Archive by Month
December 02, 2005
I just taped a segment with host Conan Nolan to air Sunday at 9 am. Political analysts Arnold Steinberg and Darry Sragow are on first to discuss Gov. Schwarzenegger's hiring... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Todd Purdum, the former Los Angeles bureau chief for the New York Times who also has covered the White House, will depart the paper's Washington bureau at the end of... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
The Daily News feature staff has started a blog called Red Carpet. It apparently began a test run last month with Fred Shuster posting from the American Music Awards. In... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Longtime LAT writer Al Martinez uses today's column to report that he survived the buyout and layoff putsch, and to commiserate with those who lost jobs at the Times and... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Around the LA Observed offices, we prefer our pigskin roasted or barbecued. A hotbed of football fever we aren't, but we've ignored the gathering tension across the city (and the... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Rapper Kanye West will perform outdoors at Santa Monica High School on Monday afternoon, the result of students casting a million votes in a Power 106 contest. They get to... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
December 01, 2005
Couple more things came in via email after this morning's post: ⇒ MoveOn.org has—believe it or not—adopted the L.A. Times buyouts and cutbacks as a lefty political cause, complete with... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Tonight's "Life & Times" at 6:30 pm on KCET features an interview with Joe Coulombe and his wife, Alice, the creators of Trader Joe's. They opened the first store in... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Perhaps taking a cue from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Controller Laura Chick has offered to oversee an audit of school district administrative operations. "As the independently elected Controller for the... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Scott Martelle has the cover piece in the Weekend Calendar section on local blogs: "In an odd synchronicity, as the pervasiveness of the Internet and mass media homogenizes mass culture,... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Robert Greene in the LA Weekly observed the welcome ritual for L.A.'s newest city council members and says they fit in like familiar veterans—and for good reason. On their first... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
I received several reports that computer system troubles plagued the Times yesterday. A big chunk of the IT staff was laid off last week. Also, Orange County staffers are complaining... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
At 1:30 Mayor Villaraigosa will announce a deal to scale back the old LAX expansion plan (and settle the lawsuits) at a command audience of pols: two Congress members, two... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
November 30, 2005
Today's Hollywood Reporter is out with the who-makes-what piece of the trade's annual Women in Entertainment issue. Julia Roberts stands atop the actress salary Top 10, able to command a... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Today's most-emailed L.A. Times story is the off-lede talker about the U.S. military covertly paying Iraqi newspapers to run propaganda written by American troops. Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi report:... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
I don't know for certain that L.A. Observed's scrutiny played any part, so let's just applaud the Times for making the right call. Mark Kurtich, the senior VP of operations,... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Jon Wiener, the KPFK host and Nation contributing editor, posts an email that left-side historian Mike Davis sent to Susan Brenneman, the deputy op-ed editor at the Times, rejecting an... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
In another move to save a few bucks, the Times is once again closing the ornate main entrance to its historic building—shutting off public access to the Globe Lobby and... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Sacramento columnist George Skelton opted out of the L.A. Times buyout at the last minute. But a more prominent name put himself on the list: longtime Pop Music Editor/Critic Robert... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
In the classroom and panel discussions I've been having lately about blogging, someone always asks whether blogs can be believed. I usually give a spiel on knowing who to trust... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Charles Crumpley, Money Editor at the New Orleans Times Picayune since 2002, starts Jan. 1 as editor of the Los Angeles Business Journal, the staff has been told. LAO reported... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Last night's sold-out show at Staples Center was a homecoming for Paul McCartney, whose current U.S. tour ends tonight. He and Heather Mills own a big mansion in Pasadena, and... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
November 29, 2005
L.A. County health director Thomas Garthwaite resigned today in a closed session of the Board of Supervisors. He has accepted a position as chief medical officer of Catholic Health East,... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Before he edited the L.A. Times Book Review, Steve Wasserman was deputy editor of the paper's op-ed page and Opinion section (and before that was a researcher for Robert Scheer.)... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Mayor Villaraigosa didn't announce any public events for today, but he was plenty busy. He spoke at the joint swearing-in of new City Council members Herb Wesson and Jose Huizar.... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
LA Observed has been down much of today due to a "bandwith issue" at the server end. In short, a rush of visitors this morning pushed us unexpectedly over the... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Hollywood will add jobs this year and next, but the overall picture is still cloudy says a report to be released today by the L.A. Economic Development Corp. Advancers in... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
November 28, 2005
Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and former L.A. Times columnist and reporter Robert Scheer have been pals a long time—at least since Scheer interviewed the "boy mayor" of Cleveland for... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
LA Weekly Publisher Beth Sestanovich told the staff this morning that the Justice Department gave the okay for New Times to acquire Village Voice Media, and with it her paper... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Author and former state Sen. Tom Hayden had a strong letter in Sunday's Calendar section praising the Times for tough coverage of the Getty. But, he writes, much more scrutiny... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Nearly a dozen posts made their way onto the blog during the so-called holiday break, including the first (exclusive) list of which familiar names look to be leaving the L.A.... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
November 27, 2005
Wife-and-husband team Elizabeth Snead and Joel Stratte-McClure used to jointly byline their celebrity gossip dispatches for the Daily News and the other LANG papers. Then Snead started dispatching her side... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
Like all big newspapers, the Washington Post is stumbling toward an uncertain future, online and off. One of its online experiments is a blog page called Post Remix, where readers... $MTEntryExcerpt$>
⇒ The Paul Williams-designed Holmby Hills home adjacent to Harvard-Westlake (formerly lived in by Bruce McNall and Ronald O. Perelman) will be saved and moved to Pasadena, the NYT says.... $MTEntryExcerpt$>