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The L.A. Times is dropping the shell that remains of its national edition. Once a full-scale newspaper sold on the street in Washington and New York as part of a national strategy, it recently had shrunk and was being faxed for free (with no paid ads) to fewer than 2,000 readers. Even that ends Dec. 22. "We've learned over the past year that most of our East Coast audience reads us on the Web," spokesman David Garcia said in the New York Times. Also:
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Today's new issue of gay magazine In Los Angeles has another special report on how the system failed Sarah Chavez, the two-year-old who died after being removed by county authorities from her lesbian foster parents.
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♦ Another key departure from the Los Angeles Business Journal: Amanda Bronstad is moving to the National Law Journal as Los Angeles correspondent.
♦ Two mornings after Tookie Williams died, the Times runs separate staff eyewitness accounts from columnist Steve Lopez and Sacramento bureau reporter Jenifer Warren. Gordon Smith, the L.A. bureau chief for Copley News, has his report in the Daily Breeze.
♦ The Engineers and Architects Assn. at City Hall is flacking a report that says the city has plenty of money, in hopes of getting the sweet raises that DWP workers got. So far it isn't working.
♦ Crash number eight on the Orange Line, another red light runner.
♦ The post-buyout LAT has posted internal job openings to replace religion writer Larry Stammer, federal courts reporter David Rosenzweig and deputy obituary editor Claudia Luther. Metro also wants an early morning general assignment reporter "who likes a variety of assignments, who likes to get news and news feature stories into the paper and wants to be a key part of the big breaking story. This assignment also works well for those who want to start the work day earlier and end it earlier." The memo from Metro overseer Janet Clayton adds that "other reporting assignments are expected to open up in the City-County bureau, courts, education and growth/immigration."
♦ State of the city: Councilman Greig Smith sent out a press release bragging that he will declare Saturday the "Day of the Horse" via videoconference hookup today between the city hall's downtown and in Van Nuys.
♦ L.A. author Richard Lange has sold Dead Boys, a collection of stories set in Los Angeles, and a novel to Little, Brown, says Publishers Lunch.
♦ Wholly unsurprising, Michael Hiltzik and Hugh Hewitt reach much different conclusions about their head-to-head on KRLA yesterday. Of course, nothing got settled.
♦ BoifromTroy reports from the weekend Cerrell and Associates holiday bash, a traditional gathering for L.A. pols and journos (and recently a few bloggers.)
♦ Director Ron Howard speaks with Elvis Mitchell today on The Treatment at 2:30 pm on KCRW.