KNBC News Conference *

I just taped a segment with host Conan Nolan to air Sunday at 9 am. Political analysts Arnold Steinberg and Darry Sragow are on first to discuss Gov. Schwarzenegger's hiring of Democrat Susan Kennedy as his chief of staff. Then I talk about Wilshire Boulevard and touch a little on what's going on at the Times. "News Conference" comes on right after "Meet the Press" on Channel 4.

* More shameless self-promotion: Sunday 5:30 pm

David Ulin calls Wilshire Boulevard "a work of urban anthropology" in the "Favorite Books of 2005" edition of the LAT Book Review.

My Zócalo interview with Times Editor Dean Baquet from November aired Friday on C-SPAN in the American Perspectives slot. LA36 also offers video on demand through the website.

The LA Observed visitor stats for November are in: another record month, even with the holiday and minus the traffic that was lost last week when the server shut it down for several hours by mistake. Bandwidth use jumped 18% in November. Items about Robert Scheer and doings at the Times took nine of the top ten most-read pages. The vast majority of you clicked here from your own bookmarks and favorites, but pointers from other web sites and search engines also accounted for 120,000 hits. Some of those details after the jump: