When Peter Hong left the Los Angeles Times on a buyout during the last staff paring, he hinted at a gig to be named. It's this: the former real estate and Metro reporter is now a senior deputy to Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. Specifically, Hong is "Senior Deputy for Agency Review and Support," which sounds a lot like the investigative role that another former Times staffer, Joel Sappell, is performing for Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. Just speculating here, but Hong's last Times gig was covering real estate, and perhaps he got to know Dan Rosenfeld, Ridley-Thomas' senior deputy who was co-founder of the development firm Urban Partners LLC.

Noted: Ridley-Thomas's senior deputy for communications is Aurelio Rojas, the longtime former reporter for the Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Chronicle who was also a childhood friend of Antonio Villaraigosa, back in the Tony Vilar days.

OK, at least one more Gavin Newsom item. A day or so after the San Francisco Chronicle editorialized about Newsom turning into "a mystery man," he finally sat down with a TV political reporter to answer some questions. He didn't stay long.

With Newsom proving so entertaining in his new post-candidate mode, I talk about him (and a little about Antonio Villaraigosa, and their mutual admiration for TV news women) in today's LA Observed segment on KCRW. It airs at 4:44 p.m. (like most Fridays), or is available online in audio or text at KCRW.com. The text is also after the jump.

Quite a bit, according to the LA Weekly. Start with the Neon Tommy story's claim that the Weekly had just six full time editorial staffers:

It left out music editor Randall Roberts, web editor Erin Broadley, food blog editor Amy Scattergood, and copy editors Karre Jacobs and Mel Yiasemide. Editorial creative director Darrick Rainey, assistant art director Jason Jones and designer Mitch Handsone were also left out of the editorial head count. There are seven full-time print and web staff writers: Gendy Alimurung, Patrick Range McDonald, Libby Molyneaux, Christine Pelisek, Scott Foundas and Liz Ohanesian, who is also the online editorial assistant. On the part-time/regular-freelance tip there's critic at large Steven Leigh Morris, assistant listings editors Siran Babayan, Falling James and Derek Thomas, as well as columnists Nikki Finke, Jonathan Gold and Lina Lecaro. Neon Tommy also said the news blogger is an editor. We can assure you, he is not.

More by Dennis Romero at LA Daily.

*And Neon Tommy responds, via email:

We want to acknowledge that more than six people work in the editorial department of the L.A. Weekly and regret any suggestion to the contrary. Let it be noted, however, that the number six was not conjured up by our reporter but was, in fact, the number given to him by editor-in-chief Heikes. In retrospect, it’s clear that he was referring to his hard-news reporting staff, which indeed appears to be no more than six. The Weekly’s listing of its music editor and web manager and various art and tech support staff does nothing to alter the scope of the challenge that Heikes faces in building a credible and functional news department from such a tiny core reporting staff.

Beck's popular first order, Leiweke calls Trutanich's bluff, what it's like to be 33, gay and a deputy mayor, and the LAT's Rainey weighs in on Ruth Seymour. Plus a bit of catch-up from yesterday, tucked after the jump.

Today's Financial Times carries a story from Oceanside, Calif. on the differences in opinion in town over sending more Marines from Camp Pendleton to Afghanistan. The story, by Los Angeles correspondent Matthew Garrahan, is notable as a media moment of sorts for running on the web with the UK newspaper's first news video from Southern California. "It was shot and edited by Sean Ross, a very good local documentary/short film maker," Garrahan tells me.

Screen grab from FT.com

Now that City Council member Janice Hahn is running for Lieutenant Governor, the pace of press releases is creeping up inexorably toward one a day. The latest introduces the new website that's supposed to help her become familiar to the 25-plus million Californians who don't live in Los Angeles or know anything about her. There's also this video interview with the candidate by Robert Cruickshank of Calitics, the "progressive open source news organization for California politics."

Then there's this: Does California even need a Lieutenant Governor? Perhaps not.

Here's what I've been doing all morning: UCLA Newsroom.

New posts at LA Biz Observed and Native Intelligence.

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 Bay Area media has been running with tales of odd disappearances, uncharacteristic Twitter silence — candidate Newsom even tweeted his pregnant wife's labor — and this week's resignation of press secretary Nathan Ballard. He had been with Newsom since 2007, just after the mayor admitted to an affair with the wife of his campaign manager and sought help for an alcohol problem. More recently Newsom split with adviser Eric Jaye, and the San Francisco Chronicle has taken to referring to the "mayor's bizarre behavior of late."

Today, Chronicle columnists Matier & Ross say some of Newsom's behavior is explained by his new sense of being burned by — and wanting to get back at — the Bay Area media. Matier & Ross also have an item about the mayor's wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, getting special handling on a Southwest flight to Los Angeles on Monday.

Also in SF: New police chief George Gascón has taken a page from ex-boss William Bratton's playbook and endorsed local DA Kamala Harris for state attorney general.

Anh Do, a former columnist for the Orange County Register and vice president of Nguoi Viet Daily News (the largest Vietnamese-language newspaper in the U.S.), will be the managing editor of LA.Spot.Us. That's the local arm of Spot.Us, which calls itself the "only 'crowd-sourced' Web site that focuses on local, long-form reporting" and that raises money from readers for journalism projects. “Anh Do’s energy will help us explore this great city and use our platform to better serve the community,” said David Cohn, founder of Spot.Us., in a release from partner USC Annenberg. “She brings an open mind on how to use this platform along with journalism and news judgment that will benefit the site's development. It's exciting to work with USC, and Anh helps solidify that relationship."

Noted: Another citizen reporting site, AllVoices.com, says it's hiring reporters and freelancers in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Lynda Gorov, the former Boston Globe correspondent in L.A., is chief of correspondents. More info.

Click to view larger. See more by Steve Greenberg in the LA Sketchbook archive.

Curbed LA introduced a bold new look today, bringing the site more in line with others in the company's spreading empire, with more obvious links to the sister sites. We've got a major re-visualizing in the works ourselves (maybe), so I'm interested in some of their choices. From the explainer:

Since Curbed LA launched in November 2005, the visual look of this site has changed little. That was, until early this morning when the switch flipped on the aesthetic overhaul now seen before you. Do come in and make yourself comfortable.

For readers of Eater LA, the design will be familiar—it's a look based on the new feel brought to that family of blogs last month. For those who haven't seen this new look before, couple quick notes. We're aiming to make it easier to access recent news about individual neighborhoods—look for clear neighborhood links to the right of each post, and a full neighborhood list down the right column.

Check it out. I notice they're now segregating anonymous comments from those left by registered visitors.

OK, Mark Gold of Heal the Bay, how do you really feel about the owner of Malibu's Paradise Cove getting a big break from the state's clean water regulators, despite evidence that "Paradise Cove has long been one of the most polluted beaches in Santa Monica Bay?" Gold feels this way:

How did the most egregious serial Bay polluter of the 21st century get away with so many violations?

The Regional Water Board staff and attorneys made some egregious errors of their own in enforcing the case. Picture a serial felon getting released on probation because the police failed to read the accused his Miranda rights. That’s what happened here.

It's a tale of raw sewage forgiven, Gold says: "All of those men, women and children that got sick from swimming in the sewage polluted waters of Paradise Cove in the last 10 years have the Regional Board and the Kissel Co. to thank."