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Celeste Fremon writes at Witness LA that Ridgway, a supervising deputy probation officer for Los Angeles County, "changed—and in many cases, saved—more lives than anyone can adequately count." Ridgway died...
LA Observed archive
for February 2009
If you don't find what you want here, check another month or search below.
The city of Los Angeles could face nearly a $1 billion — that's with a B — shortfall in the 2010 budget year because of a "mammoth bailout needed...
Today's segment on KCRW looks behind the scenes at The Wrap, the new Hollywood news website headed by Sharon Waxman. It airs at 4:44 p.m. at 89.9 FM, or is...
Double whammy today in the Los Angeles Newspaper Group world. First, holders of the company-wide Media News Group credit card, called P-Cards, were notified to stop using the cards at...
Some 190 lawyers and 250 staffers are getting the word this morning at Latham & Watkins offices around the country. The law firm was founded in Los Angeles in 1934...
The Dodgers' $25 million offer to Manny Ramirez actually would have paid him $10 million this year and spread the rest over three years with no interest, Dylan Hernandez reports...
While Los Angeles readers will mostly have to just look elsewhere in the paper to find the news that used to appear in California, for those in Orange County this...
Negotiations are back to square one, says Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti. If Manny were talking to reporters tonight, I bet he'd wink and pretend he doesn't speak English very...
Officers from the LAPD met mayoral candidate David "Zuma Dogg" Saltsburg at tonight's campaign forum, took him to the Wilshire station and questioned him about an accusation that he directed...
L.A. artist Shepard Fairey guested with Terry Gross on NPR's "Fresh Air" tonight to explain his side of the dispute that has ensued over Fairey basing his Obama campaign poster...
Soto, who left office last year after missing significant amounts of time in Sacramento due to illness, apparently died today. She was at least 82. A statement from Speaker Karen...
In a follow to her audit of City Hall gang programs a year ago, Controller Laura Chick says there is still a long ways to go. ReportUnlike in L.A., next...
Architectural photographer Marvin Rand was 84 when he died on Feb. 14. Along Abbot Kinney Boulevard, where he kept his studio, Rand is being called one of them — a...
John Corrigan succeeds Sallie Hofmeister as editor of the Los Angeles Times Business staff. Here's this afternoon's newsroom memo from editor Russ Stanton: Colleagues, John Corrigan, deputy business editor for...
The Scripps newspaper in Denver announced today that it will publish tomorrow for the last time. The Dean Singleton-owned Denver Post immediately snapped up more than a dozen Rocky Mountain...
Movieline is relaunching as a web portal "covering all things Hollywood" with former Defamer bloggers Seth Abramovitch, S.T. VanAirsdale, and Kyle Buchanan on board. The press release says to await...
The gay-oriented West Hollywood store announced this week that it's closing soon after nearly thirty years, citing in part the loss of foot traffic from all the construction work to...
Writing for the front of today's Thursday Styles section in the New York Times, Scott Timberg says that Eagle Rock's much talked-about invasion by young creatives is crashing along with...
The L.A. Times editorial board, in a slap to the mayor and City Council, recommends a no vote on Measure B: Set aside, for a moment, the secretive and rushed...
Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the actress who married San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, made "The Trouble With Romance" before they met. It has been out since Feb. 1 on Netflix and...
Slow news day in Covina? An exercise in Dadaism? Whatever — all I know for sure is that a story in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune leads with IHOP running...
Because it's been that kind of day: The consulting company belonging to the Screen Actors Guild’s new national executive director, David White, shut down shortly before he was hired because...
For the first time, Times reporters and editors covering entertainment in Calendar will work alongside the Business staffers who cover the harder news side of Hollywood. A new masthead job...
While Joel Kotkin sees Los Angeles "fading rapidly toward irrelevancy," this month's Atlantic cover story posits that L.A. is one of the relatively few American places ideally situated to rise...
"Incredulous News Corp. insiders" tell Variety that Rupert Murdoch's love of print media is so fervent that he's been talking about making a play for the Los Angeles Times....
When the L.A. Times kills the California section and moves local news inside the A section next week, the result will be less versatile space for news, fewer feature stories,...
Is this an anybody but Jack Weiss for city attorney statement? Only Rep. Maxine Waters knows for sure, but the press release quotes her saying, in part: "Carmen Trutanich grew...
Hearst posted the news that it will seek quick "significant" cuts to both union and non-union staff at the Chronicle. If enough savings aren't realized, the company says it will...
Rep. Hilda Solis is the new U.S. Secretary of Labor, so there will be an election out east to replace her. The vote was 80-17 after Republican leadership in the...
Urban analyst and critic Joel Kotkin warns at Forbes.com that the upcoming reelection of Antonio Villaraigosa as mayor should not be taken as "evidence that all is well in the...
Thomas A. Saenz, the in-house counsel to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, has been selected to head the U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division, the Los Angeles Daily Journal reports today...
Is Kenneth Turan rebutting critics within the L.A. Times in his column praising the revamped Oscars show? Patrick Goldstein and Mary McNamara go unnamed by him, but readers reject...
A NASA satellite launched from Vandenberg air base just before 2 a.m. failed to reach orbit and crashed minutes later in the ocean near Antarctica. That only cost $278 million...
It's so tough that journalists have stopped entering prize competitions. Recently the L.A. Press Club extended its deadline for contestants to submit entries to the entertainment awards. Now the California...
Even before last week's new round of departures from the Times, the paper's once-signature foreign staff had shrunk. The bureaus in Tokyo, Paris and Rome have been listed as vacant...
I agree with Mary Melton, the executive editor of Los Angeles Magazine, who blogs that the Bill Condon-Larry Mark-Hugh Jackman Oscars show was more watchable, not less. She posts: The...
Greg Hernandez, laid off by the Daily News earlier today after finishing his Oscars coverage, blogged about it tonight at Out in Hollywood. He said the site will live on...
Fox News shouter John Gibson did not compare Attorney General Eric Holder to a monkey with a bright blue scrotum, and thus the Huffington Post regrets the error. Live by...
City Attorney candidate Jack Weiss scheduled a press conference this morning to announce the backing of some local enviros, including Ed Begley Jr. and Heal the Bay's Mark Gold. But...
Daily News entertainment writer Greg Hernandez worked long hours posting a whole bunch of blog items on the Oscars yesterday and today — and now posts on Facebook that he...
Cost-cutting moves unveiled in the Daily News today include no more editorial, Op-Ed or business pages on Mondays, and the comics and TV grid moved into the front news...
The editorial page at the Daily News came out against both Measure B, the solar energy and jobs program, and Measure E, which is billed as a way to give...
Phil Willon, the L.A. Times City Hall reporter whose beat is mostly Mayor Villaraigosa, delivers a pre-election analysis that declares the mayor's record mixed. Villaraigosa gets credit from Willon for...
If you hope to win your Oscars pool, you should have had "Slumdog Millionaire" in eight categories including best picture. Full list of winners, plus backstage video at the Academy...
There will still be a Defamer brand and Hollywood posts, but they will run as a section of Gawker's main site. Owner Nick Denton explains it's part of Gawker's transition...
The Tour of California hit Pasadena on Saturday with Lance Armstrong riding in support of race leader Levi Leipheimer, in the yellow jersey. Jonathan Alcorn has more race photos at...
Dunder Mifflin's office, parking lot and hedge are located on Saticoy Street in an industrial part of Van Nuys. In case you suspected Scranton looked eerily like the San Fernando...
David Kronke, who covered television for the Daily News and wrote the paper's Mayor of Television blog, posted his final item today and said to watch for the launch of...
The two all-news AM stations (KNX 1070 and KFWB 980) share the same floor on Wilshire Boulevard but a wall, physical and virtual, has separated the newsrooms. The staffs were...
KCRW will announce later today that veteran Hollywood journalist Kim Masters is taking over as host of the half-hour showbiz show The Business, which airs Mondays at 2:30 p.m. Masters...
The Times unveiled its Mapping L.A. effort to identify Los Angeles neighborhoods yesterday and has been getting lots of online reaction and suggestions at the paper's website. A story that...
TMZ posted last night a photo it says shows Rihanna with bruises from the alleged attack by singer Chris Brown the night before the Grammys. It appears to be an...
Court houses in Los Angeles County have metal detectors that screen for weapons. You know that, I know that, but apparently many people who come to court don't realize it...
Former city Controller Rick Tuttle had considered running in the open race to replace Jack Weiss on the City Council. He opted against, and now has thrown his backing to...
Monica Corcoran, a staff writer in the L.A. Times Image section, was on the front page this morning with a co-byline on a piece about Oscar fashion being toned down...
This was the day that Daily News desk editors who didn't want to make the move to West Covina had their buyout applications accepted — a "tense and tearful day,"...
Los Angeles-based tech writer Joseph Menn has been on book leave. In a note to the Times newsroom that I've heard described as "droll," Menn announces that he's moving back...
I'm told now that the pending wave of departures from the Los Angeles Times newsroom will be split into two phases: with voluntary departures and a relatively small number of...
The economic downturn is hitting the pro bono legal sector hard, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California imposing layoffs for the first time, today's L.A. Daily Journal...
CityBeat this week brings out-of-work classical music critic Alan Rich back into print, at the expense of freelance critic Donna Perlmutter, who wrote for CityBeat for five years (and was...
Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria crossed over in a vote held about dawn, and lawmakers finally passed last year's budget with California on the brink of financial...
After 26 years, Martha McCully "pulled loose from the glue trap of New York City to start fresh in Venice, California." The former executive editor of In Style and executive...
Senate Republicans dumped their leader overnight because he dared to support the Democrats' plan for ending the embarrassment in Sacramento. LAT, Bee, APPlus: Gov. Schwarzenegger returns to Los Angeles....
Abigail Goldman, who told colleagues that she raised her hand to leave the Los Angeles Times, was the last remaining member of the four-reporter team that won the Pulitzer Prize...
The most-visited newspaper websites — errantly labeled the "top sites" by the Nieman Journalism Lab — all posted big gains in readership in 2008. While the absolute numbers from Nielsen...
Researchers at the George C. Page Museum have excavated a major new deposit of Ice Age fossils adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits — found under the former May...
Freshman Republican Curt Hagman from Chino Hills tells Capitol Weekly that he was at home in Sacramento last night when he heard a crash. Outside he found a man and...
Admittedly I pay no attention at all to horse racing, so everyone may know this. Still I was surprised to read over the weekend that it's considered a good year...
Joe Mathews, who left the Los Angeles Times last year to write and be a New America Foundation fellow, says in the New Republic that reading the paper these days...
The Legislature remains stalled, so layoff notices are headed to at least 10,000 state workers. Rough & Tumble Inside the new Washington journalism force that is Politico. New Republic...
It's not what you think — perhaps, though, it's the logical Darwinian outcome of car culture? Observed Sunday on Reseda Boulevard in Northridge. Video link More LA Observed video: Downtown...
Staffers who had been preparing for the axing of 70+ co-workers today are now expecting the newsroom to get hit on Thursday....
L.A. County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore is getting some nice attention for Sunday's visiting blogger post at LA Observed about his famous father, the actor James Whitmore. He told the...
This stormy President's Day is when the 2009 Los Angeles Marathon would have been run under one of Frank McCourt's schedules. The race was postponed until Memorial Day, and at...
Sacramento Democrats have so far failed to get the one Republican vote needed to pass a state budget and break the fiscal logjam. LAT, AP MTA officials think that...
The Times' L.A. Now blog, in reporting Chris Brown's apology, locates the incident with Rihanna in "the Westside neighborhood of Hancock Park." Well, I guess it is west of the...
Tim Rutten's take is that Mayor Villaraigosa's all-out support for the mysterious solar-and-jobs Measure B makes more sense when viewed in the context of the Democratic primary for governor next...
The Los Angeles Times editorial board delivered a slap to the mayor's pick, Jack Weiss, and endorsed Carmen Trutanich for City Attorney. Voters could assemble a fairly good city attorney...
Since I mentioned her last week on the blog, and on Friday in my KCRW commentary, let's note for the record that Joann Killeen and her partner have stepped aside...
James Whitmore, the award-winning actor who died of lung cancer on Feb. 6, wanted to be wakened to see the inauguration of Barack Obama. He wasn't always lucid by then,...
Ken Gurnick, the Dodgers beat writer for MLB.com, is now sharing his insights on a blog for the network. "Covering all things Dodgers since Steve Sax was a rookie," reads...
In a statement this afternoon through crisis managers Sitrick & Co., performer Chris Brown doesn't mention Rihanna but does mention God: Words cannot begin to express how sorry and saddened...
Estelle Bennett, original Ronette and sister of Ronnie Spector, died this week at her home in Englewood, N.J. She was 67. They're forever young on YouTube, especially in the...
Newsroom staffers at the Daily News were called into a meeting late this afternoon with Editor Carolina Garcia and HR and told there will be layoffs next week. They were...
On Saturday, Father Daniel Berrigan's Vietnam-era protest drama, "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine," opens at The Actors' Gang in Culver City. And on Wednesday, L.A. Theatre Works begins a...
Channel 4 plans to air a half-hour investigative piece on Sunday night at 11:30 examining LAUSD oversight of an ambitious library renovation program called Wonder of Reading. I'm told the...
The next big wave of journalist departures from the Los Angeles Times is due to start Monday — and continue at the end of the month, apparently — but Metro...
A plane circling over Los Angeles rush hour traffic and trailing a "try Colorado" banner is part of a push by states to take jobs and talent from financially...
Tonight on Which Way, L.A.?, Warren Olney gets Controller Laura Chick (con) and former DWP general manager David Freeman (pro) into a spirited back and forth over the merits of...
Newsroom staffers at the Los Angeles Times have been told to expect the newest layoff taps to be delivered Monday, amid talk that the numbers to be let go are...
The Los Angeles Times editorial pages don't get as much use out of their website as I expected — the blogroll would have been light in 2006, for instance —...
A photographer taking pictures in the public areas at Union Station deleted his photos under pressure from Amtrak employees. More details at the Discarted blog. Apparently it's in violation of...
Former Lakers great and Clippers GM Elgin Baylor alleged in a civil lawsuit that Clippers owner Donald Sterling embraced a "vision of a Southern plantation-type structure" for the team...
Former planning commission chair Jane Usher is co-hosting a Feb. 18 fundraiser in Hancock Park for city attorney candidate Carmen Trutanich. "Trutanich lacks the staunchly Democratic, Westside, Ivy League credentials...
Steve Mikulan gets off a couple of good lines in his L.A. Daily post that "as a press representative for Union Pacific Railroad, Joann Killeen has plenty of experience with...
Here's an update to my post last night about nachos, El Cholo and Anthony Bourdian. El Cholo says through its publicist that the claim regarding Carmen Rocha has always been...
Mayor Villaraigosa is back in Washington again to lobby with other California mayors and pick up an award from the League of United Latin American Citizens. DN/Sausage Factory The...
NeonTommy.com at USC Annenberg is an "online digital news Web site created to fill a void in local and national news while providing news and commentary across multiple platforms—audio, video...
Eight candidates have filed papers to run in the March 24 special election to fill the vacancy in the 24th Senate district created when Ridley-Thomas was elected to the Board...
It wasn't just Channel 4 -- all L.A. TV stations covered last night's low-speed Bentley chase, probably hoping it was Chris Brown or that the audience would assume it was....
Mayor Villaraigosa was on Which Way, L.A.? tonight talking up his water restrictions to the KCRW audience, Patt Morrison continued her daily run through the challengers on KPCC with Zuma...
When longtime El Cholo waitress Carmen Rocha died in October, the L.A. media hailed her as the creator of nachos. It's not so, says chef and Travel Channel foodie Anthony...
Looks as if, yet again, former editor Jerry Roberts has prevailed over McCaw in her reign of terror at the Santa Barbara News-Press. Craig Smith blogs the details up there....
The Jewish Journal is streaming video of Israeli consul general Jacob Dayan giving minute-by-minute analysis of election returns from Tel Aviv, with an audience of journalists and Israelis on hand....
Mayor Villaraigosa told the Daily News editorial board that the city is facing "layoffs in numbers we've never seen." DN The accidental release of a list of 900 allegations...
The Huffington Post says the L.A. Times was the first major media outlet to identify Rihanna as the victim of Sunday's early morning domestic violence, "despite the LAPD's refusal to...
David Garza of Los Angeles Mission College grabbed this photo of snow dusting the hills behind Sylmar this afternoon....
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa went a bit further than he has before, telling AP political writer Michael Blood that he won't promise not to begin running for governor if he's reelected....
TMZ reports that law enforcement sources tell the site Rihanna was found in Hancock Park with two "huge contusions" on her forehead, and a bloody lip and nose, from the...
Former EBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman, who is 52, announced today that she'll be a Republican candidate for governor next year. Former Gov. Pete Wilson will be her campaign chairman....
Los Angeles magazine — which until lately eschewed the terms Westside and Eastside — has expanded the definition of the latter beyond even the Times' recent make-it-up-as-you-go style ethic. In...
KTLA has posted an interview with octuplets mom Nadya Suleman by former health reporter Marta Waller for a story on a fertility clinic back in 2006. Suleman also identifies...
LA Observed contributor Cari Beauchamp's new biography, "Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years," is about to be released and she has a piece in the new Hollywood issue of...
Both performers were supposed to appear this afternoon at the Grammy festivities at Staples Center, but instead Brown was being booked at the LAPD's Wilshire station and Rihanna's people were...
Marc Haefele's comparison of Thursday's Drew Street demolition to something out of the Middle Ages struck a nerve in the City Attorney's office, which sent over a response: The February...
The Los Angeles artist best known now for his Obama poster was taken into custody on his way to Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art for the opening of his first...
The reader who sent this photo into LongBeachReport.com said it was the last of three water spouts seen descending offshore before 9 a.m. Story there....
Residents of Culver City got robocalls on their home phones informing them that the city would be patrolled today by Santa Monica police, while Culver City police attended services for...
The Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor died today at home in Malibu. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer a week before Thanksgiving, said his son Steve Whitmore, a Los...
Journalist Marc Haefele found this week's media event at the demolition of the former Avenues gang home in Northeast Los Angeles more than a little unsettling. A bunch of pols...
Eric A. Morris, a former writer for television and the Harvard Crimson, is a recurring guest blogger for the New York Times' Freakonomics blog. In his hats as a doctoral...
Photographer Gary Leonard is no longer taking pictures for CityBeat — they cut him in November — but he has moved his collection of Los Angeles photos to a new...
Many state offices are closed today due to the unpaid furloughs ordered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. LAT, Chronicle PA Consulting Group says the DWP's embrace of renewable energy will...
New York officials think they have figured out the source of the Westside maple syrup aroma that, as one writer put it back in 2006, "spread faster than warm Aunt...
Sam Sayyad, the husband of Rep. Hilda Solis, paid $6,400 this week to settle small Los Angeles County tax liens against his auto business dating to 1993, USA Today reported....
Daily Breeze columnist John Bogert settled in to the paper's new location with a column that hints at the glamorous life of a South Bay scribe. In one scene, he...
Rich DeMuro was let go as the tech reporter at channels 2 & 9 after CBS acquired CNET. (Somewhat ironically, he left CNET about a year ago to come work...
After an adult male opposum was shot in the head in Van Nuys on Saturday, it required the neighborhood kids, an Animal Services officer, Valley Wildlife Care in Woodland Hills...
Telemundo's new lifestyle cable network for Latinos, mun2, has posted a video with the guys behind the Kogi Korean barbecue taco truck. The video was shot during a stop at...
Associated Press wants credit and money from Shepard Fairey for the Obama photograph he based his now-famous poster on. AP MSN and BermanBraun are rolling out Wonderwall as a...
The Los Angeles Daily Journal will report tomorrow that a ruling by Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutionally...
Relaunch of L.A. Now is in the works, plus the much-needed redesign and more links to blogs and other free non-Times content: "simply doing a better job of linking to...
The pressmen's union at the L.A. Times has been told it looks as if 63 of the 244 workers at the printing plants downtown and in Costa Mesa will be...
Due to Jet Blue debuting at Los Angeles International on June 17, summer fares to New York and Boston have dropped as low as $105 one-way — or $231 roundtrip...
The City Council agreed to pay the settlement to end nine lawsuits against the city by people attacked in the LAPD sweep through MacArthur Park in 2007....
The House voted to delay the implementation of the digital TV changeover until June 12....
Tim Rutten suggests an anti-trust exemption to let newspapers collude on charging for web content. LAT Op-Ed A string of street robberies and attacks in Silver Lake and environs...
One of Sam Zell's quirks is that he sends out an annual gift and personal take on the year to friends and colleagues. Sharon Waxman at The Wrap digs up...
Channel 2 & 9's Bryan Frank takes us behind the scenes of another glamorous night in the TV news business. Frank, Sharon Tay and a trainee camera guy make ready...
The media scene outside the Suleman home in Whittier — Camp Octuplets, you might say — is described in tomorrow's New York Times by L.A. reporter Randal C. Archibold. Photographers...
Tamiflu, the most commonly used influenza antiviral drug and the key to the government's emergency stockpile, no longer works on the flu strain that is emerging as the most dominant...
The New York Times has a series of nicely done Flash ads running on LATimes.com playing off the popularity of Obama coverage and offering, among another things, a "weekender" subscription...
IN Los Angeles and Frontiers are combining into one publication, nearly two years after the former acquired the latter. The new bi-weekly magazine debuts Feb. 25 as Frontiers-IN Los Angeles,...
Patt Morrison on KPCC is giving the challengers to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa maybe a bit more than some are due — ten minutes for each on the air. Today at...
Bob Hope Airport's board wants Burbank to become the first airport with a 10 p.m. curfew for newer jets. DN, LAT Competing estimates of Measure B's cost. LAT, DNPlus:...
Jon Weisman, keeper of my favorite Dodgers blog and blogging community, is leaving the indie ranks and moving Dodger Thoughts to LATimes.com. He starts there immediately and will be replacing...
County supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky just sent a letter to Los Angeles Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein urging him to reconsider his decision to fold local news into the A section and...
Bill Keller, the editor of the New York Times, is answering questions from readers this week on the NYT website. He extolls the virtues of good journalism and explains the...
City Controller candidates Nick Patsaouras and Wendy Greuel have picked an odd issue to bicker over: who attended Mayor Villaraigosa's recent birthday party at the Santa Monica home of certified...
Readers have pointed out this tagline at the end of the Times' Super Bowl ads story in today's paper and online: Editor's note: This review has been ended because of...
Measure B could end costing double what current estimates say, according to a DWP draft audit obtained by Rick Orlov. And the Times' David Zahniser got documents showing that...
Los Angeles Times staffers were told Friday by resigned editors that publisher Eddy Hartenstein realized there would be a sizable public backlash against his decision to kill the local news...
Clinton fundraises in LA
Jim Henson Studios on La Brea became a presidential campaign stop on Thursday.
Brown declares disaster area
The natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Performing arts with cheer
Donna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
