Catching up with some reading and email after a slow online day:

• Venice gets the 36 Hours treatment in Friday's NYT Escapes. Janelle Brown has the gig and visits the canals, The Rose, The Brig, Beyond Baroque and other local landmarks.
• Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood column is devoted to Disney's choice of Robert Iger to run the whole show. She's less than impressed by his warm-up performance: "There’s been so much trouble at Disney during Iger’s tenure that it’s hard to select just one screwed-up area, but let’s talk about the most costly: ABC."
• FilmStew's Richard Horgan reacts to the verdict and says "Blake and Bakley were a B-level odd couple for the ages. A washed up TV star and a groupie from hell; a Baretta and a barracuda."
• Los Angeles Magazine is in the running for two National Magazine Awards, finalists in General Excellence and in Photo Portfolio/Photo Essay for Robert Polidori's photographs of the 2003 fires. In the Essays category, Caitlin Flanagan is nominated for "How Serfdom Saved the Women’s Movement" in The Atlantic Monthly, and Ms for "Between a Woman and Her Doctor" by Martha Mendoza.
• Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes updates the Getty's search for a new museum director. Separately, crisis PR guru Michael Sitrick's office is on the case for the Getty, still tainted with bad ink over the awkward departure of Deborah Gribbon.
• The L.A. Times gave out its internal editorial awards, quietly this cost-cutting year instead of with a banquet and open bar in an expensive hotel ballroom (the Beverly Hills and Beverly Wilshire in the recent past.) Winners included the top Publisher's Prize to the reporters, photographer and editor of the King-Drew series, Editor's Prize to Robert Hilburn, opinion award to media columnist Tim Rutten, best writing to Erika Hayasaki and best sports reporting to new national baseball beat writer Tim Brown.
• Larry Mantle is out with a compilation of his radio interviews, This is AirTalk: 20 Years of Conversation on 89.3 KPCC, from Angel City Press. Patt Morrison wrote the foreword.
• CityfeedsLA has gone live with RSS-style excerpts and links to selected blog items that mention Los Angeles.
• Daniel Olivas is looking for submissions to a new anthology of fiction by Latino writers about "the seathing cauldron of soul and cariño - the City of Angels."
• Ron Fineman broke the news to his subscribers that Paula Abdul is under investigation for possibly being involved in a hit-and-run accident. His readers also voted Fritz Coleman of Channel 4 best weather anchor.
• Investigative Reporters and Editors is at the Renaissance Hollywood hotel this week for a national conference on computer-assisted reporting.