• The three white female victims of the Halloween beating in Long Beach testified tearfully in court today and asked that the black defendants, in jail since then, get the book thrown at them. LAT
• Beverly Hills police want actor Lane Garrison charged with gross vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs in the December crash that killed a teenage passenger. CBS 2
• Dean Baquet goes into more details about his contact with Eli Broad, his weighing of the prospects of returning as editor of the L.A. Times, and the talk that he's a contender for editor of the NYT. Editor & Publisher
• Another OC Weekly original, features editor and Commie Girl columnist Rebecca Schoenkopf, has ankled. Actually she gave two weeks notice today and was told by Village Voice Media to leave immediately. "This paper will be a very different place a year from now," she says in a farewell column that I'm told is in tomorrow's issue. "And I'm not particularly interested in being the last rat off."
• If you go looking for that BMW video promised in today's LAT Highway One section, you get this error message: "A box in Wednesday's Highway 1 mistakenly referred to a web video on the new BMW 3-series. That video will be posted at a later date."
• Daily News sports columnist Tom Hoffarth will start contributing to Sports By Brooks, the news and babes website of Brooks Melchior.
• Calabasas magazine is going national as (you can't make this stuff up) Calabasas Statement. Because America has been waiting with excitement for the Calabasas lifestyle. Franklin Avenue.

And an add: Nikki Finke reports that Claire Hoffman is leaving the LAT for Portfolio, the yet-to-launch Conde Nast business magazine. That would reunite her with Amy Wallace, who did the main editing on Hoffman's West magazine piece on Joe Francis. Last week, Hoffman was in talks with the New York Times.