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Archive by Month
February 28, 2006
Dennis McDougal, author of Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the LA Times Dynasty, gave a lecture on his subject and...
Sam Lanni, the owner of Safari Sam's, has gone public with a rant about City Hall bleeding him dry before he can open his long-awaited...
Alice Short, editor of the daily Calendar and Thursday Weekend Calendar sections at the Los Angeles Times, is moving off the features floor and upstairs...
Channels 2 and 9 are out with a discovery by David Goldstein that carbon monoxide levels are high at several Southern California ice rinks. Propane-powered...
People care about this stuff and write in. Today several readers noticed that the Times got two names wrong in the Eddie Nalbandian obituary in...
Variety has hired Monica Corcoran away from In Style's Los Angeles bureau to replace Ginny Chien as style editor, today's Women's Wear Daily says. Corcoran...
Why the Los Angeles Times may be getting some new window blinds, blog reaction to the death of Otis Chandler, Channel 5's anchors accept a...
February 27, 2006
⇒ USC Annenberg awarded the Selden Ring investigative reporting prize to the Washington Post for stories on Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Copley News Service reporters...
What is it the last couple of days? Add actor Dennis Weaver to the list of newly passed. Also, John Rabe did a piece today...
Tomorrow's printed Los Angeles Times obituary on Otis Chandler will run over five to six pages and be one of the longest the paper has...
Channel 5 is promoing up close and personal time with Corina Villaraigosa on tonight's Prime News at 10 pm. They call it the first prolonged...
OK the hed's kind of a joke, but it is supposed to rain hard starting today. Channel 4's website links to the NWS flood and...
A suspicious backpack or duffel bag in the parking lot at the El Monte station has closed down that leg of Metrolink. A bomb squad...
The last family publisher of the Los Angeles Times died this morning at home in Ojai at age 78. Otis Chandler had suffered from a...
Going to New York to evaluate the mayor's school takeover plan, popping the algebra question, Hollywood Hell Week begins, Stacey Snider makes the downward leap—plus...
February 26, 2006
Last week was a good one for LA Observed scoops. Here are some talked-about posts from the past seven days: Ensign Eric Garcetti, U.S. Naval...
Author Steven Barnes is reporting on his blog (picked up by Boing Boing, where Cory Doctorow calls the news confirmed) that Octavia Butler has died...
February 25, 2006
Eagle-eyed reader Doug Thomson spotted the paid obituary in Saturday's Los Angeles Times for Edward G. Nalbandian, better known as Eddie in TV commercials for...
The longtime comic actor, who lived here in West Los Angeles, died of lung cancer yesterday at UCLA. Knotts was best known as Deputy Barney...
Fed all weekend, with new ones at the bottom... ⇒ Layoffs at the Los Angeles offices of Clear Channel, reports Franklin Avenue. ⇒ West magazine's...
The war of words between the United Farm Workers union and the Los Angeles Times continues. To catch you up, the Times in January ran...
February 24, 2006
Kyle Ballard was jogging with other Pasadena PD officers at the Rose Bowl Friday morning when he collapsed. The Pasadena Weekly has posted a web...
A piece in today's LAT Calendar asks why author Kate Braverman isn't more famous in Los Angeles, her hometown. She is more than happy to...
This could have come right out of a script for "Emergency!"— or "Rescue 8," the 1950s show starring Jim Davis that gave birth to a...
Full plate for a Friday morning: Plaschke rips the silver from Sasha Cohen's neck, Steve Cooley's least favorite Mexican fugitive is nabbed, the Writers Guild...
February 23, 2006
New manager Grady Little doesn't have many rules for the Dodgers, but he does have one. In a multi-lingual, multi-cultural clubhouse where cliques have been...
Skid Row's most recognizable recent drug bustee pleaded guilty this morning to "attempted possession of heroin." Actor Brad Renfro will get three years probation and...
Xbiz reports that Penthouse is building a 50,000-square-foot production studio in Glendale to help launch its new cable channel. . CEO Marc Bell Bell "wouldn’t...
Orange County Register investigative editor Mark Katches emailed his staff yesterday about losing one of his prized reporters to the Los Angeles Times: "As staff...
Maria Elena Durazo watch begins, the Z Man appears in the LA Weekly, "Ask a Mexican" cracks Column One, questions about Ed Boks—all this and...
February 22, 2006
One of the new cardinals of the Roman Catholic church named today by Pope Benedict XVI has a Los Angeles past. Archbishop William J. Levada,...
The Times website is rolling out some design tweaks today—press Ctrl-F5 on a PC to reload the new stylesheet if the pages look screwy at...
Tribune stock has lost 27% in value since the start of 2005 and most of its newspapers went through layoffs and are losing readers and...
In case you didn't catch enough premature Oscar buzz the first time around, the LAT is publishing the best of The Envelope and other Times...
Malibu Sheriff's sergeant Philip Brooks dished out an amusing dose of skepticism about the story given by Swedish millionaire Stefan Eriksson to explain yesterday's crash...
Another near-miss at LAX, Vin Scully signs on for three more years (but that's probably it), chiding Erin Aubry Kaplan on race, the editor of...
February 21, 2006
You better be getting up early. Plans call for the world's largest cruise ship to appear at the entrance to the Port of Los Angeles...
⇒ Terry Christensen appeared in federal court to plead not guilty to charges implicating him in illegal wiretapping of Kirk Kerkorian's wife by Anthony Pellicano....
Josh Getlin, New York bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, is moving over to the Calendar staff to cover the publishing beat. He will...
After taking the weekend to ponder his future, County Fed executive secretary-treasurer Martin Ludlow quit today and says he is cooperating with the federal investigation...
Would you believe Jackie Goldberg for school superintendent? Rampant talk of that, plus good press for Alan Rothenberg, the mystery ooze of Olive Street takes...
Starting this morning, more than 5,000 would-be lawyers begin taking the three-day California Bar Exam. Many will see their career hopes crash and burn. If...
LA Observed is the first blog to have its content licensed by NewsBank, which provides libraries and schools with material from newspapers, TV and radio...
February 20, 2006
Today's New York Times has a piece on the post-Katrina travails of LAT editor Dean Baquet's New Orleans family, some of which is still transplanted...
Blogging.la and the rest of the Metroblogging empire this afternoon unveiled a thorough redesign. Gray shades, bigger pictures and bolder text are among the visual...
Ray Richmond quit his Hollywood Reporter column in December to jump to E! Entertainment Television as director of corporate and trade publicity. Tomorrow he jumps...
On the eve of the scheduled San Quentin execution of convicted killer Michael Morales, his lawyer Kenneth Starr talks about the case with Warren Olney...
Murder sprees in Venice (maybe) and the gangland of Panorama City-North Hills...How Darry Sragow came to hire former Roy Romer advisor Glenn Gritzner at Sonnenschein...
I have a piece on Council President Eric Garcetti in the March issue of Los Angeles, out but not online. It talks about his rising...
Slow morning for the holiday. Here are some highlights from the past week at LA Observed: Terry Christensen indicted in Pellicano case New York Times...
February 19, 2006
Dave Sifry of Technorati tracks what bloggers link to and notes in his latest report that the New York Times receives by far the most...
February 18, 2006
* Newest shorts at the bottom... ⇒ More subplots in the Anthony Pellicano affair, a thirteenth defendant and Leslie Abramson joins the case. Also, the...
Mimosa and Cafe Beaujolais L.A. Ritz Sunshine in a basket LAPD Wife Lebowski Fest West 2006 Sergio Leone & the Infield Fly Rule Official Skunks...
February 17, 2006
Today's Daily Journal (no link) features a front-page piece on John Stodder, the indicted former Fleishman-Hillard executive turned blogger who I began telling you about...
Trevor Butterworth argues in the Financial Times that, as a business model, blogs never were here. Blogging will no doubt always have a place as...
John Broder is returning to the Washington bureau of the New York Times, and will be replaced as Los Angeles bureau chief this summer by...
Martin Ludlow's possible political demise is what the clued-in class will be chattering about this morning, but there's also a Republican move to break up...
Rumors about Villaraigosa intimate Martin Ludlow swept California political circles all week and finally make it into print in Friday's LAT: Sources say the former...
February 16, 2006
The February issue of TPR talks to Corbin Smith, project manager of the Getty Villa transformation, and also with Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller and...
The city Cultural Heritage Commission overruled the staff and decided to hear a nomination for historic-cultural monument status for The Derby in Los Feliz. It...
Mayor Villaraigosa's press conference du jour was to announce the members of his newly created panel on homeland security. Councilman Jack Weiss co-chairs with Deputy...
Will Campbell at blogging.la (last night), Carolyn Kellogg at LAist and Brady Westwater (this morning) blogged about last evening's forum on homelessness at the Times...
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Speaker Fabian Núñez plan to campaign on the Eastside tomorrow for Mónica García, their anointed candidate for the open school board...
Village Voice Media maximum editor Michael Lacey talked to Boston's The Phoenix about what the New Times takeover will mean at the Village Voice—and, I...
February 15, 2006
Today's front pagesNew York Times See/Read Washington Post See/ReadLA Times See/ReadDaily News See/ReadDaily Breeze See/ReadPress-Telegram See/Read Register See/ReadStar-News Read Variety ReadHwd Reporter ReadLa Opinión Read Slate:...
A federal grand jury charges that Terry Christensen, 65, paid private eye Anthony Pellicano at least $100,000 to wiretap Lisa Bonder Kerkorian, the wife of...
The tiny Santa Monica breakfast and lunch spot has a sign in the window saying it will close in March. I guess having Catherine Keener...
Inspired by yesterday's long-lost amusement parks post, Susan at 2020 Hindsight spools out her Pike stories....
Jim Bursch at West L.A. Online is peeved at the Daily News for some language in today's news story about the jaw-dropping cost of extending...
Those left-turn arrows going in at 160 new Los Angeles intersections will mostly be of the kind that switch to a full green light—"green ball"...
Michael Kinsley was dismissed as editor material for The Atlantic last summer, and he acknowledges in today's New York Observer that he has never been...
Maybe it's been around awhile, I just didn't know of takemypicture.com. Not much information about the photographer— well none really—but Leonard's gallery of Los Angeles...
From the Los Angeles Fire Department news blog: This morning, more than a dozen public agencies in the Greater Los Angeles area will be participating...
As of today, new names eligible for election to The Baseball Reliquary's Shrine of the Eternals include the creator of Strat-o-Matic, a one-eyed umpire, the...
Today's front pagesNew York Times See/Read Washington Post See/ReadLA Times See/ReadDaily News See/ReadDaily Breeze See/ReadPress-Telegram See/Read Register See/ReadStar-News Read Variety ReadHwd Reporter ReadLa Opinión Read...
February 14, 2006
The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles informed members today of another defection by an unhappy congregation. He doesn't mention the Episcopal Church's...
Jon Weisman notes at Dodger Thoughts that the real spring training has begun. The baseball beat writers have winged their way to Florida and Arizona...
Quick, name the highest-grossing actor of all time.... Turn the page for the answer:...
Front pager in the L.A. Business Journal mentions that the circa-1930 Wilshire Theatre, designed by S. Charles Lee as the Fox Beverly Hills, will be...
There seem to be a lot of Angelenos who fondly remember the old pony rides and amusement park that Beverly Center displaced. Re-creations of it...
Loyalty to Jill Murphy may have finally been Barry Munitz's undoing, the police commission waffles, going after Deaton, bomb on the 210 and another batch...
February 13, 2006
At a news conference out in the Valley this afternoon, Mayor Villaraigosa said he made an offer yesterday to Sheriff Lee Baca to help out...
Sheriff Lee Baca has postponed his interview on Talk of the City for at least a day. As I sort of suspected he would this...
Maybe he can help with the riots. From Channel 4's website: Lou Ferrigno, the former Mr. Universe and star of "The Incredible Hulk" television series,...
Last week it was a naked pedestrian on the 710, last night it was a woman on the 210 who got out of her car...
West Hollywood is thinking about adding its own late-night trolley shuttle and taking other steps to recapture nightlife business heading Hollywood's way, the L.A. Independent...
Tough talk in Crain's Chicago Business about the L.A. Times being a serious drag on the Tribune Company—and charging way more for ads than the...
Three lead items out of the largest local bureaucracy in the nation, none of them good news...plus Hiltzik lashes Keith Brackpool, no retraction for the...
February 12, 2006
Tony Mora in North Hollywood posts photos of the wall murals he finds at carnicerias, mariscos emporiums and taco stands. The Valley is his usual...
New ones are added to the tail end through the weekend.... ⇒ Robert Parry, who frequently contributed when LA Observed took comments, returned last month...
Michelle Kwan woke up Sunday morning, realized that it's over at age 25, and announced her withdrawal from the Turin games. She fell in practice...
February 10, 2006
Theresa at The Wit of the Staircase points to a Quicktime video that glides silently over downtown at night, letting you watch the light patterns...
LAUSD superintendent Roy Romer has told the school board that he wants to leave by September, nine months before his contract expires, the Jewish Journal...
You know it's been a tough location shoot when you get stabbed in the forehead on set and the producers get in a brawl. Second...
By all accounts they are funny and profane, but what the Ministry of Unknown Science comedy troupe lacked was permits. So they won't be staging...
A sampling of what will be in print and on the air... West magazine: Cover story on the saga of a Stradivarius violin found beside...
Rodger Jacobs has a profile in Xbiz of Eric Edwards, said to have acted in adult films from the 1960s to the 1990s and recently...
Staffers at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles—in the office building at 3424 Wilshire—just heard a loud crash outside. They ran to the window and saw...
When last we spoke of Desiree Horton, the former Channel 5 pilot who blogs at The Adventures of Chopper Chick!, she had requested that fans...
An exclusive on the new boss at "California Connected," a $15 million payday for three LAPD cops, Rocky's legal memo to the police commission and...
I had not heard of Willie Grace Campbell until Karen Wada profiled her in Los Angeles Magazine in 2004, writing that she "has changed American...
February 09, 2006
Claude Brodesser at Fishbowl LA has the stats: Almost twice as many people watched "American Idol" (28.3 million) than saw the Grammy Awards (15.1 million)...
East Coast blogger Tyler Green seems to have it first, with the email from Getty chairman John Biggs: To all Getty Staff: I wanted to...
The baseball team in Orange County won the right to call itself the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. A jury voted 9-3 against Anaheim's claim...
Finger pointing aside, it sounds like President Bush's morning disclosure of more details about the four-year-old Al Qaeda plot to bomb Library Tower (he called...
Chris Ayres, who interprets Los Angeles for the Brits back home as the correspondent here for the Times of London, now blogs about it on...
The Breeze has a follow on the Metropolitan Water District not hiring Mayor Villaraigosa's preferred candidate, Richard Katz. The agency offered the top job to...
Real Estate Journal has a free link to yesterday's WSJ story about developer Rick Caruso. * Also: I added the link I meant to include...
Mayor Villaraigosa has filled out the city's Board of Transportation Commissioners with the daughter of State Sen. Richard Alarcon, a former deputy to Nate Holden...
LAVoice has taken down a long anonymous entry accusing a Hollywood strip club of various crimes. Mack Reed explains why. He also notes his site's...
Updated below: Villaraigosa feels blindsided by Bush's remarks In a speech in Washington this morning, President Bush offered more evidence that an Al Qaeda...
It was thiry-five years ago today that the bedrock buckled beneath the San Gabriel Mountains, unleashing what became the Sylmar earthquake. In all that time,...
The tale of L.A.'s wild parrots gets an update from Emily Green in the Times, focusing on the large flock of the red-crowned variety that...
Jack Weiss steps in on the police commission ruling, more jail riots, the gang war rages in Watts, girls behind bars, more left-turn arrows—it's a...
February 08, 2006
The LA Weekly website posted a (perhaps final?) Rob Greene story saying that the multi-agency investigation of SEIU Local 99's help for Martin Ludlow's City...
The LA Weekly editor has posted a defiant response to the United Farm Workers demand for a retraction of an earlier column he wrote lauding...
Los Angeles billionaire A. Jerrold Perenchio is apparently ready to put Univision Communications up for sale and cash out, the New York Times reports based...
City Council members Herb Wesson and Bernard Parks want to rename 17th Street (between Norton and Bronson avenues) for the late attorney. The Board of...
Tom Teicholz is impressed by the museum on PCH. Meanwhile, Tyler Green gets a look at the Getty piece in today's Vanity Fair and blogs:...
Not much wind, but fire crews have already doused a small flare-up along the Reagan Freeway in Santa Susana Pass and are doing battle with...
John Stodder blogs about a time when Elliot Mintz flacked for John and Yoko, not Paris, and was one of the hip voices on the...
BiZBash covers the live events trade and will begin an L.A. version of the magazine later in the year. The website goes up Feb. 15,...
Bill Marimow, the former editor of the Baltimore Sun and a protege of departed L.A. Times editor John Carroll, got the nod today as Vice...
City Councilman Dan Baker resigned dramatically in front of TV cameras during Tuesday's council meeting, blaming a press "witch hunt" about his business dealings. Before...
Richard Katz reportedly doesn't get the MWD gig, friends of Cesar Chavez turn their legal guns on Marc Cooper, everybody it seems is investigating the...
While the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim have proven they are the fast, tough, relentless local hockey team with young stars on the rise, the Los...
February 07, 2006
Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue out Tuesday has more than Scarlett and Keira nude on the cover (though that's a pretty decent jump-start on newsstand sales.)...
A guy named Darnell Riley was sentenced today to ten years in prison after pleading guilty to robbing "Girls Gone Wild" creator Joe Francis in...
Naked Man Killed While Walking on 710 Freeway This after he first tried to get out of the moving car he was riding in. The...
Mayor Villaraigosa voiced his support today for the commission's decision to no longer release names of LAPD officers involved in shootings. But he isn't too...
Doug Dowie scores some points but not a knockdown, the police commission mums up, "Today" takes the Chino shooting story, a new Nina Zero review...
I'm otherwise occupied this morning. Back soon....
February 06, 2006
⇒ Truthdig.com's Blair Golson contends that Times editor Dean Baquet would not meet with representatives of the United Farm Workers union to hear their challenges...
Dateline: Hollywood's spoof of the week headlines the news that "automobile fatalities in Los Angeles are up 85% in the past month as residents seeking...
I just came from a session where this year's Coro Foundation fellows interviewed me about blogs and the media. Asked to name my favorite L.A....
State Controller Steve Westly has hired Ed Sanders as his Director of Public Affairs in Southern California. Sanders used to be chief of staff for...
The Rev. Cecil Murray, who stepped down in 2004 as pastor at First AME Church, is co-producer on Color of the Cross, a new film...
The Smoking Gun has posted sixty pages of government allegations that private investigator Anthony Pellicano "illegally recorded Sylvester Stallone's telephone calls and accessed confidential law...
This photograph that the owner says shows the Quartermaster's Depot at San Pedro circa 1863 recently sold on eBay for $4,569. Visible in the...
Former LAT book editor Steve Wasserman, now in New York as Managing Director at the compound-named agency Kneerim and Williams at Fish and Richardson, has...
Mayor Villaraigosa is lobbying hard to install his campaign advisor and former Assembly colleague Richard Katz at the head of the Metropolitan Water District—and MWD...
Eyewitness News goes hi-def, James Frey has a few words for the LAT, the Downtown News loses patience with Villaraigosa and a former mayor goes...
February 05, 2006
⇒ Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez writes that the Democrats would have reached more Latino voters had Antonio Villaraigosa given the English-language State of the Union...
Rick Wartzman's editor's note (labeled "From First and Spring") in Sunday's debut issue of West magazine fesses up to a strong belief in the Carey...
LAT book editor David Ulin responds to the James Frey controversy in Sunday's Book Review with an essay that argues the line is fuzzy between...
February 03, 2006
Former PI to the stars Anthony Pellicano was released today from the Taft Correctional Institution near Bakersfield, immediately taken into federal custody and moved to...
⇒ The LAT explains why it's not running the controversial Prophet Muhammad cartoons: "Our newsroom and op-ed page editors, independently of each other, determined that...
Here's the story lineup for the first issue of West, the Los Angeles Times Magazine replacement that debuts in the Sunday paper. Cover story: "The...
The museum board formally named Michael Govan as the new director and CEO. Here are this morning's Suzanne Muchnic story in the LAT and my...
The victim is expected to survive. The South L.A. kids were apparently showing off a handgun on the bus to school when the accidental shooting...
Jack Weiss makes his ambition more or less official, Anthony Pellicano comes back to town, the Ambassador gets a proper send-off, Channel 13 News adds...
February 02, 2006
Ohhh, now I think I know why the county Department of Health Services suddenly switched gears and yesterday released the name of the popular Olvera...
City Controller Laura Chick's latest audit dings the Department of Transportation for letting $5 million collected from developers as "traffic mitigation funds" go unused. "There...
Yash Gupta, dean of USC's Marshall School of Business just since July 2004, will remain on campus as a professor of information and operations management,...
I was interviewed at the fabulous old HMS Bounty on Wilshire this afternoon by John Rabe of KPCC News. His piece, about the loss of...
David Zahniser, the Copley News Service reporter in City Hall whose work appears mostly in the Daily Breeze, is jumping to the LA Weekly. He...
Officer Walter Ramirez was wounded in the wrist and is recovering. He was shot while undercover this morning on 17th Street near Pico; two suspects...
Prominent attorney Pierce O'Donnell admitted pleaded no contest to charges of laundering campaign funds to then-City Attorney Jim Hahn's first campaign for mayor in 2001....
Looks like there's finally a new head of LACMA, Tom LaBonge finally makes it in Column One, County Health finally comes clean about the hepatitis...
February 01, 2006
Rip Rense has some thoughts about the marketing campaign for the LAT's new West magazine, coming soon to a Sunday paper near you. Whatever the...
That Los Angeles Magazine piece by RJ Smith on Pajamas Media is now online, along with Smith's cover story on George Clooney ("The sexiest man...
Brian Flemming gives a good argument for why a bunch of bloggers taking a freebie to Amsterdam is not a big deal. (Scott Olin Schmidt,...
Franklin Avenue has further details, including that KTLA paid $5,000 for the video of that Chino shooting by a sheriff's deputy and managed to get...
The first eight pages of this morning's Calendar section in the Times—including six full opens plus most of the cover—are devoted to coverage of the...
Updated with new entries at the bottom ⇒ Copies of the first West magazine issue were seen at the Times' Travel Show over the weekend....
In the news this morning, the FBI looks at that videotaped shooting by a deputy in Chino...misreading Los Angeles...quitting James Frey...buying off Stuckey...and Hollywood's gay...
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| The deal would have 750 employees moving to Prospect Mortgage, which specializes in buying midsize residential lenders.
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| But please don’t just think of of the victims.
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