Ron Fineman lost his battle with colon cancer today. The founder of the television news website Ron Fineman's On the Record was taken off his respirator Dec. 21 and told Scott Martelle of the Times that day by phone, "As far as I'm concerned, I'm leaving this world having contributed something important, and I hope people remember me for that. Some people were angry with what I wrote, some people took it in stride, and professionally. The real pros looked at the content of what I wrote and realized there was merit to what I was saying." The obituary up now on LATimes.com has some nice quotes from readers and admirers:

He was like the conscience of television news reporting," said Don Barrett, a friend who runs the LARadio.com web site. "If he felt something wasn't exactly the way it should be -- pronunciations, approaches, leaving parts of the stories in or out that didn't belong -- he would point that out."

[snip]

"He never backed down from a fight," said Diane Thompson, a longtime friend and former colleague at KNX. "He was very tenacious, especially when he thought a TV station had really taken a downturn and gone the tabloid route."

[snip]

He won three Golden Mike awards for commentary, most recently in 2001 for work done for KPCC-FM....After several years as a disc jockey in Lompoc and Arroyo Grande, he joined KNTB, a Bakersfield talk radio station in 1981, then moved to KERN-AM/KQXR-FM. He returned to the Los Angeles area briefly then moved into television at KERO-TV in Bakersfield, where he remained until the mid-1990s before once again moving back to Los Angeles.

I'm quoted briefly as well. Fineman was married to Christy Knorr, a news producer at KCAL-9.