Morning Buzz: Friday 2.29.08

City Hall sacred cows

Everybody is talking about them with the budget now in flux. DN

Layoffs day across LANG

Staff meeting is at 11 am at the Press-Telegram in Long Beach, I'm told.

Impact of newspaper cuts

Story in the Times says that if Sam Zell's point is that the real money is in local news, "the recent experience of the Daily News, the Orange County Register and the regional dailies ringing the Bay Area -- all more locally oriented than The Times -- has been a discouraging counter example. Their inability to keep ad revenue from falling at double-digit percentages year over year has led to staff reductions that further hobble local news coverage."

Where six or eight reporters once routinely covered the Board of Supervisors and county agencies, now there are only two or three on the county beat, said Joel Bellman, a longtime spokesman for Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

"I think people are losing any understanding of what local government does and how it figures in people's lives," Bellman said. "There is the paper there, but there is no substantive understanding of the government beat anymore. We simply fade away like the Cheshire Cat."

Another voice in praise of Dutton's

The New Yorker's Dana Goodyear blogs, "I, like many people, gave my first reading in L.A. at Dutton’s."

Boyarsky visits a charter school

The LA Observed blogger writes in his Jewish Journal column, "I write about education a lot because it's important for the Jewish community to have a strong public school system. Education is part of the Jewish culture. Many Jews can't afford private schools, and their kids deserve an education good enough to send them to college. Moreover, strong public schools are good for everybody, Jews and non-Jews.

William Buckley on Rudy, Elvis, etc

Writer John Meroney, based in Los Angeles working on a book about Ronald Reagan, did a wide-ranging interview with Buckley a few years ago for the American Enterprise Institute magazine.

LA Observed on KCRW

My weekly Friday commentary today talks about the Los Angeles empire in the Eastern Sierra. 4:44 pm on FM 89.9, or on KCRW.com, or on iTunes.