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Archive by Month
July 31, 2007
Zone coverage of the Santa Clarita and Antelope Valley will be eliminated, with resulting job losses via buyouts. The MediaNews bean counters have managed to...
It really is the summer of adultery. I'm told this billboard has gone up at Wilshire and San Vicente (east not west) La Cienega and...
The New York Police Department confirmed this afternoon that the body found by a New Jersey fisherman last month was that of missing artist Jeremy...
PEN USA has chosen the winners of its 2007 literary awards for writers and journalists in the West. Among the local winners is Cynthia Kadohata,...
Our post earlier this month on Hollywood tabloidist-turned-author Marlise Kast and her pursuit of blissful contentment inspired Luke Ford to interview her for his blog....
Sharon Waxman of the NYT bureau here continues to blog about her book research around the Mediterranean (with a stop for a swim on the...
Times story on Supervisor Burke's mansion catches the DA's eye, the city wants to count traffic better, and Green Dot founder Steve Barr thinking national...
July 30, 2007
Jonathan Diamond is leaving the City Attorney's press office after a bit more than two years. He had been assistant managing editor at the Los...
From the email in-box: Quarterback Matt Leinart has agreed to pay Brynn Cameron $15,000 in monthly support for the child they spawned together at USC....
Editor and writer Glenn O'Brien pens a final entry at The Wit of the Staircase, adding photographs of Duncan and Jeremy Blake and some Steely...
Paul Karl Lukacs has concluded his traveling sabbatical from the life of a Hollywood lawyer. He blogged from Thailand during the coup, reviewed a book...
Elizabeth Guider, a 18-year vet at Variety who has been sliding down the masthead lately, has jumped to The Hollywood Reporter as Editor. Most recently...
Geoff Boucher was in San Diego to cover Comic-Con when he encountered some toughs on the sidewalk in the Gaslamp Quarter. In the 15 years...
Bergman, one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died on the Swedish island of Faro. Nine Oscar nominations, but no statue. NYT obituary,...
July 29, 2007
Catching up on some business: If you saw today's L.A. Times story on the city's Historical Resources Survey Project, this will make more sense. I'm...
Big weekend story in the LAT — a solid gotcha: L.A. official steered work to relatives Nearly $800,000 in contracts, often with inflated prices, went...
This has been a bad day for the Los Angeles Police Department. Detective George "Mike" Selleh of the Mission station was killed about 3:30 am...
July 28, 2007
Nice personal piece on Wen Roberts, the sports photographer who died this week, by David Davis at SoCal Sports Observed. Roberts was probably the photographer...
Editor Ron Kaye is still apologizing for cutting some comics beloved by the Daily News' declining (and apparently aging, based on their choice of comics)...
Dakota Communications political consultant Rick Taylor didn't like having his tactical memo exposed by the group fighting a Home Depot store in the Sunland area....
July 27, 2007
Summer time and the blogging is easy... Big story on KNBC at 5 pm with Controller Laura Chick accusing Playa Vista head Steven Soboroff of...
Former LA Weekly publisher Michael Sigman has optioned the film rights to that piece about Washington lobbyists in Harper's by reporter Ken Silverstein, who posed...
Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke admitted to the Times (after changing her story) that she doesn't live in the district where she represents most of...
July 26, 2007
A memo from political adviser Rick Taylor lays out Home Depot's plans to stack a City Council meeting next week with supporters of the store's...
The mayor's leverage with NBC and Telemundo, a possible discovery of Jeremy Blake's body and the return of L.A. Sniper — and a whole lot...
July 25, 2007
Noted photographer Edward Weston preferred smallpox and poverty to Los Angeles, as he says in a new post at Native Intelligence. But he made some...
Half of the team at KCRW's Friday afternoon staple Left, Right & Center have sold new books. Matt Miller, author of The Two Percent Solution,...
In a piece at Artnet called "L.A. Confidential," writer Emma Gray surveys local galleries and also gives credit to journalist Jori Finkel, a sometime contributor...
Prints of Patrick O'Connor's cover cartoon in the Daily News' Sunday Viewpoint section, "An Illustrated Guide to L.A.'s Summer of Scandal," have been offered for...
One of the writers at the San Pedro blog Life on the Edge details some of the withering away occurring at the South Bay Daily...
Sherman Torgan's son posts on the theater's website that programming is cancelled until further notice: Sherman was my father and my best friend, and his...
Brynn Cameron versus Matt Leinart, that Spanish burglar goes down, and the names of the LAT managing editor candidates. Plus more inside....
The L.A. Times got around to chasing last week's story on the suicide of Theresa Duncan and possible death of Jeremy Blake, leading with the...
July 24, 2007
An LAFD firefighter was rescued tonight after plunging through the roof of a commercial building on fire in the Jefferson Park area. He was saved...
The losing candidates are apparently being told that John Arthur is getting the Times managing editor nod after all. A few weeks ago his name...
Recurring outages in the South of Market Street area of San Francisco have knocked Craigslist, Netflix, Technorati and other websites offline at times this afternoon....
George Miller, who is 69, was the subject of a legal tussle over access to files kept by the Los Angeles Archdiocese. The U.S. Supreme...
The bug at the bottom of the Calendar front in today's Los Angeles Times says columnist Patrick Goldstein is on assignment. Not true. His The...
I'm guessing she won't get any rehab endorsement deals any time soon....
Is a young Spaniard L.A.'s most prolific home burglar? Should there be laxer rules for building downtown? Did Greece win in getting back an ancient...
Lindsay Lohan, fresh off a second stint in rehab, was booked in Santa Monica this morning on suspicion of drunken driving and felony possession of...
July 23, 2007
San Bernardino Sun sports columnist Paul Oberjuerge seems to have a bit of a thing about Christine Daniels, the transgender sports scribe for the L.A....
The August issue of Los Angeles is the annual Best of LA theme job. This time 196 is the magic number, don't ask me why....
The Sunday Viewpoint cartoon showing Mayor Villaraigosa frolicking naked with Mirthala Salinas in the "Garden of Telemundo" is now online at the Daily News...
Nice of a little overnight rain to clean the sky. This time of year our murky air is mostly old-fashioned smog, stuck in the basin...
The L.A. Times PR staff has taken to sending pitch emails to journalists bragging about stories the paper wants credit for breaking in the Sunday...
Mayor Villaraigosa's thank you campaign, a candidate in the 5th council district and entries on a whole lot more. Click for the Monday buzz....
July 22, 2007
The cover of Sunday's Viewpoint section in the Daily News is a full-page color illustration showing a naked and grinning Antonio Villaraigosa, fig leaf strategically...
A portion of Reseda with large lots wants to rename itself Reseda Ranch to help fend off developers and instill some community pride. If the...
Consecutive reader comments on Gothamist regarding the suicide of Venice blogger Theresa Duncan (and the apparent death of her lover, Jeremy Blake) illustrate the poles...
Earl Ofari Hutchinson blogs at Friendly Fire: Telemundo officials say that they will make a decision within the next few days whether to fire Mirthala...
When will newspaper editors get it? If you cut comics, readers scream — always. Sometimes by the thousands, costing you more in goodwill and circulation...
July 21, 2007
David Beckham may be no Gretzky, but he'll do. Photo: AP Photo / Kevork Djansezian via Yahoo...
Writer and activist Jasmyne Cannick blogs that her neighborhood of Historic West Adams is more than big houses and the Ray Charles studio: I kid...
Updated at the bottom through the weekend... Former LAT religion writer William Lobdell describes his born-again awakening, attempted conversion to Roman Catholicism and finally his...
Bob Sipchen left the L.A. Times last month after working as an education columnist, editorial writer (where he won a Pulitzer Prize) and founding editor...
July 20, 2007
A medical examiner in New York told perfumer Anya McCoy that the autopsy results will be known in about six weeks. McCoy says that Jeremy...
Free wine and eats! For Saturday evening's Extravaganza of the Senses on the 20th Century Fox lot, benefiting the Los Angeles Free Clinic, we can...
In addition to yesterday's flurry of moves, and a couple of others we broke the news on Tuesday (and Monday), here are the latest transactions:...
July 19, 2007
Writer, filmmaker and perfume aficionado Theresa Duncan has not posted at her Venice-based blog, The Wit of the Staircase, since July 10. She gave no...
David Beckham is giving La Opinión exclusive Spanish-language access for print and the web, the paper says. Content and photos will be in the paper...
David Lazarus is joining the L.A. Times in August to write a Business section column. Let's hope the San Francisco Chronicle, his current employer, knew...
Today's arrival of Gustavo Arellano's ¡Ask a Mexican! column in the Sacramento News and Review was greeted by three stories in that upstate alt-weekly, including...
Barry Bonds clubbed home runs number 752 and 753 today in Chicago, leaving him two behind Henry Aaron....
Sherman Torgan died yesterday of a heart attack while bicycling in Santa Monica. Hollywood Elsewhere, LAist and GreenCine Daily have reports....
Glenn Bunting took the buyout from the L.A. Times last month and signed on at Sitrick and Company. Guess he makes his old colleagues nervous....
Two or three men dressed in black and ski masks have targeted Bel-Air, Holmby Hills and Encino in the evenings and on weekends. Their take...
Alan Mittelstaedt, who left the LA Weekly in the Jill Stewart changeover, joins CityBeat today as News Editor, the same title he had at...
Big sale at the Archdiocese, Babydol Gibson shows up at the criminal courts building and a first review of Harry Potter — plus Victoria Beckham...
July 18, 2007
Author and Pomona College alumnus Verlyn Klinkenborg has another of his Editorial Observer pieces about California in today's NYT. The subject this time is the...
The union-backed project employing eight former reporters at the Santa Barbara News-Press to cover local news didn't make it. The staff posted a note saying...
Westfield plans to erect a $750 million outdoor retail complex connecting the Topanga and Promenade malls in Woodland Hills. Included in The Village will be...
I'm told that Women's Wear Daily confirms in today's paper that editors pulled a recent story on Hollywood journo Nikki Finke off the paper's website....
Business Week has a story focusing on more than a dozen bloggers who are making decent money with their sites, including the L.A. women behind...
July 17, 2007
The onetime maven of media mixers sold mediabistro.com today for $23 million. The buyer is Internet research firm Jupitermedia, which wants the company for the...
Strong words from financial analyst Jim Cramer at The Street.com about the pending Tribune Company sale. Make that red flags and warning sirens: You have...
Art Marroquin is leaving City News Service for the Daily Breeze, where he will take over the LAX and Port of Los Angeles beat. That's...
Lots of L.A. city council members are happy about this — a judge rejected a challenge to the ballot measure that extends their term limits....
KTLA News Director Jeff Wald informed his department this morning that he's leaving the station to spend more time his family. Wald's wife died suddenly...
Newly reunited at Los Angeles Magazine with his former editor Kit Rachlis, Moehringer explains at the end of a long profile of an obscure musician...
His kidney stone left the building, so Mark Lacter is back at the LA Biz Observed desk. The Morning Headlines led today with the Dow...
Invitations have gone out for a Sept. 8 Barack Obama fundraiser at Oprah Winfrey's home in the Santa Barbara area. The ante for entry is...
There's an agreement in principle for Rupert Murdoch to buy Dow Jones for $5 billion, but the Bancroft family's approval is still too close to...
The Cardinal Mahony show tops the news, with District Attorney Steve Cooley and the newspapers all over his case. Also a chat with Aaron Sorkin,...
July 16, 2007
The staff at the LA Weekly was informed that Kate Sullivan is out and the new music editor is Randall Roberts, who was sent west...
NBC 4 led tonight's late newscast with a five-minute piece by Ana Garcia reporting that Mirthala Salinas got the only one-on-one interview with Mayor Villaraigosa...
Zócalo has added a new speaker for September: author and Angeleno James Ellroy. They say he'll discuss "60 years of the secret history of Los...
Chris Weinkopf at the Daily News opinion blog gets Cardinal Roger Mahony on the phone. Sample: I pressed him further: What is he taking responsibility...
The Tribune begins them soon too, and there the memo trying to convince everybody that readers really want them comes from the publishing group president....
The half-hour that Warren Olney hosts on KCRW at 7 pm Monday through Thursday "remains an abiding presence in the landscape of local news," Sean...
Elsewhere on the site: David Davis has a good interview with David Zirin, the provocative progressive writer who is author of Welcome to the Terrordome:...
Cardinal Mahony apologizes but doesn't satisfy, the mayor skips out on personal questions, and much more in a good rich Monday installment of Morning Buzz....
July 15, 2007
Howard Bragman of Fifteen Minutes Public Relations, co-founder of what used to be Bragman Nyman Cafarelli, talks with the Los Angeles Business Journal's Anne Riley-Katz...
Dan Laidman, the Copley News reporter at L.A. City Hall, throws another entry on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's pile of undesirable press clippings in today's San...
Jacob Bernstein, offspring of Nora Ephron and Carl Bernstein, tried in the July 6 Women's Wear Daily to comprehend the Nikki Finke phenomenon. He writes...
July 14, 2007
Associated Press reports that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Los Angeles has agreed to pay at least $600 million to settle legal cases with hundreds...
July 13, 2007
Laurie Pike, the style director at Los Angeles Magazine, lives here but owns three flats in Paris and runs an English-language blog for ex-pats and...
Fed up with delays in opening the filled-and-waiting swimming pool at the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, activists have posted their own Craigslist ad to help...
Publisher David Hiller just dropped a "mid-year business update" on L.A. Times staffers that has fresh bad news: "Revenue was down 10% in the second...
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa heard boos when he stepped to the microphone at today's media debut of new Galaxy member David Beckham in Carson. It really...
Director Susan Pinkus, who's staying, issues a statement after the jump. In addition to the senior staffers she names, something like 90-odd interviewers who work...
Sharon Waxman is on leave from the Hollywood beat at the New York Times bureau on Wilshire to write a book about museums and the...
Beckhams hit L.A., David Zahniser's first Times byline and more — just click below for the Morning Buzz....
July 12, 2007
While researching his forthcoming biography of the late California political leader Jess Unruh, Bill Boyarsky delved into the story of how reporter Paul Weeks covered...
Sheri Epstein, the assistant to KPFK General Manager Eva Georgia, will file suit this week in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging race and disability discrimination...
With all the gushing about David Beckham and his wife coming to town, it's nice to see the Venice-based eTrueSports — "Dedicated to taking scraps...
Abigail Goldman has covered the retail beat for the Times' Business section even though she loathes shopping. They are moving her to a newly created...
The new chain-ified print version of LA.com will run in the Daily News, Daily Breeze, Press Telegram and other papers in the group, says Laura...
Motivated by yesterday's fun video of Broadway shot in the 1980s, Los Angeles photographer Robert Pacheco sent along his photo essay of Downtown in...
Antonio makes Jay Leno's monologue again, plus cameras at stop signs now (not put there by traffic cops) and much more. Click to head on...
Ross Johnson of Sitrick and Company did such a good job promoting Tuesday night's premiere party for Captivity that he had bloggers falling over themselves...
July 11, 2007
The Daily Dish is blog number 25 at LATimes.com, not counting the phantom USC sports blog that hasn't appeared yet. The DD carries contributions from...
Editor Jim O'Shea informed the staff today that eliminating the Times Poll operation came up during the recent round of staff cuts, but that he...
It's not as classic as Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles, but a YouTube user named Meadowlawn has posted a video of downtown's Broadway district as...
Kent Couch of Oregon flew 193 miles on a lawn chair attached to helium balloons, emulating the startling 1982 flight over San Pedro by the...
Ron Burkle's move on the Wall Street Journal, Italy's snit with the Getty and the passing of a longtime L.A. journalist. Those items and more...
July 10, 2007
No, not on the couch like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Just in the monologue, which Leno opens this way tonight: Welcome to Los Angeles. Or as our...
Former Los Angeles city administrative officer William Fujioka, 55, was hired today by the Board of Supervisors as the county’s chief executive officer, at an...
The actor whose familiar face graced these pages last year died Monday night at home in Brentwood. He was 102 years old. In January 2006,...
Hector Villalta, a rookie officer in the West L.A. station, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of sexual assault. A female companion complained the assault occurred...
Today's Daily Journal front page carries the story of Ted A. White, an attorney who quit abruptly as a $115,000-a-year immigration judge in Los Angeles...
Here's some of what you can find around the site today: Paddle boats will remain for rent at Echo Park "as long as I am...
The mayor tries to stay on message, the $165 million Beverly Hills estate, another bookstore closes...and more. Click to go on in....
Ex-UCLA basketball coach Steve Lavin apparently took a cue from the airlines and overbooked his own wedding. He has been scheduled to marry Mary Jarou...
July 09, 2007
Amy Alkon, the syndicated Advice Goddess and blogger, was the first reader to identify Charles Dickson's Martin Luther King Memorial in Watts. The sculpture bears...
LARadio.com reported that longtime news reporter and anchor Chris Stanley was escorted from the radio station last Thursday after "a major blow-up of some sort."...
Some anti-Villaraigosa blogs have been gleefully spreading anonymous hearsay that city planning commissioner Sabrina Kay is another girlfriend of the mayor. At today's photo op...
Department of Water and Power general manager Ron Deaton is in an intensive care unit in Costa Rica "with his family by his side" after...
FourStory is "fact-based housing advocacy with a human perspective," and with fiction and a manifesto. It reads in part: This site had its genesis over...
The first issue of h Magazine has Julie Delpy on the cover, a piece on the Suicide Girls and Elizabeth Johnson in the editor's chair....
There's a cool story behind this piece of street art located somewhere in Los Angeles. Be the first to email with the location and win...
Today is supposed to kick off the next phase where Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa repairs his image with a flurry of staged feel-good events, starting with...
We've got the next head of the Police Commission, Rocky Delgadillo, Cardinal Mahony, Tia Chucha, a "Jeopardy" appearance, even a wedding — and so much...
July 08, 2007
Steven Maviglio, deputy chief of staff to Speaker Fabian Núñez, called the LA Weekly's Marc Cooper the state's worst political journalist on the state Democrats'...
Rick Wartzman, former editor of West magazine and the LAT's Business section, takes over Monday as director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University....
Longtime journalist Lou Cannon sums up the case against Santa Barbara News-Press owner Wendy McCaw in a lengthy open letter that runs in the Santa...
July 06, 2007
It's Buzz Lite today: Reilly talking to Fox Former NBC Entertainment head Kevin Reilly is in talks to become chief of programming for the Fox...
From Steve Lopez in the Times: If embattled City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo has any sense at all, he'll call a press conference today and get...
July 05, 2007
No surprise here: Telemundo Channel 52 today put Mirthala Salinas on leave while the broadcaster looks into the ethical questions around her affair with Mayor...
Brenda Lee only received $2,500 in punitive damages today from the jury that earlier awarded her $6.2 million for suffering discrimination as a black lesbian...
Marlise Kast is a former Hollywood production assistant who began digging up dirt for The Globe at age 21. She now dishes about her three...
A memoir, noted at Publishers Lunch: "Director of strategic alliances for global think tank, TalentSmart, Lac D. Su's THE CRIP WALK, a coming-of-age memoir about...
Erik Himmelsbach didn't enjoy last night's fireworks show at CBS Studio City. It set him back thirty bucks and he wants to share the experience:...
Welcome back from the holiday. Click below for the Buzz....
July 04, 2007
Telemundo has been covering the mayoral affair and media ethics dust-up involving its own reporter, and seems very interested in hearing what listeners think. At...
KCRW (89.9 FM) has turned over most of its schedule today to specials on American music, leading this morning with the stories of Sly Stone...
I will be on NPR's Day to Day this morning talking with host Alex Cohen about fallout, if any, from the Villaraigosa-Salinas relationship. I think...
July 03, 2007
Jonathan Gold at his best, in a eulogy to Al Langer: Glance at their faces a moment after they bite into a Langer’s pastrami sandwich...
Mirthala Salinas got around in the club of Latino elected officials. David Zahniser, still at the LA Weekly, reports tonight that the mayor's current main...
The Times' City Hall beat reporters who were beaten on the Villaraigosa affair, Duke Helfand and Steve Hymon, recovered by the end of the day...
Eric Longabardi of ERS News.com reports that before Mirthala Salinas became involved with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, she was the girlfriend of his good friend and...
Mayor Villaraigosa bristled at the question, but replied that his girlfriend of more than a year, newscaster Mirthala Salinas, is not pregnant. That had been...
The city council voted unanimously today to keep Eric Garcetti in the president's chair. Councilwoman Wendy Greuel also stays as pro tem. Garcetti re-appointed Jan...
Chris Weinkopf, editorial page editor of the Daily News, is a conservative and a Catholic. On the paper's opinion blog, he just called on Mayor...
Light day in the Buzz, since let's face it, most of the local buzz today will be about the mayor and the city attorney. Click...
The Times editorial page calls Rocky Delgadillo "unfit" to be City Attorney and urges he do the right thing and resign. Under the headline "The...
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa confirmed, in the Daily News, the rumors that he has been in a romantic relationship with Mirthala Salinas, an anchor and reporter...
July 02, 2007
Two Southern California legislators, Sen. Edward Vincent and Assemblywoman Nell Soto, have been away from the Capitol injured or sick for six months of the...
The Dodgers on Sunday finally got the game they have been waiting for from young pitcher Chad Billingsley. He gave up no runs and three...
Geoff Kelly edited at the Daily News and Times and most recently was on the desk at the International Herald Tribune in Hong Kong. He...
Alan Klein, president and publisher of Los Angeles magazine since 2001, is jumping to Modern Luxury Media as president and publisher of Angeleno. Los Angeles,...
I keep hearing from LA Observed readers who pass along email from RealTalk LA saying the magazine is in dire financial straits -- suspended operations,...
Greg Hernandez writes the only mainstream media blog in town (that I know of) devoted to gay Hollywood. His Out in Hollywood on the Daily...
The actress uses her second contribution to the Huffington Post fray to decry the proliferation of "elimination-based" shows. "I understand there is a good side,...
We've got Rocky, Antonio, Paris, Orlov and Hymon, Robert Heinlein, Daniel Pearl and more — just a typical Monday at Morning Buzz. Click to come...
For the past few days, the Times has been promoting the re-appearance of columnist Al Martinez in the California section and, sort of, admitting that...
July 01, 2007
The Daily News went out front Sunday with San Bernardino Sun columnist Paul Oberjuerge's worshipful interview with Vin Scully, who has announced Dodgers games since...
All those residential and commercial developments that planners and politicians like to promote near transit lines make getting around harder, since most occupants choose to...
This week's LA Weekly letters page is more interesting than usual. Aside from the reader feedback there's a box announcing "an immediate opening for a...
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