Wednesday, 4.19.06

Kevin Roderick • April 19 2006 7:49 AM

I pull together a lot of the coverage of the mayor's schools plan—it's after the jump, along with students living in the USC library, Chief Bratton and the street homeless, an update on the Dowie-Stodder trial, Clippers get their playoffs match-up and much more. Click on the Buzz to get started...

♦ Front pages and news links

♦ Mayor Villaraigosa: Coverage of his speech and schools takeover plan:

Times: Bypassing voters, critics react, editorial.
Daily News: Revolution in education, advance script, editorial.
Daily Breeze: Mayor asks for control.
AP: Urges legislature to give control.
LA Weekly: Antonio Accelerated.
Jewish Journal: Competing moments of truth.
La Opini�n: Ambici�n.
TV: CBS-2, NBC-4 with Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, ABC-7 with video and John North interview.

♦ Trying to be cool: The L.A. Times generates a keyword cloud of the mayor's speech. Also, the Times posts the advance script and bills it as the full text of the speech, but it's not. For that you have to go here.

♦ Homeless at USC: Several students at the University of Southern California live in the Leavey Library, which is open 24 hours, the Daily Trojan reported yesterday.

"At first I thought I was the only one, but there's like a whole subculture that lives in Leavey," said the senior majoring in public policy, management and planning. He is among several students who regularly sleep at Leavey Library, which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week except for Sunday mornings, when it closes for cleaning. These students sleep in the library because they simply cannot afford the high cost of attending USC, despite grants, loans, part-time jobs and sometimes assistance from parents.

♦ Homeless rousting: LAPD chief William Bratton wants the city to aggressively appeal last week's homeless ruling.

♦ That's escheating: The city of Los Angeles has been seizing bonds from their rightful owners, in the name of "efficiency."

♦ Common sense?: While it's true that street crossing signals are way too short for many people, Steve Lopez still thinks that 82-year-old Mayvis Coyle got her jaywalking ticket for being too slow to finish crossing the street. Didn't she really get it for, allegedly, being too slow to begin crossing?

♦ Fleishman-Hillard trial: Eric Moses, the former Delgadillo communications director, was declared a "hostile witness" by the judge in the Doug Dowie-John Stodder trial for being unresponsive and recalcitrant under questioning. Moses, also a former Riordan deputy, worked on the DWP contract while at Fleishman-Hillard.

♦ Clippers win by losing: The Clippers got the playoff match they wanted—Denver in the first round—by losing last night.

♦ Needs to be said: We the small hockey nation of Los Angeles are fortunate to have Helene Elliott in town.

♦ Doing better: Former LAPD chief and state Senator Ed Davis is recovering from a bout with pneumonia.

♦ Village Voice: The cultural war brought on by new boss Mike Lacey—which may have implications at the LA Weekly—are looked at in the New York Observer.

More: Los Angeles | Morning Buzz

10:13 AM Sat | Reporter sort of does DWTS

9:36 AM Sat | Steve Barr leaving Green Dot schools

4:40 PM Fri | Peter Hong lands with Ridley-Thomas

4:17 PM Fri | Newsom breaks silence (snippily)

10:59 AM Fri | What Neon Tommy got wrong re: Weekly *

Go to LA Observed

Oprah's (sort of) big event

4:03 PM Fri | CBS and ABC have far bigger fish to fry - namely whether their stations can get back the auto and retail advertising that fell off a cliff in 2009.

Go to LA BIZ