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Archive by Month
August 31, 2005
Every week the Southern California Booksellers Association canvasses its member stores to find out what readers are buying. Here are the top fives from today's...
Colleen Wainwright reports at Blogging.la that an L.A. Times circulation clerk offered her a lower price to take the paper for more days, if only...
Louise Roug, who has been on the L.A. Times' Getty Museum beat, is moving on to cover an institution with less wealth, simpler politics and...
I just caught up with the new blog of screenwriter Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds, Black Dahlia), and now I can't get any work...
Ripped from the headlines at Dateline Hollywood, TV evangelist Pat Robertson has called for another well-known figure who annoys him to be assassinated. That would...
Dodger Thoughts blogger Jon Weisman got up this morning and realized that the Milton Bradley incident nicely summarizes why he quit being a sportswriter at...
If you've been watching the video from New Orleans and wondering why the city wasn't better prepared, consider this intro to a five-part "special report"...
Here's how it works: You send your resume, writing samples, family info and agent status to an anonymous email address. Then you submit to a...
A little morning briefing... • Brian Cullen, the suspected killer of model Iryna Singerman, was found dead in a Tijuana motel room. Authorities say he killed...
Dodger Milton Bradley spoke to the press Tuesday, in a fashion. The team's crisis PR adviser Sitrick an—oops, I mean Bradley—issued a statement through the...
August 30, 2005
The Los Angeles Fire Department has put water-rescue specialists, inflatable boats and vehicles on military transports to New Orleans, Brian Humphrey says at the LAFD...
Village Voice Media, which owns the LA Weekly among other papers, and New Times are in serious talks about merging to create a new 18-paper...
It's Charles McNulty. He's a senior editor at the Village Voice and teaches at Brooklyn College. He used to work at Variety. The previous theater...
Police in Redondo Beach have answered three domestic violence calls at Milton Bradley's home this summer, the Daily Breeze reports today. In a July 11...
• The L.A. Conservancy threw in the towel on the fight to save the Ambassador Hotel from demolition. The school board votes today on a plan...
August 29, 2005
I'm told that the Writers Guild of America, West board tonight rescinded its decision to give the group's prestigious Valentine Davies Award to defrocked...
Good lede by Matt Meyerhoff on this week's L.A. Business Journal front-pager about TV huckster Ron Popeil, who is now 70 years old, cashing out...
The reporter noted for her Michael Jackson coverage emailed a fan club that she was dropped by Court TV last week. Here's an excerpt of...
Nice image from New Orleans on the front of the LAT (at least in the early edition.) It's by Mark Wilson of Getty Images....
• KCAL and KTTV each won nine local Emmy Awards on Saturday night. Among the top honors, KCBS won for best daytime newscast ("CBS2 News" at...
August 28, 2005
These were some of the best-read or most emailed-about LAO items from the past week. I might do this every week. Anybody find it useful?...
August 27, 2005
* Late adds pinned to the end... This one is a week old, but I don't care. Enjoy the L.A. River as you've probably not...
The National Weather Service has issued a "hazardous weather outlook" advisory, and the Daily News publishes a chart of safety tips in today's paper. The...
Grady Miller writes in the LAT's Weekend Calendar about a challenging rite of L.A. life, the left turn: In the asphalt labyrinth called Los Angeles,...
The Florida gator-nabbers who were summoned to save Machado Lake from the terror of Reggie have called it quits for now—just like the Colorado wranglers...
Record producer Christian Julian Irwin wasn't being chased by killers with dogs or by Nigerian Internet scammers, L.A. sheriff's deputies say. After going missing for...
Tim Rutten's Saturday column in the LAT, nominally about the declining audience for Republican radio, posits that "While the political talk-show hosts and right-wing bloggers...
August 26, 2005
Downtown's shuttered Herald Examiner building at 11th Street and Broadway is going to become offices and condos, with a surrounding residential complex featuring a pair...
Wilson's play "Radio Golf" is enjoying a well-received, laugh-filled run at the Mark Taper Forum. Today comes word out of Seattle, however, that the 60-year-old...
Pretty bad. Does anyone remember that the Dodgers ended last season on their highest high in many years? Forget the nonsense about being in second...
• Jill Murphy, the Getty's 33-year-old chief of staff with no art background, is leaving and apparently won't be missed. Her mentor since college at Cal...
August 25, 2005
The Times editorial page broke into conventional programming today with its second installment of Our So Cal Life. Instead of the usual third unsigned editorial...
Rolling blackouts are occuring across Southern California today, supposedly due to the heat and loss of a power transmission line. About 500,000 people have been...
News on the local sports talk scene. Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton, who moved to XTRA Sports (570 AM) when it subsumed what used to be the...
The Times is getting credit from Defamer and elsewhere for today's story on Scarlett Johansson’s 911 call, placed after she had a fender-bender near Disneyland...
David L. Ulin's choice as Book Editor of the L.A. Times is starting to get good blog reviews. Mark Sarvas at The Elegant Variation wishes...
The first hotel in Century City, opened in 1966, fetched $293 million from Global Hyatt Corp., the L.A. Business Journal says. At $403,000 per room,...
The New York Daily News reports today that Mayor Villaraigosa will host a fundraiser here on Monday for Fernando Ferrer, the Democrat who is trying...
This is the month that Variety's glossy VLife hits newsstands and begins to find out if there's any (v)life separate from the trade's subscriber list....
• That's Daily News sports columnist Tom Hoffarth in the photo, taking a parachute jump with an instructor at Lake Perris. It's front and center on...
August 24, 2005
Did the LA Weekly try to muscle in as the sole media purveyor at this weekend's Sunset Junction street festival? A "media muckups" piece in...
It's been a busy day for personnel moves down at the Times, in Dean Baquet's second week on the job. First the paper gets a...
That elusive alligator is still loose in Machado Lake, but two men suspected of releasing the gator in Harbor Regional Park two months ago were...
The New York Times' most gonzo Los Angeles correspondent hasn't had a byline in the paper since April 14, prompting colleagues, rivals and competitors to...
David Kipen, the Malibu-dwelling book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, is the new Director of Literature at the National Endowment for the Arts. Here's...
When Dean Baquet became LAT editor, speculation swirled around the future of Deputy Managing Editor Joe Hutchinson. He came from the Baltimore Sun with the...
The Times has named David L. Ulin to run the Book Review. Ulin authored most recently The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction and the...
The Michael Kinsley-to-Atlantic Monthly rumors are raised then dismissed in today's New York Observer. He had breakfast in Seattle with the magazine's owner, David Bradley,...
The former ABC News reporter who worked closely with Chief William Bratton in New York and followed him to the LAPD is leaving for Washington....
• Channel 2 won't renew the contract of political editor Linda Breakstone after eleven years, RonFineman.com reports. No additional details, except that political reporter Dave Bryan...
August 23, 2005
Councilwoman Janice Hahn is getting all territorial about the reclusive reptile that is putting Machado Lake and Harbor City on the pop culture map. A...
Janet Arvizo, the mother whose teenage son was at the center of the molestation charges for which Michael Jackson stood trial, herself was charged today...
Mayor Villaraigosa's new police commission today chose John Mack to be president of the panel that oversees Chief Bratton and the LAPD. He was president...
Melissa Lalum was named today as the new managing editor of the Daily News. A nice round of applause greeted her introduction in the newsroom,...
Yesterday was a slow day around here—preoccupied with other summer pursuits, you know. We'll see how today shapes up, but here are some morning links......
August 22, 2005
The 1947Project, the creative blog trip through a year in L.A. crime culture by Kim Cooper and Nathan Marsak, has thrown in with Rodger Jacobs'...
• Rocky Delgadillo is mini-profiled in Monday's LAT by Michael Finnegan, who says the city attorney's political advisers are calling themselves Team 1600 — "as in...
August 20, 2005
Quick, test your grasp of Los Angeles vehicle culture: which model of car or truck sells the most here? A) Toyota Prius - everybody's talking...
I walked Wilshire the other day from Alvarado (Langer's Deli, at Seventh and Alvarado) to Western with a group that is looking at sending tourists...
To go with the smelly red tides and prolific jellyfish, the beach vibe has been hurt by flat surfing waves. "This is as bad a...
Brian Flemming is back in the news—at least in the L.A. Times—with a "Beliefs" page feature on his new hour-long documentary questioning the existence of...
First up on the LATimes.com podcast lineup are travel tips from Jane Engle and some past Column One stories. The page includes podcasting tips to...
August 19, 2005
I confess I haven't been monitoring all of the media buzz, so the first name I've seen given to the Menace of Machado Lake comes...
Noelia Rodriguez, the former Deputy Mayor for communication in the Riordan years who did a stint as press secretary for First Lady Laura Bush, didn't...
Hard as it is to visualize, the urban sprawl that spills seaward from Compton to Long Beach and Redondo Beach used to be a giant,...
Some links and things to know for getaway day... • The Daily News proclaims its own staff artist, Gregg Miller, the "best-dressed guy in the San...
August 18, 2005
Gawker has the memo: Elizabeth Leonard, the deputy bureau chief in the Wilshire Boulevard offices of People magazine, has been quickly promoted to West Coast...
I could almost do a standing daily feature on the interesting story du jour about Los Angeles in the New York Times. (And maybe I...
Links, things to know and observations to start the day. • Writer, humorist, KCRW impresario and blogger Harry Shearer has sold his first novel. Not Enough...
Pretty soon the wily alligator or caiman—take your pick—that is vacationing at Machado Lake is going to get a cute name and media immortality. He...
August 17, 2005
Shanghai-born Esther Wong began booking punk and new wave bands into her Polynesian-themed Chinatown club in 1978, hoping to increase the meager crowds. It worked....
Tonight's Which Way, L.A.? with Warren Olney looks at the issues of race and class in the fight over King-Drew Medical Center. Elected county Supervisors...
The Times website has been carrying audio reports out of the Gaza Strip from Jerusalem correspondent Ken Ellingwood. Today he's in Neve Dekalim and talks...
Amy Argetsinger, who has been out here on temporary assignment in the Washington Post L.A. bureau, was named today as one of the paper's two...
Tribune bosses Dennis Fitzsimons and Scott Smith didn't bring good news to the Times building today. Full-run advertising in the Times fell 11% in July,...
Wayne Tanda, the general manager of the city Department of Transportation, up and resigned today after just three years. That means Mayor Villaraigosa will get...
Mack Reed has gotten his blog back online. LAVoice.org....
Boston Globe editor Marty Baron shoots down talk that he would leave his #1 perch to become #2 at the L.A. Times. Baron's name had...
The community blog run by Mack Reed is still offline this morning grappling with a hacker attack. It looks like Mack has finally been table...
On Day Six, they couldn't agree whether it's a caiman or an alligator. Nor could the barefoot gator wranglers from Colorado trap the tortilla-gobbling, raw...
LAPD Wife posts word of a new club for the wives of officers. From the group's website: The LAPD Wives Club is for women dating,...
I keep hearing tons of amazed buzz about the Tim Hawkinson exhibit at LACMA—more than I hear about King Tut. On yesterday's All Things Considered...
The Times' Column One story today is all about Fred Brito, aka Federiqkoe DiBritto III, the Eastside con man who talked his way into a...
Trying a slightly new look to these shorts... • Former mayor Richard Riordan has joined the local office of Bingham McCutchen, the Boston law firm that...
August 16, 2005
Blogger Steve Smith posts his astonishment that longtime baseball figure Bobby Bragan just became, at age 87, the oldest pro baseball manager—and the oldest to...
Some anonymous jerks keep hacking Mack Reed's blog LAVoice.org. He's offline now (except for RSS feeds, which are getting through), and may be for awhile....
I've posted before about Laura, who blogs about her tribulations with oropharyngeal cancer at Kevin's Dead Cat. The intro banner there now reads: "After surgery...
Mayor Villaraigosa filled open slots on a slew of commissions today. The appointees include the wife of county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, the former husband of...
On Day 5 of the Great Caiman Hunt in Harbor City, experts fly in (from Colorado, not South America) and a woman tells the Breeze...
LA.com is jumping into the traffic biz with a monthly newsletter of commuter tips called Car Keys. The first edition carries links to traffic-related stories...
Time magazine's cover this week unveils its take on the "25 Most Influential Hispanics in America." Locals meriting mini-bios include Antonio Villaraigosa, of course (looking...
Roger Ebert's Chicago Sun-Times review gives zero stars to Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo and also recounts last February's little spat between Rob Schneider, the film's...
August 15, 2005
Timothy M. Gray is the new Editor of Variety and Daily Variety. In a shuffle of positions at the trades last year, he became executive...
Go figure: Two-plus years of L.A. Observed with no references to People magazine West Coast Bureau Chief Todd Gold, then two mentions in less than...
The Times quietly dropped "Dear Abby" from the feature pages a week ago, then waited to see if anyone noticed. Almost no one did. At...
Monday was Dean Baquet's first day on the masthead as Editor of the L.A. Times. Besides holding a half-dozen conferences on stories with reporters and...
Friends and family of the late Times media and food critic David Shaw celebrated his life Sunday at Stephen S. Wise Temple. Times film critic...
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's appointments to the Department of Water and Power commission are as previously rumored and reported: Mary Nichols, Nick Patsaouras, David Nahai, Bill...
Kids down in Harbor City aren't fazed by the six- to eight-foot caiman that has moved into Machado Lake—they threw tortillas at the pseudo-croc. Well...
Longtime local conservative blogger Xrlq posts that he has been summarily banned from posting comments at Hit and Run, the blog of (loosely) Los Angeles-based...
Rick Orlov's Tipoff column in today's Daily News quotes the best line that the late city councilman from "the great Ninth District" (as Lindsay used...
I can sorta see why they break in for Amber Alerts, but in these days of narrowcasting and hyper-targeted cable niches why would Comcast interrupt...
August 14, 2005
Monday's New York Times reports that the Getty Museum is "in final negotiations" to hire Michael Brand, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,...
Sounds like there are a ton of insider references in Hollywood Hussein, the new novel by Ken Baker, West Coast editor for Us Weekly. Monday's...
Mayor Villaraigosa will be the guest editor for the next collection of student writing from 826LA, the Dave Eggers-inspired group based in Venice. The students...
What do North Hollywood, Tarzana, Glendale, Rancho Park and the heart of Hollywood have in common? They each have entire zip codes where the median...
* Newest at the bottom • Will Campbell blogs revealingly about the anticipation of meeting his estranged 15-year-daughter for the first time in five years. She...
August 12, 2005
Hollywood's sound stages and location crews are swamped these days. At her blog Totally Unauthorized, Peggy Archer regularly posts about what it's like from the...
The L.A. Times has a story saying that American Media, the tabloid publisher that backed off Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was running for governor and...
• City Council President Alex Padilla was "near tears" during an intense closed-session fight over hiring a new legislative analyst for the council, the Times' Steve...
August 11, 2005
Plans to demolish The Derby on Los Feliz Boulevard and build condos have got some Los Felizians in an uproar. The fledgling Save the...
Denise Fairchild has been thinking of running against former Speaker Herb Wesson for the open 10th district seat on the City Council. She hired Villaraigosa...
Big story on the front page of today's Washington Post tries to make sense of the Census Bureau stat that the urban sprawl around Los...
CityBeat runs a piece on the frustrations of small newspapers like, well, CityBeat, over the city's coming newsrack ordinance. Every newspaper dispenser on the street...
• The last radio station to be located in Hollywood leaves Friday at 11:05 p.m., Bob Pool says in the LAT. • All the high-profile ankling from...
September's Vanity Fair has six images from photographer Tim Street-Porter's new entry on the list of books that are titled simply Los Angeles. I don't...
August 10, 2005
The Beverly Hills home where George and Ira Gershwin wrote some of their famous songs has been quietly demolished despite efforts to save it, the...
Author Frances Dinkelspiel heard new LAT Magazine Editor Rick Wartzman pitch the magazine this week at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She blogs the...
Mack Reed's website LAVoice.org already stood apart among local blogs as a place that welcomes disparate voices to have their say about whatever is on...
The L.A. Times website has a hit on its hands. Last Friday's story about revealing tapes Marilyn Monroe supposedly made for her psychiatrist in the...
An email from an editor on the LAT features side says the Times has dropped "Dear Abby" after umpteen years. Something about a $20,000 renewal...
• Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys throws up a new hurdle for NFL football coming back to Los Angeles. Times • Big raises for DWP employees...
August 09, 2005
The Jewish Journal has posted a story saying that charter schools entrepreneur Steve Barr will unveil on Thursday a proposal to take over racially troubled...
Rikki Klieman, the Court TV legal analyst and wife of LAPD chief William Bratton, is guest hosting for the vacationing Bill Handel on KFI this...
Alan Pavlik at the blog As Seen from Just Above Sunset photographed the brush fire that burned about 25 acres this evening in the Hollywood...
Interesting graphic on page B2 in today's Times (and on the website in PDF format.) The paper's data analysis unit headed by Doug Smith mapped...
Erwin Baker used to be the Times' City Council reporter and by virtue of longevity was crowned the "dean of City Hall reporters" before that...
We have another new Editor in town. Ron Kaye, longtime Managing Editor at the Daily News, got the top job this afternoon. Every Daily News...
Mayor Villaraigosa's pro-environment appointments are analyzed by Copley's David Zahniser in today's Breeze. He includes Mary Nichols and David Nahai, who he reports are expected...
Novelist Walter Mosley's latest Easy Rawlins mystery, Little Scarlet, is set right after the 1965 Watts riot. He writes on today's LAT op-ed page that...
Still catching up to the backlog... • CityBeat's current "Real. Best. LA" theme issue is the largest yet at 108 pages. Fun tidbits include the revelation...
August 08, 2005
It has been thirteen years since a true skyscraper opened in Los Angeles—the last one completed was the 52-story California Plaza II tower on Bunker...
Mayor Villaraigosa has appointed Robert M. Saltzman to the City Ethics Commission. Saltzman is Associate Dean of the University Of Southern California School Of Law....
Terree Bowers left his job as chief deputy to City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo recently to specialize in white-collar criminal defense as a partner at the...
Both LA.com and Defamer got some credit in Sunday's New York Times Travel section for shining light on the excessive celebrity-and-hipster sucking-up going on at...
August 04, 2005
Can't let it go unmentioned that Army Archerd will write his last regular column for Variety on Sept. 1. He will still file occasional reports....
If I post at all in the next few days, it will be of the quick variety. Meanwhile, perusing the July logs has been fun....
No, Danny Bakewell is not stepping down from his duties at the helm of the Los Angeles Sentinel. But he is retiring at the end...
KFI's Eric Leonard reported Wednesday afternoon that the LAPD's John Miller has been offered an FBI job. Miller was on vacation and unavailable to comment,...
August 03, 2005
While I was traveling today, my in-box was filling up with the stunner that Dean Singleton acquired The Detroit News, converted it to a morning...
Not just a semi-vacation week, but a travel day too. • The New York Times catches up on David Shaw, General Motors and the Getty probe....
Whatever may or may not be going on between Dodgers pitcher Derek Lowe and Fox Sports West Dodgers reporter-anchor Carolyn Hughes is breaking out as...
August 02, 2005
General Motors has cancelled its punitive boycott of the L.A. Times and resumed advertising. Many dealers had never pulled their ads from the paper, but...
Told you it was going to be a light week... • The state AG has requested eight years worth of records on Barry Munitz's compensation and...
August 01, 2005
David Shaw won the Pulitzer prize for his media reporting in the L.A. Times. He died tonight of complications from a brain tumor that was...
The Dodgers didn't make any deals at the baseball trading deadline, but Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa added some key players today. Cecile Ablack is the new...
This is going to be a light mid-summer week for me. But here's something to get you started. • The hoary old Olympic Auditorium—excuse me, the...
© 2003-2008 • About LA Observed • Contact the editor
| This is not a great time to walk off your job, but does that mean much to the 80,000 SAG members who barely make any money as actors?
| The new owner is Minneapolis-based US Bancorp, which suddenly becomes a much bigger player in California and Arizona.
| Without referencing its recent layoff, the Ventura County Star's editor says the suburban LA paper is now "more streamlined and, in many ways, much more efficient."
| We stripped the Indians of their ponies, and now we're doing it to ourselves.
| When the sun looks like that, there's a big fire somewhere regardless of whether we see or smell smoke.
Lee Abrams, Tribune Company's chief innovation officer, doesn’t seem too impressed with the Los Angeles Times. That’s the feeling I got when he appeared at the Los Angeles Press Club.
Seven or fifteen minutes from now I can definitively say I didn't hear the sound of sirens.
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