Steve Hymon's Bottleneck blog is the latest Times staff blog to be folded into L.A. Now, which the paper is trying to deepen and finally build up in hopes that it will become a go-to source of local news that will capture more external blog links and eyeballs.

Sign of the (L.A.) Times: The LAT broke all the stories on the UCLA employees who snooped on medical records, then star investigative reporter Charles Ornstein fled the paper for ProPublica. This week, when the main violator pleaded guilty in federal court, the Times had to pick up wires from AP. "So freaking sad it hurts," one of the many ex-staffers emails.