Weekly archive
January 4 - January 10, 2009
Friday, Jan. 9
The Bruin Rangers, UCLA's official women's rugby club team, held their annual Prom Dress Rugby game on Thursday. "I got into rugby because I got tired of getting yellow cards...
Word, unconfirmed, out of 1st and Spring is that Metromix Los Angeles is shutting down — the Tribune pub's staff will merge with the staff of The Guide at the...
L.A. Times Editor Russ Stanton sent the staff a note about the approaching re-departure of Al Martinez from the columnist ranks. Here's the LAO exclusive from Wednesday. Stanton's note today...
Say you live on one of those Los Angeles streets with permit parking. Say you want to get a couple of visitor permits so friends or family can visit you...
My segment on the air at 4:44 p.m. centers on the ailment afflicting brown pelicans, with a little mention of the SS Catalina meeting its demise. It's about icons of...
Longtime film writer Ella Taylor was told today that she too is being laid off by the LA Weekly, sources say. On top of the earlier news about Steven Leigh...
Sources close to the Daily News say the newsroom has just been told that publisher Doug Hanes has left the company. No immediate word on a successor, if any. For...
Word came down from Village Voice Media HQ in Phoenix that the LA Weekly can't afford a theater editor any more. That puts Steven Leigh Morris out of a job....
Santa Ana winds are back and the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning effective from noon today until 4 p.m. Sunday. Wires Mayor Villaraigosa's pro-Israel comments have...
Thursday, Jan. 8
"Slumdog Millionaire" won for best picture, director, writer, young actor/actress (Dev Patel) and composer, A.R. Rahman. Sean Penn won the top actor prize for his role in "Milk." Anne Hathaway...
As SoCal earthquakes go, this one was moderate but probably felt like more if you are near San Bernardino. The epicenter is initially thought to be right under the Inland...
Readers of Los Angeles Metblogs have spoken. They voted Sam Zell as the 2008 Grinch of the Year. Quips the blog's David Markland: "Congratulations, Sam! Ebenezer Scrooge and William Mulholland...
Guild blog The Stress Telegram has the background on the three journalists laid off today (by seniority in each department, I'm told) at the Long Beach Press-Telegram. There were also...
The L.A. Times may not have a Washington bureau of its own anymore, but soon KPCC will. Kitty Felde is heading east to open the first Washington bureau of any...
State Sen. Gloria Romero has dropped her interest in running for the Hilda Solis seat in Congress. Romero said today she will run as planned for Superintendent of Public Instruction...
Last year at this time, Brent Hopkins was a reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News and the guild shop steward/blogger called upon to keep the staff informed through waves...
Variety blogger-editor-columnist Anne Thompson endorses Marc Cooper's autopsy on the decline in gravitas of the LA Weekly under New Times leadership. She posts: It's a sad tale. Like many L.A....
Author and former state Senator Tom Hayden, writing at the Huffington Post, praises the late sculptor Robert Graham for his quiet work with the street gangs in Venice. In the...
Among the newsroom cuts at the Daily News are the editorial cartoonist Patrick O'Connor and sports columnist Steve Dilbeck, both fixtures in L.A. media. I'm told that today's layoffs will...
The son of former LAPD spokesman and Fox 11 reporter Rod Bernsen died of cancer. The family suggests donations be made to the Memorial Hospital Cancer Center's Circle of Hope,...
The Sparks' Candace Parker won the WNBA's most valuable player award — and rookie of the year, plus an Olympic gold medal and a national championship at Tennessee before turning...
Traffic was up an average of 83% over last year, with local readership up 54% and overall page views up 47%, says the year-end memo from LATimes.com executive editor Meredith...
Schwarzenegger proposes to cut five days of public school to save money. LAT, Capitol Weekly Passengers on Delta flight 110 subdued a passenger who tried to open the exit door...
Wednesday, Jan. 7
Heal the Bay says its staff spent the past year reviewing eight years of records on wastewater discharges kept by the Los Angeles Water Quality Control Board. The findings: "A...
Not the kind of email you like to see at the end of your shift. Long Beach gets in on these layoffs too. Email to staffers from the SoCal Media...
Looks like the former K-Mart store on Foothill Boulevard will stay empty. Home Depot has given up trying to get approval — over concerted neighborhood opposition — to open a...
The city of Santa Monica website says that Katz, a member of the City Council, died today with family and close friends by his side. The family appreciates everyone’s prayers...
LA Observed contributor TJ Sullivan talks about the new parking regulation controversy in Los Angeles with Warren Olney on "Which Way, L.A.?" on KCRW at 7:30 p.m. He's up against...
This time the editors mean it: Al Martinez's last column is scheduled to run in the Los Angeles Times on Jan. 19. He asked to go until his 80th birthday...
Doug Frantz, one of the many senior Los Angeles Times editors to depart in recent years, has been named chief investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under new chairman...
Some top LAPD officials pushed hard, but unsuccessfully, to get the coroner to change the finding that a SWAT bullet killed 19-month-old Suzie Peña in 2005. LAT, Witness LA...
Tuesday, Jan. 6
Ted Soqui at LA Photo has images from the scene, which closed Wilshire Boulevard at rush hour tonight....
These two items aren't really related, but they came in at the same time and are both about the new Los Angeles Times. First, right now the story at the...
Former LA Weekly columnist and editor Marc Cooper (now director of Annenberg Digital News at USC Annenberg) has been relatively quiet about his longtime editorial home since he was squeezed...
This year the L.A. Times didn't fall back into the trap of reporting the old canard that a million spectators watched the Rose Parade. But the editor in charge of...
There's been plenty of drama at the Los Angeles Times the last couple of years — and now there's a documentary. "Inventing Los Angeles: The Chandlers and their Times" hits...
Aron Miller, who recently served a stint as interim city editor at the Daily News, has given notice that he's leaving the paper and journalism. He's been on the Woodland...
Whether or not City Hall actually wants to take control of billboards is open to interpretation, but today the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out a challenge to...
City Council President Eric Garcetti and Amy Elaine Wakeland, his longtime partner, were married Sunday at a small ceremony attended by the couple's parents and close friends, his office announced...
Los Angeles Magazine's restaurant issue includes three-course epicurean splurges for $35 or less at Local, The Park, Palate, Sugarfish, Terroni and Delancey. Also in the issue: Patric Kuh's designation of...
A new staff report from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority sort of confirms what people involved in the transit arena knew, but may come as a shock to...
The longtime L.A. music critic blogs about this week's death and the legacy of arts patron Betty Freeman. (Here's my news post from yesterday.) Rich: She insisted on facing death...
Proposition 8 proponents filed briefs challenging AG Jerry Brown's legal position against the measure. AP, LAT, Chronicle Sen. Dianne Feinstein isn't happy about the Obama appointment of Leon Panetta...
Monday, Jan. 5
Decades after the damage from DDT almost destroyed the Southern California brown pelican population, something is causing the coastal birds to get sick and turn up distressed in unusual places:...
The latest web venture from Drudge Report West Coast man Andrew Breitbart goes live Tuesday. Big Hollywood, he says, "is not a 'celebrity' gabfest or a gossip outpost - it...
One of the old-time Los Angeles bloggers, Boi from Troy, has typed his final entry. There, anyway. In more than five years since this blog started, more than 3.5 million...
Henry Casas, deputy chief of staff for Councilman Jose Huizar, has been arrested on suspicion of felony domestic violence. Casas, 40, was booked in Van Nuys on New Year's Eve...
Variety reports that Ned Tanen, who served as president of Universal and Paramount and produced three popular "Brat Pack" films in the 1980s, died today in Santa Monica. He was...
Roman Polanski's lawyers argue that the director's bid to have that pesky sex with a minor case from the 1970s dismissed should be moved because the entire Los Angeles Superior...
Andrew Blankstein reports at the Times: Over the weekend, the LAPD opened its emergency operations center in the wake of Hamas rocket attacks against Israel and the Jewish state's bombing...
Betty Freeman, who died at her home in Los Angeles on Sunday, was a leading patron of the arts and new music. That's her in David Hockney's Beverly Hills Housewife,...
Voting by members of the Los Angeles Press Club has returned Ezra Palmer, Anthea Raymond, Jon Regardie, George White and Adam Wilkenfeld to the board for new two-year terms and...
Gene Parrish was from 1984 to 1996 a host and producer on classical music station KUSC-FM. Its website says that Parrish passed away after a long illness and most recently...
Confirming speculation that's been around since he left Channels 2 & 9 last summer, Don Corsini has been named president and general manager of KTLA Channel 5. The job has...
Michael Hiltzik asks the question: what is the succession plan for Apple after Steve Jobs, who has been treated for cancer of the pancreas? LAT There's a new LAPD...
Sunday, Jan. 4
Monday's front page in the New York Times carries a 2½-inch high display ad from CBS across the bottom. Economic necessity, the paper explains in a news story. In the...
Echo Park author Charlie Huston, who blogs at Pulpnoir.com, gets a helpful Janet Maslin review in today's New York Times for his latest book, "The Mystic Arts of Erasing All...
"This is a human tragedy that is beyond words. A horrific night this evening." — Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at Metrolink crash scene in Chatsworth "Officer Randal Simmons was a...
"I didn’t have to put much thought into it....It’s really an honor." — Lindsay Lohan, on posing nude as Marilyn Monroe for New York Magazine "What we need is...
"I always keep my options open." — LAPD Chief William Bratton, dismissing speculation he was a candidate for London police chief "Barack's better half not only has stature but...
"We used the internet to win the internet." — WGA head Patric Verrone, on the writers strike "Trying to get a story on the front page is so similar...
Dutton's farewell gathering "It is with profound regret and sorrow that Dutton’s Brentwood Books must announce that it will be closing on April 30, 2008." — Note from owner...
