Politics
Schwarzenegger blasts Romer
The governor calls the management of LAUSD "disastrous," and suggests that Supt. Roy Romer is just hanging on to this job — apparently not knowing that Romer has already announced his departure. The remarks came
seemingly unplanned at a gaggle with reporters on the campaign trail in Corona.
What I am trying to do is I am trying to be helpful to the mayor," Schwarzenegger said, "because whenever you say you want to change something, immediately you get attacked by the status quo, by those who want to hold on, like Roy Romer. He wants to hold on. He thinks it is perfect the way L.A. Unified School District has been run. He's wrong. It is horrible the way it has been run. It is disastrous. With any business in the world, if you had that kind of progress, you would be fired and they would change the system immediately."
When read a transcript of the governor's remarks, Romer's first reaction was a long, bemused laugh.
"The exaggeration in his remarks is absolutely surprising," Romer said. "There are many things that we are working on, that need to improve, but this district is very far from the status quo. I need to remind the good governor that when I came they hadn't built a new high school in 30 years. We have undertaken the most rapid development of new schools in the United States, in the history of the United States. He's just blowing in the wind."
Goldberg gets more than a minute
The Daily News
seems bothered that there is a one-minute speaking limit on the gadflies who address City Council meetings but that the rules were suspended for former council member Jackie Goldberg.
Grins
The Downtown News
asked readers if they can tell the difference between Mayor Villaraigosa and the Cheshire Cat from "Alice in Wonderland." It's also the Best of Downtown issue.
Media
McCaw's PR strategy all wrong
It's how not to handle a PR crisis, former Fleishman-Hillard exec John Stodder
advises on his blog.
Wendy McCaw, controversial owner of the Santa Barbara News-Press, parted company with San Francisco PR man Sam Singer about a week ago, and her new spokesperson is Agnes Huff of LA. But there is no discernable change in McCaw’s public relations strategy yet as today’s missive, reported by Kevin Roderick in LA Observed, demonstrates.
Now, the basic job of a PR advisor when a client is having a crisis is to help the client overcome his or her natural reticence to own up to problems, admit mistakes or even wrongdoing, and explain to the public what will be done to correct the problem. The reason a course of action like this is considered “good PR” is that it shifts the focus of the story to the future — what you’re going to do to fix things — while ending the cycles of revelation, denial and admission concerning the past. The client who takes that advice henceforward owns up to the events of the past, takes whatever heat derives from that and, to use the cliche, “moves on.”
Wendy McCaw does not seem ready to “move on,” and thus, her critics also will not move on.
Noted
It will go over the Red Line station and have the usual mix of shops below. The condos will be targeted at Koreans in K-Town. The mayor and friends break ground today.
Rupert Pole, Anais Nin's husband was 87
The executor of Nin's literary estate was found dead at home in Silver Lake on July 15.
Nice obit in the Times by Elaine Woo:
After her death in 1977, he oversaw the publication of four unexpurgated volumes of her erotic journals, which exuberantly detail her affairs with such men as novelist Henry Miller, psychoanalyst Otto Rank and her own father, Spanish composer Joaquin Nin. Seven previous volumes, which had been purged of much of the salacious material — as well as most references to her husbands — had established Nin as a cult figure, revered by many in the women's movement for her embrace of sexual freedom and exploration of the female psyche.
The uncensored diaries overseen by Pole sold thousands of copies and introduced Nin's work to a broader audience.
Today
LA Observed contributors around town
Cari Beauchamp guests on KPCC's "Patt Morrison" to talk about "Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary" and her work on early women in Hollywood. She's due on around 2:45 pm.
Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
