KNBC Channel 4 has tapped David Markland, a "city captain" at LA Metblogs, to write a couple of items a day under the California Faultline banner. He will focus on "local, state, and national politics that impacts residents of the Golden State," says the site. Markland's writing from the Democratic debate in Hollywood last month caught the station's eye. He tells me:

The great thing is that besides asking me to blog about Los Angeles and California politics, and national politics as it relates to us here in the state, they haven't given me any other restrictions.

I'm by no means an expert on politics, but I feel that, especially as a blogger, that can work to my advantage, in that I won't be talking over casual reader's heads.

Following a hardcore rule that stems from the Metblogs playbook, I won't write about something unless I find it interesting, and even then likely won't bring up a story unless I feel there's something I can contribute. Instead, I hope to highlight news from around the state that L.A. and other readers would likely otherwise miss - even the political junkies - and in other cases bring the readers with me as I learn different aspects of the political realm.

I didn't know until I saw in Markland's blogroll that Channel 4 reporter Conan Nolan has a state politics blog, where he had a personal reaction to the recent court ruling on home schooling.

Politics note: Alex Traverso emails that he's leaving as media contact for Assemblyman Lloyd Levine to join the Kevin Johnson campaign for mayor of Sacramento. Starting Monday the new Levine press person is Beth Willon, formerly with Speaker Fabian Núñez.