There's only been one on the epic scale since statehood, but a story in the new Scientific American says the next time will be worse for us.
In the rest of the United States, the best selling new vehicle is the Ford F-series pickup truck. In California the Prius has surpassed the Honda Civic to be number one.
The owners of the Sacramento Kings, the Maloof family, made official what has been talked about and feared by many around the state capital. They are selling the team to a group headed by Seattle investor Chris Hansen, who hopes to move the team by next season and call it the Sonics.
Commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut in Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station, has been tweeting eye-catching photos of points all across the planet.
This ran on this week's episode of "The Simpson's." Hat tip to KCET on Facebook. There is a sunset memorial to Howser scheduled this afternoon at Griffith Observatory.
Citrus growers in the Inland Empire fired up seldom-used smudge pots, ran water in the orchards and tried to create wind between the trees in desperate moves on Saturday night and this morning to protect the fruit from freezing temperatures. Smoke could be seen rising this morning from burners in citrus areas such as Redlands and Mentone.
A new study offers evidence that the massive fault that defines the geography of California could snap along its entire length, unleashing a whomper of an earthquake that would hit north and south. Up to now, seismologists have assumed that a portion of the San Andreas in Central California where the Pacific and the North American plates creep past each other fairly smoothly would protect us.
Howser is "retiring from making new shows but does not want to make any formal announcements about it," says an email. Amazing.
Ken Burns' latest documentary debuted on PBS on Sunday night. The great migration to California begins in tonight's second part. Watch a preview.
California voters went 59 percent for President Obama, 39 percent for Mitt Romney. It's largely, but not totally, a coastal thing. But Obama lost 2.7 million voters in California since 2008.
San Francisco swept the Detroit Tigers four games to none to win the series — again. They beat the Texas Rangers in 2010.
Mark Bittman, the New York Times food columnist, asked readers where in the world they wanted him to go to write a solid, serious piece for the NYT Magazine's food issue this Sunday. This challenge led him to California's Central Valley, where so much of the food consumed in America comes from — at least for now. He explains why that had to be the place, and shows his excitement at the scale of it all, but sounds the alarm about the future.
"When you meet with people in the legislature in Sacramento, the most striking thing is how stupid everybody is," says Bloomberg News' Josh Barro
For a long time the keepers of the weather stats believed the hottest temperature recorded on Earth to be 136 degrees at El Azizia, Libya, exactly 90 years ago today — September 13, 1922. Doubts were raised, studies were done, and now scientists say the distinction belongs to Death Valley.
"The High Sierra beckons," Brown's Twitter feed says....
With a yurt, a Mayan shaman, a massage practitioner and of course nudity, Esalen has almost everything the NYT loves in a story from California.
The state says that California residents will buy 725,000 rifles, pistols and shotguns in 2012, nearly twice the number they purchased five years ago, when 370,628 were acquired.
For the first time in history, California-born residents constitute a majority of the state's total population. Native Californians are now the state's only majority. Here's one thing that could mean.
A Sacramento judge rejected activist Molly Munger's argument that Jerry Brown's tax measure should not be listed first on the November ballot. Munger's group, Our Children, Our Future, said it won't appeal. "We're moving on," said spokesman Nathan Ballard.
All but five of the 70 state parks that were listed for closure will remain open either due to arrangements with private donors or money included in the state budget.
State wildlife biologist Richard Shinn snapped spotted OR7 on Tuesday in California's Modoc County and snapped the first known color photo of the male gray wolf that crossed over from Oregon in December, becoming California's only documented free-ranging wolf since the 1920s. "He appeared very healthy," said a state wildlife specialist.
The Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley just announced that it will be launching an investigative news channel on YouTube with $800,000 in support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. "One of the goals of this partnership will be to raise the profile and visibility of high impact story telling through video," says CIR executive director Robert J. Rosenthal.
Douglas retired last year as executive director of the California Coastal Commission, a regulatory entity he helped create.
He's back, at least for now.
OR7's quest has taken him back across the state line, the California Department of Fish and Game announced.
China's dust seems to create more snow than California dust. Though the data is still incomplete.
OR7 crossed the state border yesterday, becoming the first gray wolf known to roam wild in California since the 1920s.
ProPublica landed a major California investigation this week, using internal memos to show how the Democrats secretly and very successfully manipulated the new congressional district lines.
Wildlife trackers in Oregon have followed a lone male gray wolf on a 730-mile trek across the state, south toward the border with California. "He could be in Yreka in two days if he wanted to be," a California fish and game official says.
On January 1, a new amnesty program allows drivers who ignored their traffic tickets before 2009 to pay half of what they owe and clear their record. The Legislature saw...
We didn't exactly answer the question of who rules California, but last night's Zócalo panel at the Museum of Contemporary Art did get into some interesting insights about the state and its cultural touchstones.
Tonight at MOCA, I'm on a panel where the question is posed by Zócalo Public Square and the USC-Huntington Institute on California and the West.
Historian Richard White provides a dose of reality for the romantic notion of high-speed trains zipping across California, just like in "France, Japan, and now China."
By Ryan Killackey, who writes: "I worked on this project on and off for over a year and a half. It is composed of over 10,000 photos shot in California by my wife and I."
The ineptitude takes your breath away - agents made about 60 visits to the home of onetime parolee Phillip Garrido without realizing that Dugard was being kept hidden in the backyard.
Author and long-ago L.A. Times enviro reporter Philip L. Fradkin and his photographer son, Alex L. Fradkin, walked the eleven-hundred miles of California coast and have married their words and images in “The Left Coast."
Don't plan to drive between Big Sur and Carmel or Monterey any time soon.
A cartoon by Donna Barstow featuring J. Brown, Lady Lockyer and the new cool kids.
Sped-up video of the tsunami surge entering and leaving Crescent City's harbor on Friday morning, leaving extensive damage behind.
Inland areas, led by Riverside County, grew the most since 2000. The coast, not so much.
Ed Lee, San Francisco's administrative officer, was appointed and sworn in today as the city's first Chinese-American mayor.
San Francisco Police Chief George Gascón said he had no idea when he walked into Mayor Gavin Newsom's office that he would be asked to take over as District Attorney.
For the first time since 1920, California's congressional delegation will not grow in the shuffle of seats that occurs after each 10-year census.
The science story of the day is that one of the basic assumptions about life on Earth — and potentially elsewhere (get it?) — has been upended by a discovery at Mono Lake, the briny prehistoric lake in the Eastern Sierra.
Republican Steve Cooley's lead in the race for attorney general stands at 19,189 in this morning's update from the Secretary of State.
Steve Cooley has erased Kamala Harris' lead and gone up up by 22,817 votes as the late vote counting stands now in the state attorney general race.
Jerry Brown will be governor again because he won the coast.
Proposition 19 passed on the coast of California, from Los Angeles to Sonoma counties, and in the mountains of Mono and Alpine counties. Everywhere else in the interior, no dice.
Visit the Secretary of State site for the latest statewide and county by county vote totals.
The youngest California governor since the 19th century is now the oldest to be elected. Jerry Brown's email to supporters went out a little before 1 a.m.
On the occasion of a new cookbook from Sunset, the New York Times heaps praise on the former booster publication of the Southern Pacific Railroad as the ultimate definer of California cuisine and the California image.
California Watch has been at it for a year now, and says its 11 full-time reporters are "by far the largest investigative team operating in the state."
Editorial Director Mark Katches explains in a blog post how a recent California Watch project on the shrinking school day came to appear in newspapers, on the air and on websites around the state.
The non-profit newsroom arm of the Center for Investigative Reporting in the Bay Area has added Joanna Lin, a former reporter at the Los Angeles Daily Journal and Los Angeles Times, plus Pulitzer winner Ryan Gabrielson and reporter Susanne Rust.
If you believe that Meg Whitman really was 50 points ahead of Steve Poizner in March, the news that her lead is down to 9 points in the latest poll from the Public Policy Institute of California will be stunning news indeed.
Each year around this time, the state's Department of Finance estimates the population for California and every city. Selected tidbits from the report.
HealthyCal debuts today, billing itself as "a new independent, non-profit web site focused on the health of Californians and their communities."
No damage has been reported and no tsunami action is forecast.
Correspondent Vince Gonzales spent six months unearthing a multitude of problems with the agency that is supposed to ensure worker’s safety in California.
That's the headline on a good Timothy Egan perspective piece on broken California currently getting high billing on the New York Times website.
It now costs more to insure Californian municipal debt against default than it does bonds issued by the central Asian country satirized in "Borat."
Publisher Kate Gale blogs that the idea of a book on the living history of California was inspired by book agent and Truthdig book editor Steve Wasserman. Doesn’t have an...
Corporations with records of pollution violations, criminal probes and fraud allegations are sharing in the millions of dollars being doled out in federal stimulus funds, California Watch says in an investigation running in newspapers across the state today.
California Watch christened its website with a report on how politicians of both parties and their supporters routinely funnel money through county-level political party committees.
A segment of "60 Minutes' on CBS will focus on the California water situation, with reporter Lesley Stahl talking to Governor Schwarzenegger, farmers and others. It's scheduled to air Sunday,...
Somebody had to represent Highland Park's favorite son in Yosemite Valley, and LA Observed was honored to make the introduction. That's Chicken Boy at Lower Yosemite Falls. Below is also...
When San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom dropped out of the race for governor two weeks ago, one chapter of his political life ended and a new, stranger one began. The...
Patrick McGreevy likely wrote about Keith Brackpool and the Cadiz water scheme in the Mojave Desert when he was a City Hall reporter for the L.A. Times, given that Brackpool...
Region 9 of the Environmental Protection Agency covers California, Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada, the Pacific Islands, and over 140 tribal nations. The new administrator is Jared Blumenfeld, director of the San...
What happens in a region when the dominant local newspaper starts to die? In the Bay Area, first the New York Times comes in with local pages, and starting tomorrow...
The first is more of a website than a blog, by ex-Los Angeles Daily Journal editor Martin Berg. He's editing Where's Our Money? for Harvey Rosenfield's Consumer Education Foundation, billed...
The most-viewed article in the UK's Guardian the past 24 hours has been a weekend piece from Los Angeles asking if California will become America's first failed state. For what...
Eight inches fell on Mammoth Mountain over the weekend with a "generous delivery of powder" in the Lake Tahoe area, and with that the winter snowpack watch begins. The start...
With fall quarter classes starting today, protests over budget cuts and employee furloughs are expected at many University of California campuses, including at UCLA. LAT...
California Watch, the new investigative reporting operation, will be coming out with its first piece tomorrow - an examination of waste and mismanagement in local homeland security grant spending across...
An update to the Morning Buzz: the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco re-opened at 6:30 this morning after emergency repairs went quicker than expected. Also: As Witness LA...
Steve Greenberg weighs in on the early fire season. And please, close cover before striking. Click to view bigger and go here for the LA Sketchbook archive. Fires coverage gathered...
A detection dog working with inspectors found a package at a FedEx depot in Sacramento that contained at least 100 live Asian citrus psyllids, including juveniles and adults, the L.A....
Yosemite National Park says the historic Ahwahnee Hotel will stay closed until Friday at 4 p.m. while geologists puzzle over whether any more rocks are likely to crash down from...
The Ahwahnee Hotel has been evacuated due to a rock fall in the Royal Arches section. About 300 guests are affected. No one has been hurt, although some cars have...
The investigative reporting operation launched to fill in where newspapers such as the L.A. Times don't go so much any more will announce on Monday its staff of 11 reporters,...
The Bay Area art magazine Artweek has gone out of business after nearly 40 years of publication. The final issue was dated June 2009. From the website: A victim of...
The Center for Investigative Reporting received more than 600 applications for its new California Watch project. The winner, to be announced soon, is Lance Williams, who has been part of...
Steve Greenberg picks up on the lost story of the California budget mess. The crunch and the political fallout of kids being kept out of college in California — and...
Sacramento's fragile deal on the state budget is in the best tradition of California governing, according to editorial cartoonist Steve Greenberg. See more of LA Sketchbook by Greenberg in...
Joel Kotkin posits five suspects in a new piece at Forbes. It took some amazing incompetence to toss this best-endowed of places down into the dustbin of history. Yet conventional...
In the same issue of The Atlantic where Sandra Tsing Loh finishes off her marriage, the editor's choice book is Kevin Starr's eighth in his series on Golden State history:...
Nic Fiore taught skiing at Badger Pass in Yosemite National Park for more than 50 years, but Scott McAuley of Angel City Press remembers his friend as the summer impresario...
Due to a snafu in the new Post- 9/11 GI Bill, California veterans won't get the aid for private colleges that vets in other states do. That's because, officially, the...
The Center for Investigative Reporting named the editorial director for its new reporting initiative focusing on California: Mark Katches, the former editor who oversaw prize-winning investigations at the Register in...
Schwarzenegger's plea, the Lu Parker/Villaraigosa talk continues, those Chinese are still at LAX, books by Barbara Streisand and Choire Sicha, a journalist gets a job and more. Mark Lacter's LA...
Eerily prescient headline from last July at Not the L.A. Times, Roy Rivenburg's spoof of his former employer's foibles: State sells San Diego to erase deficit Now today's headline at...
Fix the basic unfairness of Proposition 13 that lets multi-million dollar mansions get away with lower property taxes than you or your neighbors pay and the state might not...
The Center for Investigative Reporting is launching a new statewide reporting initiative "to produce in-depth multimedia journalism specific to California and to engage the public on issues of critical importance...
My post yesterday on NBC closing its bureau in Sacramento should have pointed out that ABC still maintains a fulltime presence in the state capital. Nannette Miranda, of course, has...
Peter H. King has been the Los Angeles Times city editor, California columnist, roving reporter and a writer of big stories over almost 30 years at the paper. He's jumping...
Nope, not to Sam Zell, Ron Burkle or Dean Singleton. Only time will tell if this is better for the paper and for San Diego. The buyer of the Union-Tribune...
Hearst posted the news that it will seek quick "significant" cuts to both union and non-union staff at the Chronicle. If enough savings aren't realized, the company says it will...
Ellie Nesler came to public attention in 1993 when she shot and killed the accused molester of her son during a hearing in a Tuolumne County courtroom. She was convicted...
I observed more WTF? head scratching over the L.A. Times' layoff of Calendar writer Scott Timberg this fall than over just about anybody. So no surprise he shows up today...
Sowing Hope, a series in the Merced Sun-Star upstate about efforts to open a medical school at UC Merced, is the first published project of the Center for California Health...
SF Weekly writer Benjamin Wachs is trying to watch all 7.5 hours of State of the City videos posted by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on his new YouTube channel....
For a couple of years I've been anticipating the biography of Isaias Hellman, who had a hand in so much early Los Angeles history as the power behind Farmers and...
By Bay Area tradition, references to freeways don't carry an article. In Los Angeles we "take the 101" (or "the Ventura Freeway") but up north they just "take 101." Times...
Surprise, a bit of good news about the Los Angeles Times. It appears that, just ahead of the layoff reaper, one of the paper's most graceful and reportedly highly paid...
Tygiel, a professor at San Francisco State, was the author of "The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks and Scandal in the Roaring Twenties," the fascinating story of C.C Julian...
San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom filed papers for a campaign committee that lets him start gathering contributions for a possible run for governor in 2010. He's the first of the...
Most of Big Sur's main landmarks have been spared by the Basin Complex Fire, but there have been some losses and several close calls. From the San Jose Mercury News:...
John Rabe, host of "Off-Ramp" on KPCC, hopes to be pretty much first in line for a marriage license Tuesday morning at the Beverly Hills courthouse. Rabe, 42, and Julian...
The L.A. Times did an analysis and found the Californians who have died so far in the two wars included 208 who were married and 160 who were parents, leaving...
Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria packed them in at the Central Library's ALOUD series last week and his new book, "The Post-American World," is getting mostly good reviews. His argument that...
Appropos of not much, when my daughter was about nine months old Robert Mondavi stopped by our table at Mustard's, beside his winery in the Napa Valley, and offered to...
Author and Roman Catholic deacon Eric Stoltz and Los Angeles photographer Francesco Cur are engaged in a project to document the state's cathedrals in fine art photography and text. They...
Author and Pomona College alumnus Verlyn Klinkenborg has another of his Editorial Observer pieces about California in today's NYT. The subject this time is the forecast that our fair state...
News item: The population of California is now estimated (pdf) to be 36,591,000. How do we compare? Only 32 countries in the world have more people. The next one we...
New at LA Observed
Clinton fundraises in LA
Jim Henson Studios on La Brea became a presidential campaign stop on Thursday.
Brown declares disaster area
The natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Performing arts with cheer
Donna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
