Catch up time

Photographer Gary Leonard's archive of 40 years of Los Angeles ephemera and artifacts—menus, flyers, concert tickets and other hard to replace historical items—was soaked by a leaky roof in his Echo Park storage room. He's salvaging some of it, but LAPL photo curator Carolyn Kozo Cole says: "It's heartbreaking. Every day he is discovering something else lost and damaged." Bob Pool's LAT story calls Leonard's collection "Los Angeles' most unusual cultural record." Leonard says:

"I'd always worried in the back of my mind about a fire. But I never thought about a flood...."

"I thought of this as my retirement," he said as he pulled a wrinkled and stained 1972 photograph of artist Andy Warhol from a pile. "I'm an independent photojournalist. I don't have a company retirement plan. I would have been able to sell some of this. A lot of this would have supported me."

And a very quick round-up:
• Chico State's president was mighty upset with Tuesday's LAT story about a frat hazing death, calling it "a poor piece of writing and research." A For the Record in Thursday's Times admits to three factual errors (including that the dead guy didn't die) and quoting the university president without speaking with him.
• Hahn got the endorsement of county supe Mike Antonovich, who backed Parks in the primary. Villaraigosa added Richard Close and other Valley secession leaders, plus groups that represent Latino, black and Asian American LAPD officers. Meanwhile, Joe Scott blogs that Hahn's insistence on calling his opponent "Antonio" reminds him of the 1969 campaign when Yorty tried to denigrate Tom Bradley by using solely his first name. Scott was Bradley's press secretary.
• The New York Observer delves into Elaine Lafferty's quiet but not altogether happy departure as editor of Ms. The rest of the staff waits to find out what's up.
• FishBowlLA reports on the birth of The Huffington Report, a new webzine from Arianna which will include a group blog for which the group includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Larry David, Barry Diller and others. The story originated with Greg Lindsay at Business 2.0.