This time it's the Wall Street Journal going behind the scenes of the hit show "Dancing With the Stars on the front page. I'll leave it to you to decide if you prefer the L.A. Times approach — a reporter lightly approximating the experience of competing — or the WSJ angle of reporting on how and why spray-on tans are used on every dancer (except Tom DeLay, apparently.) Excerpt:

A recent Sunday afternoon, backstage at the McCadden rehearsal space here, Ms. Locke spritzed half a dozen contestants, naked or in string bikinis, to chestnut-colored skin. She changed the settings on her gun to paint in the shadows of muscles. Six-pack abs, defined cheekbones and sculpted arms appeared almost instantly. Each 10-week season, the cast goes through more than six gallons of spray-tan liquid, or juice as it is known in the industry....

Depending on the dance the couple will perform -- fox trot or waltz, West Coast swing or cha-cha -- TV makeup artists use a specific tone of tan. Latin dances like the rumba and sultry lambada seem to call for the darkest shades. Waltzes and fox trots take fine-tuning on hands, neck and ankles since most of the body is covered....

"It's a real Eastern European, communist version of what's beautiful," says "Dancing With the Stars" executive producer Conrad Green.

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Ms. Mills calls dancers who get too dark "tanorexic." When they come to the makeup room for an extra dark coat of tan before a performance, makeup artists will apply brown water and pretend it's self tanner. "We try and trick them," body makeup artist Nadege Schoenfeld says. "They're about to be half naked on national television. A tan makes them look thinner."

See how tanning happens and hear from Mills, the show's top makeup artist, with reporter Amy Chozick in this video with the story:

Tesla Motors will build its Model S, four-door, all-electric sedan in the city of Downey, the mayor there told the District Weekly.

Former LA Weekly staffer Pandora Young takes some thoughtful umbrage at the Dennis Romero blog post for the Weekly about last week's USC/Neon Tommy story on the Weekly. Young at Fishbowl LA:

It's a strangely schizophrenic and defensive piece of propaganda, and probably not even worth addressing - but here I go.

Romero argues that "what's seen as a reduction of the editorial department is also a changing of the guard." That the new owners reduced the staff of the editorial department by more than half is not a perception - it's a fact. Romero should note all the empty cubicles around him in the Weekly office. Furthermore, the freelance budget has been slashed and the paper's page count has shrunk.

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The mention of "old white guys" is similarly baffling. The "Weekly of yesteryear" was run by a Latina woman - who was fired and replaced with an old white guy. The staff of the LA Weekly at the time it was acquired by the new owners had more religious, cultural and ethnic diversity than the one today. There were more women. More homosexuals. Not that there's anything wrong with being an old white guy. It's just inaccurate to characterize that demographic as having been the dominant voice of the paper: a "crusty, bell-bottom voice," according to Romero, in stark contrast to the "bright and digital" era he lauds as the paper's future.

The real truth is that the changes at the LA Weekly are not nearly so radical, nor so black-and-white. While the paper has changed, it has hardly been reborn - or destroyed.

Barely related: Romero has a post today on the DA deciding not to file DUI charges on Alexandra Kerry, since her blood alcohol level apparently came back under the legal limit.

More LA Sketchbook by Steve Greenberg

New LAPD chief Charlie Beck has made his first substantial personnel moves. "The new organization includes six Direct Reports and the renaming of two Offices. I have made several selections at the Senior Staff Officer level to complete my leadership team," he says in the memo, which is after the jump.

The interim Lieutenant Governor won't be Richard Riordan, or Robert Hertzberg, or Laura Chick...or even Janice Hahn.

It's state Sen. Abel Maldonado, Gov. Schwarzenegger's favorite Senate Republican. Maldonado is from Santa Maria.

Zócalo Public Square is decamping in early December to the Guadalajara International Book Fair, with some assistance from the National Endowment for the Arts and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. One of the panels is called What Makes an L.A. Writer and will feature former LA Weekly editor Laurie Ochoa moderating Yxta Maya Murray, DJ Waldie, Gary Phillips, and Jonathan Gold (her husband.) There's also a Zócalo panel, moderated by Gregory Rodriguez, asking how Mexican Americans see Mexico.

* And LA Observed too: Veronique de Turenne is moderating three panels at Guadalajara, one of them with LA Observed contributor Jenny Price.

LA Observed is a sponsor of Zócalo Public Square

There could be a rush of these leaving the business items in the next couple of weeks when the L.A. Times drops its next, much-rumored layoff bomb. This one, though, is from the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Tania Chatila is leaving to do internal communications at USC's health sciences department. She blogs at Leftovers From City Hall:

It's been a crazy two and half years here filled with missteps, personal growth, opportunity and of course loads of experience.

I've been working in professional newspapers since I was 19, but I have to say no newsroom has been quite like this one. Working in the San Gabriel Valley gave me a crash course in real crime, real politics and real people.

And now it's really time to go. This isn't to say I won't ever return to journalism (readers out there are either smiling or cringing at that thought) -- journalism and writing has always been my passion....But for now, the transition is right for me and my future.

That blog has been pretty quiet lately, but she posts that City Editor Ben Baeder will be taking over.

And a new blog: Anna Scott, a reporter for the Downtown News, has a sideline blogging as Angel City. She posts, "Angel City will consist entirely of Q&As with all kinds of Los Angeles denizens, from Hollywood types to barflies to artists (not that those descriptions are mutually exclusive, but you get the idea)." First up is independent filmmaker Cody Jarrett.

Bratton may want his old NYPD job back, Meg Whitman is following the Sarah Palin act, and more evidence of political sleaze in the city's pension systen. Plus: how many unclaimed bodies do you think L.A. County has on file? Today's Buzz after the jump (and I fixed Koretz to Krekorian.)

The Los Angeles Times has revised and reorganized its guidelines from last March that staffers are supposed to follow on social media networks. Political advocacy is still out, for instance, but the rules for Twitter et al are less ponderous than the ones issued at the Wall Street Journal earlier this year. "The Times is to be, above all else, a principled news organization. In deed and in appearance, journalists must keep themselves – and The Times – above reproach," says the memo co-signed by Editor Russ Stanton. I'm not sure what all the changes are, but here are some highlights of the new guidelines.

Integrity is our most important commodity: Avoid writing or posting anything that would embarrass The Times or compromise your ability to do your job....

Even if you use privacy tools (determining who can view your page or profile, for instance), assume that everything you write, exchange or receive on a social media site is public....

Editorial employees may not use their positions at the paper to promote personal agendas or causes. Nor should they allow their outside activities to undermine the impartiality of Times coverage, in fact or appearance.

Readers of LA Observed have seen Kevin McCollister's photographs of Los Angeles, first on his blog Jimson Weed Gazette, and more recently on its successor, East of West LA. His tagline is, "I'm photographing L.A., all of it." (My favorites are his streetscapes; this one is titled simply Cafe. First comment, from a reader named Virginia: "We have reservations for two at midnight.") McCollister's book of 60 photographs, also called "East of West LA," is coming in December from Ifpub. He's got a nice blurb from Lakers coach Phil Jackson: "You will find, as I did, this work an earthy, pithy, gritty look of present-day L.A. done with the eye of an artist." Poet Lewis MacAdams blurbs as well:

Long after the bars have emptied, the taco trucks have shut down, and the citizenry are safe in their beds, Kevin McCollister prowls the streets of L.A, brooding, silent, relentless, with his Canon 40 at his side, waiting for the cityscape to whisper, "Take my picture." These photos are maps of the hours before dawn when the visible becomes invisible, when sorrow rules our dreams and the night world waits underneath the Santa Monica pier, and along the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River for the return of its champion.

Ifpub, by the way, was started by Brooks Roddan, founder of the Palos Verdes Estates PR agency Roddan Paolucci.

Also by MacAdams: In Sunday's L.A. Times, he describes a walk through Downtown Los Angeles by first-time visitor Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel Laureate in literature.

Photo: Kevin McCollister, East of West LA

Hollywood marketing has changed now that so many people willingly devour flakkery on Facebook, Twitter and blogs, a New York Times story says today:

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have also changed the publicity game in Hollywood. The P.R. apparatus has largely assumed the responsibility of monitoring, shaping and creating attention on that part of the Web. Movie characters now have Twitter profiles and Facebook pages, for instance. Guess who updates the accounts?

The Web has also given studios a way to bring consumers into the movie-making process long before the first ads roll out. Casting announcements are one example. Five years ago, nobody but the trade newspapers cared who was cast as the third lead of “Inglourious Basterds.” Now teams of digital publicists convey every little pip and squeak of the early process to hundreds of bloggers.

And because one errant blog post can start an online brush fire, publicists do reconnaissance on bloggers — What is their audience reach? Is their writing snarky? Which other blogs pick up their links? — and manage accordingly.

Universal Pictures also promoted “Couples Retreat” by flying journalists to Bora Bora: "It cost about twice as much as a standard junket, but generated at least four times as much media coverage, the studio estimated."

Plus: Some tweets are sold to advertisers. NYT