• Judge Dzintra Janavs bitch slapped Mayor Villaraigosa over his LAUSD compromise, David Zahniser writes in the LA Weekly.
  • Greg Stacy found out the hard way, after 600 weeks writing about film at OC Weekly, that the Mike Lacey regime at Village Voice Media is serious about cutting back on freelancers: "Matt Coker, my mensch of a film editor, made it clear that he liked my stuff and he’d keep using me until somebody expressly told him not to. And then, just a few days before Christmas, somebody expressly told him not to....I never really realized, until the moment I faced the prospect of finding some other way to earn a living, how much I’ve enjoyed doing this all these years."
  • The Best American Magazine Writing 2006 website at Columbia features an excerpt of David Foster Wallace's piece in The Atlantic on talk radio host John Ziegler and the whole KFI modus operandi. It includes the marginalia that made the piece such a fun read. Included in the anthology, but not online, is Jesse Katz's story "The Recruit" for Los Angeles magazine.
  • Wow: the San Francisco Giants gave Barry Zito the richest pitcher contract deal ever and will be stuck with have him for seven years. Rob Neyer at ESPN.com: "This looks to me like one of the dumber free-agent signings ever. Zito just isn't very good."
  • Veronique de Turenne thinks the LAT's house ad promoting its bloggers could be, well, a tad better.
  • Nice Q-and-A with LA Observed contributor Jenny Price at Gristmill, the blog of the environmental website Grist.
  • Ken Draper at CityWatch argues that 2006 was a good year for L.A.'s neighborhood councils. Brady Westwater disagrees, saying the city's Department of Neighborhood Empowerment "degenerated into a full time search and destroy mission against the NCs complete with secret documents, enemies lists and back-stabbing typical of the Nixon White House during Watergate."
  • The National Labor Relations Board brought a complaint against Wendy McCaw's Santa Barbara News-Press alleging unfair labor practices. The hearing is Feb. 26.
  • Gary Andrew Poole admits in USA Today that, for him, being a USC Trojans fan comes from "social identity guilt based on something called BIRGing — Basking In Reflected Glory."
  • Gold strike in old Pacoima?
© 2003-2009   •  About LA Observed  •  Email the editor
LA Biz Observed
7:18 AM Sun | More than 1,000 Toyota and Lexus owners have reported sudden acceleration problems over the last decade, resulting in 19 deaths.
Native Intelligence
Jenny Price | Advice for Greenies in a Complicated World
TJ Sullivan | Steve Jones, the self-proclaimed Sire of Wilshire (a nod to the physical address of his former home at Indie 103.1 FM), is back on the air!
Erika Schickel | She gaped at me like I was living history -- Miss Jane Pittman come to put her withered lips to the "Young Only" fountain straw of ageism.
Bill Boyarsky
As newspapers and television pull back from investigative reporting, foundations and other organizations are beginning to fill the void. One of the most interesting is Accountable California, a project of Local 721 of the Service Employees International Union.
Jenny Burman
Thinking more about buying less.
Here in Malibu
This drains to the ocean.
Sponsors
Jewish Journal logo
The California Wellness Foundation
Playa Vista ad
Blogads

Blogads Los Angeles network

Get RSS Feeds
of LA Observed
LA Observed publishes several Real Simple Syndication feeds for easy scanning of headlines. If you wish to subscribe to a feed, most popular RSS readers will do it for you. You can also enter the web address from the XML button below or click on a specific feed. For more help with RSS, try here or here.




Add to Google