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Archive by Month
June 29, 2007
In response to the London bomb discovery, Mayor Villaraigosa wishes to reassure us all that Los Angeles is safe. His statement: Scotland Yard's immediate action...
Both FishbowlDC and The Huffington Post are reporting this morning that Page One editor John Arthur has been promoted to managing editor of the L.A....
Two more refugees from West magazine who took buyouts to leave the Times have landed, both of them at Los Angeles. J.R. Moehringer comes on...
June 28, 2007
Well now we know where (soon to be ex) L.A. Times managing editor Doug Frantz is going. He is returning to Istanbul as Middle East...
The biggest benefit of subscribing to LA Observed is the satisfaction of helping the website thrive. But sometimes we also get free tickets to pass...
The first (of two!) new Pinkberry's in Brentwood hasn't been open much more than a week. But today at noon, the shop was shut down...
Doug Frantz told senior editors this morning that he has resigned as number two editor at the Los Angeles Times. He didn't say if he...
Garden expert Lili Singer acknowledges that the opossums that roam Los Angeles at night look like bloated rats, but she's a fan nonetheless. The first...
The Nation's Jon Wiener commiserates this week over the LA Weekly becoming less international, lefty and political. It's the other media takeover story in Los...
An artist went out early Sunday morning and mounted unauthorized plaques at three bars that have been gentrified. At Cha Cha, the plaque reads "Former...
How about some Morning Buzz? After the jump....
June 27, 2007
Now that the L.A. Times has given up on the idea of a readable and substantive Sunday magazine, Angelenos have to look elsewhere for deeper,...
Earlier this month, Marti Buscaglia was announced as the new publisher of the Orange County Register. Not going to happen. Current publisher N. Christian Anderson...
Don't Let the Lipstick Fool You will be "an uplifting memoir profiling the author's personal and professional life," says Publishers Lunch. Dafina bought it for...
The San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group, part of the LANG empire, is moving people around and creating new positions. Larry Wilson fills the new job...
Click the link to go on in....
June 26, 2007
Los Angeles-based Washington Post writer William Booth chatted with Post readers online this morning about the Paris Hilton media circus. To the first commenter who...
A David Hockney color offset lithograph, Untitled (Two Apples and a Lemon), that was a free insert in the Herald Examiner decades ago sold at...
Bloomberg critic Linda Yablonsky is the latest to fly in, praise Michael Govan and visit some galleries. Excerpt of her piece: You just never know...
Yesterday it was Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa giving a coveted spot on the full-time, paid Board of Public Works to labor attorney Julie Gutman. Today it's...
Click below for the Paris Hilton-is-free edition....
June 25, 2007
Slate.com has gone multimedia and unveiled a daily online video magazine. Slate V is based in the magazine's brand-new Venice offices and is headed up...
I'll be part of a "poolside chat" at the Los Angeles Film Festival tomorrow night called "Who Let The Blogs Out?" The panel and schmooze...
Good California poll numbers for Hillary and Rudy. Top of the Ticket FishbowlLA continues its run of Q-and-A's with LA Observed contributors by throwing...
The founder of Langer's Deli died Sunday in Agoura from complications of being 94 years old. He is survived by his son Norm Langer, daughter...
Jonathan Gold's latest list for the LA Weekly, from Abode to Woodlands....
Mary McNamara moves over from writing features for Calendar. To: The Staff From: Lennie LaGuire, Senior Calendar Editor We're delighted to announce that Mary McNamara,...
Monday's usual meaty helping of news and observations, after the jump....
Purging of top names at the San Francisco Chronicle continues. With a bunch of painful newsroom cuts still to come, Deputy Editor Narda Zacchino has...
June 24, 2007
Don Barrett has been informing and entertaining local radio buffs at LARadio.com for ten years, but it sounds as if the thrill is gone. He...
June 23, 2007
Now Michelle Delgadillo has business tax problems, but abruptly took care of them Friday in advance of a new round of stories. LAT, DN...
Anderson Jones, a freelance film critic who formerly reviewed for E! Online and made appearances on the "E! True Hollywood Story," died after suffering a...
June 22, 2007
Civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman was just convicted of tax evasion, money laundering and bankruptcy fraud. The possible tab for nineteen counts: 80 months in...
Al Martinez has been told that his Monday column will start in the Times' California section on July 2. It's the compromise solution reached by...
One of those days, sorry. Do check out Mark Lacter's Morning Headlines at LA Biz Observed. This afternoon at 4:44 pm on KCRW, I'll be...
June 21, 2007
Now this should get interesting. LA Weekly political reporter David Zahniser, the hottest property on the City Hall beat, is jumping to the L.A. Times...
Remember all the free publicity that obscure weekly Pasadena Now got for saying it would out-source local reporting jobs to India? Well, now the paper...
The wunderkind director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art tells the LA Weekly's Tom Christie how he intends to change the face of...
It's illegal to turn right onto La Brea from Clinton Avenue during rush hour, and so many Hollywood traffic cops lie in wait that it...
Tom Philp, who won a Pulizer Prize for the Sacramento Bee in 2005, will become an "executive strategist" with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern...
Writers Dan Neil and Charles Perry of the L.A. Times (and former LAT film critic Manohla Dargis) are on MSNBC's list of 144 journalists who...
San Jose Mecury News veteran Richard Ramirez was found dead at his home in Livermore. Ramirez began at the paper as an intern in 1984...
Today's Times relegates the obituary of Mexican music legend and big-time Los Angeles crowd pleaser Antonio Aguilar — "the Roy Rogers of Mexico" — to...
LAPD Chief William Bratton was on the panel as KPCC reporter Patricia Nazario brought many in the audience to tears describing her encounter with a...
Congratulations to Sean Roderick, who graduates today in the top tier of her class at Santa Monica High School. She begins at UCLA in the...
In honor of the 38th anniversary of a landmark moment in Los Angeles rock and roll lore, here's some YouTube video of Jimi Hendrix jamming...
June 20, 2007
Catherine Elsworth, who holds down the Silver Lake bureau for the Daily Telegraph, would really like to test drive the new iPhone. But she was...
For Richard A. Aust of Lake Forest, the LAT's decision to scale back West magazine to a monthly was the last straw. If they are...
A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that former Fleishman-Hillard executives Doug Dowie and John Stodder should remain free on...
The bulldozer came today for that circa-1911 model home built to help sell the new town of Van Nuys. In those days, Van Nuys and...
Word out of the Santa Monica courthouse is that Michelle Delgadillo came in this morning, pleaded no contest and received twelve months probation on top...
The 30-year-old daughter of former VP Al Gore lives near downtown with husband Paul Cusack, writes for "Saturday Night Live" and "Futurama" and has a...
Business was fine, but the building was sold and co-owner Ben Weinstein got a good offer for what Scott Timberg calls in the Times about...
Click the link to come on in....
Michelle Delgadillo, wife of the city attorney, has an outstanding warrant for her arrest for failing to appear in court nearly nine years ago on...
June 19, 2007
The last of the West magazine senior writers to remain with the L.A. Times, Lynell George is moving back to her roots in Calendar. Here's...
This month's Los Angeles Magazine admires Rick Caruso, creator of The Grove and upcoming shopping malls in Glendale and Arcadia, praised like this in editor...
The pages get narrower by an inch-and-a-half on August 6. From the memo at the New York Observer's Media Mob: There are few design changes...
The Police Commission vote on a second term is unanimous. LAT, CBS2, DN...
New York mayor Mike Bloomberg's people aren't too happy with Antonio Villaraigosa's people right now. Page Six at the NYP says that "humiliated staffers in...
BBC correspondent David Willis' attempt to break into Hollywood as an actor has finally come to an end. But not before his ambitions crested with...
First take on the news, after the jump....
June 18, 2007
OK, it's in New York City. But I'm just saying. WABC...
Yes, the wife of City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo was driving the city-owned GMC Yukon when it hit a pole in 2004. Yes, he'll pay for...
Publishers Weekly leads today's Deals with Los Angeles Magazine staff writer Jesse Katz selling The Opposite Field to Crown in a preempt "said to be...
The LA Weekly brought home seven first place ribbons from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies awards — best cartoon, column, photography, special section, website design,...
One of the last Monty's steakhouses is closing after 66 years with just a week's notice to employees. The sale closed early, says the management....
Columnist Joel Stein has pulled out of teaching that oral sex class at Babeland on Melrose, at the L.A. Times' insistence. The store blames "censorship"...
Hearst Corp. is demolishing the old Herald Examiner press buildings downtown to make way for residential towers. The landmarked Julia Morgan-designed offices at 1111 S....
The Times editorial page launched a Rocky Watch box this morning that counts the days until City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo "comes clean" about who was...
Full load after the jump, and I do mean a full load....
June 17, 2007
Melissa Grego, managing editor at TelevisionWeek, posts to a blog-driven column reporting on her lunches with Hollywood figures. She started it up in January and...
Longtime L.A. Times staff writer Mark Arax and the paper reached an undisclosed settlement of their public dispute about a story he wrote about the...
Signs announcing a new Pinkberry in Brentwood Village (next to DiVino and across from Maria's) still claim the tarty frozen treat that makes Angelenos queue...
Here at LA Observed we like to be thought of as getting to the meat of many issues. So, following up on last week's birthday...
The L.A. Press Club bestowed its yearly awards last night at the Biltmore. Here are the top winners: Joseph M. Quinn Award - Judy Woodruff,...
June 15, 2007
A tribute to the history of the gardeners — Landscaping America: Beyond the Japanese Garden — opens on Sunday at the Japanese American National Museum...
I'm away on business today, so there's no Morning Buzz. My KCRW commentary this afternoon speaks to the context of media reports on Mayor Villaraigosa's...
June 14, 2007
Alan Mittelstaedt, the former LA Weekly news editor guest-blogging for WitnessLA, posts on the issues raised by Mayor Villaraigosa's divorce and his handling of the...
South Los Angeles has a crying need for social workers who want to stay and work in the community. Betty Pleasant's Soul Vine column in...
The famous deli at MacArthur Park celebrates its 60th anniversary on Friday with proclamations from elected officials, free prizes and, I assume, a fair bit...
Producer and author Tom Teicholz hit on a pretty good way to give his next book a shot at a favorable reception. He devoted his...
Pinkberry's popular frozen concoction isn't yogurt in the eyes of the law in California, but the makers would like to fix that. Alexa Hyland in...
The mogul's backing of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is called "the political equivalent of the Oscar" in the Cause Celebre column by Tina Daunt that...
There are no Hall of Famers in the Dodgers dugout anymore. Murray was let go as hitting coach and replaced on an interim basis by...
On the Times Op-Ed page, Patt Morrison doesn't want to know any more about the Villaraigosa marital troubles. But Steve Lopez writes in the Times...
Jim Newton, new editor of the Times editorial pages, explains to Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell why the paper on Monday called for a ceasefire...
Bunch of morning news after the jump....
June 13, 2007
According to Babeland, the sex toy store on Melrose, Joel Stein will co-teach an oral sex workshop later this month. “I feel it's time to...
The L.A. Times readers' representative is telling people who email about the treatment of veteran columnist Al Martinez that his column will resume — only...
Philip Anschutz could import his Examiner chain of local give-away newspapers to Los Angeles by the end of the year, according to Media Life, citing...
The radio host and author pens a Times Op-Ed piece about showing his niece around Los Angeles, even though he did get lost for a...
King-Harbor, Rockard Delgadillo and Phil Spector's groin are all in the news today. Click below for all the Buzz....
June 12, 2007
David Zahniser asks the questions in a piece the LA Weekly posted early on its website: Since he brought it up and all, what is...
Catching up on my feeds, I noticed that Jonah has shut down LA Blogs.com. Franklin Avenue has a suitable tribute to the site that introduced...
Corina Villaraigosa, the mayor's estranged wife, cites irreconcilable differences in her court filing. She seeks spousal support and primary custody of Natalia, the couple's fourteen-year-old...
It's amazing what basking in the Paris Hilton media glare can do for your profile. Even Radar Online is now covering Los Angeles County Sheriff...
Today's New York Times reports on the rapprochement between LAPD chief William Bratton and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who "had not spoken to...
Whole bunch of good stuff, hidden after the jump....
June 11, 2007
Ed Moss, the new publisher of the Daily News, arrives after spending just ten months at the Akron Beacon Journal — and slashing the workforce...
A federal jury acquitted former LAPD sergeant and Fox News reporter Roderick Bernsen of inappropriate sexual contact in a cruise ship sauna. End of the...
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa knows how to draw a crowd. His news conference this morning to discuss his marriage was reportedly packed. "I take responsibility for...
John McKeon didn't last long in Woodland Hills — he bounced Tracy Rafter and took over just last October. No word yet where he's headed....
Former editorial writer Andrew Malcolm handles the West Coast, Washington bureau editor Don Frederick the east for Top of the Ticket. What can one more...
L.A. folk historian Charles Phoenix and National Public Radio producer Steve Proffitt are driving to Tulsa, Oklahoma in Phoenix's 1961 Pontiac Bonneville and filing reports...
Kurt Streeter, a Metro reporter at the Times whose lengthy narrative pieces have sometimes focused on athletes, is moving to the sports staff as a...
In 2002, crisis PR mogul Michael Sitrick and Cardinal Roger Mahony met with Times editors trying to squash an investigation of the archdiocese by then-reporter...
CBS2 anchor Paul Magers' former home in the Minneapolis area — called by one blogger a "grand-to-ostentatious Lake of the Isles mansion" — is in...
Nice online gallery and slideshow from graduating high school senior Annarose Mittelstaedt. Her website slideshow includes a Google Earth tour of the sights. Photo: Annarose...
The "best of" season isn't quite over. Los Angeles Magazine's is coming, but first comes Ciudad with the "best of Latino L.A." An online poll...
Matthew Garrahan, the Financial Times' man in Los Angeles, reported Sunday that Apple is in advanced talks with Hollywood’s largest movie studios about "launching an...
Big helping for Monday, served up after the jump....
June 10, 2007
The Times' Christine Daniels now writes a sports blog, Day in L.A., full time for the paper's website. Paris Hilton announces she won't appeal...
Back in 2005 the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin retracted a statement about former NFL star Bo Jackson and steroids. It wasn't enough. This weekend on...
June 08, 2007
When Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini concluded his live press conference announcing that Paris Hilton was back in custody, one of the media types yelled...
Remember back in February when Mayor Villaraigosa summoned the Times to Getty House to deny blogger Luke Ford's report that his marriage was kaput? Curiously,...
The brief West magazine experiment at the L.A. Times ends with the June 17 restaurant issue — and with it apparently goes the tradition of...
Paris Hilton was dragged out the courtroom — weeping and screaming for her mother — and remanded back to the county jail in Lynwood. Unclear...
A jury yesterday recommended that Frank Lima should receive compensation from the city of Los Angeles after he argued that he suffered retaliation for refusing...
Click below for the Buzz. My weekly LA Observed commentary airs on KCRW (and on kcrw.com) at 4:44 pm this afternoon during NPR's "All Things...
Paris Hilton can phone in this morning's court appearance after all. Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini, who has been speaking for Judge Michael Sauer, gave...
June 07, 2007
The feds have put King-Harbor hospital on notice again that all federal funds may be pulled because the emrgency room keeps putting patients in "immediate...
The former editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial pages will be joining the New America Foundation as an Irvine Senior Fellow. Martinez, you'll remember,...
You definitely get the feeling the Paris Hilton backlash is a lot bigger than Sheriff Baca gambled on — and the storm is just beginning....
Yes! Sometimes things just work that way. The DN editorial page staff has launched a new blog where editor Chris Weinkopf (from the right), editorial...
Cynthia Littleton reports on her Variety blog that the LAPD has closed off Wilshire Boulevard outside the Screen Actors Guild, meaning it's also right outside...
Annie Hundley arrived just last summer to run valleynews.com, the citizen journalism part of the Daily News website. Not any more, says this staff email...
N. Christian Anderson yields the publisher portion of his title to Marti Buscaglia, publisher of the Duluth News Tribune. She formerly worked at the Long...
Click on the link to venture in....
Paris Hilton was fitted with an ankle bracelet and released to house arrest after serving the four-plus days in county that are more typical for...
June 06, 2007
Thursday night's benefit concert for the Academy of Music at Hamilton High will feature David Foster as emcee, Kenny G, trumpeter Chris Botti, the horns...
Highway crews and flagmen working on the widening of California 138 across the Mojave Desert have taken so much physical abuse from motorists that the...
In rewriting an L.A. Times investigation about Beverly Hills detox doctor David Kipper, the New York Post dropped the careful wording used by the LAT...
The Stanley Cup now resides in Anaheim. Orange County's Ducks whomped the Ottawa Senators 6-2 to win the Cup in five games. At the...
Windows Steaks & Martinis, the restaurant with the amazing views atop what's now called the At&T Center, closes July 31. There has been talk of...
The latest internal missive from Executive Editor Meredith Artley says there were 77.9 million page views at LATimes.com in May, which they think is a...
City Editor Barbara Jones is being reassigned as part of a strategy to reconfigure how the L.A. Daily News gathers and delivers its content, online...
Andrew at Here in Van Nuys blogs about a home in Studio City where the front exterior has been completely sheathed in 16-by-16 inch marble...
The Anaheim Ducks will try tonight to become the first California team to skate with the Stanley Cup. Hockey fans have been lined up for...
Wanda Langstom had 120 rats in her house, many of them living in cages. She also had 25 rabbits, six parakeets, a quail, a cockatiel...
Sorry, other demands intervene. But Mark Lacter's morning headlines at LA Biz Observed include items on the Tesco stores that are coming to L.A., HBO,...
June 05, 2007
State Assemblywoman Nell Soto, who is 80, has been out with a bad case of pneumonia since March — not that the political media has...
Frances Dinkelspiel, author of a forthcoming book on L.A. pioneer Isaias Hellman (her great grandfather), tallies up the toll of veteran Chronicle editors who are...
Now that the last of the Chandler family representatives have left the Tribune Company board, Chicago Tribune columnist Phil Rosenthal writes, "it's like passing a...
We keep it tucked after the jump so the page stays cleaner. Click the link to head on in....
The L.A. Times website is finally going 24-7 (ish) with the addition of a couple of overnight editors. They will scan the wires and, in...
June 04, 2007
The Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills (and New York) becomes the Paley Center for Media today. The New York Times reports: By...
Gawker says that New York Times Hollywood writer Sharon Waxman will go on book leave this summer then be reassigned off the beat and probably...
Budget pressures are the stated reason for ending Rick Wartzman's weekly California & Co. column in the Business section. But as usual with the L.A....
Franklin Avenue spotted handwritten signs today on 6th Street near the mayor's mansion in Windsor Square posted to beseech drivers, Burma Shave-style, to SLOW... THE......
Rip Rense was a reporter at the old Valley News and the late Herald Examiner, and keeps an online archive of the original L.A. Daily...
Longtime L.A. radio and television personality Tom Hatten left KNX Friday after delivering the entertainment report for many years. He became familiar to a generation...
Paris Hilton turned herself in at the Men's Central Jail downtown on Sunday night — after attending the MTV Movie Awards — and was driven...
Full Monday helping after the jump....
June 03, 2007
I had a feeling the decision makers at the Times were clueless that an outcry — from the paper's most loyal but ever more perturbed...
June 01, 2007
Reader Leon Kaspersky will be taking his family to Sunday's debut performance in Pasadena of Peter Schickele's "Three Cellos," courtesy of the Pacific Serenades chamber...
This is the day for farewell messages down at the Times. A selection of emails to colleagues from the bought out and the otherwise leaving...
We reported before that L.A. Times Schwarzenegger reporter Peter Nicholas was leaving Sacramento for the Washington bureau. Now here's the memo from bureau chief Doyle...
The Sacramento Bee's subscriber-only Capitol Alert reports today on a nasty fight between Valley assemblyman Lloyd Levine and his former chief of staff, Stuart Waldman....
The free monthly from Southland Publishing (CityBeat, Pasadena Weekly) is "devoted to the revival of Downtown and the 'New' Eastside." Inside New Angeles are an...
Christopher Hawthorne doesn't think much of the new Landmark Theatres as architecture, but his review details some touches like the three "Living Room" theaters with...
A quick look at today's news — and Al Martinez's final regular column for the Times — tucked away after the jump....
© 2003-2008 • About LA Observed • Contact the editor
| Seven nights in a palacial suite, chauffeur-driven Maybach, private jet to Iran - any takers?
| Check out CNBC's August 2007 interview with Angelo Mozilo - the guy is practically tap-dancing in his chair.
| The late photographer shot some of the most iconic images of Los Angeles, and you can see some of them now at the Huntington.
| It likely took a few hundred dollars just to make it past Venice Beach on Sunday.
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