Morning Buzz: Monday 3.30.09

David Zahniser takes a post-Measure B look at Brian D'Arcy, who runs the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18 at the DWP. LAT
Three high-level managers forced out of their jobs under former Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Conny McCormack claim she engaged in wrongful termination, race and age discrimination and attempted insurance fraud. DN
Former mayor Richard Riordan calls the special state measures on the May 19 ballot a bunch of misleading propositions that could lead to economic disaster. LAT Opinion
Tad Friend's Letter from California in this week's New Yorker follows foreclosure king Leo Nordine, who says this year he expects to sell a house a day. TNY
Developer Jim Thomas and why he started the nonprofit, public-private Fixing Angelenos Stuck in Traffic to help implement RAND recommendations he commissioned. Downtown News
Donnell Alexander mourns the loss of CityBeat and calls owner Southland Publishing the cheapest publisher he ever worked for: "Runaway titlist. No company has come close." Blog

Embattled Animal Services chief Ed Boks tells Rick Orlov "I'm sticking it out as long as I can." DN
Announcing the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, funded by The Huff Post and The Atlantic Philanthropies, to be headed by Nick Penniman, founder of The American News Project, with NYU professor Jay Rosen advising. Press Think
Add Metro reporter Evelyn Larrubia to the L.A. Times layoff casualties. While on the county beat, she won a bunch of awards for the Guardians for Profit series in 2005 and was one of the few remaining Latino reporters.
Sign of the apocalypse for the San Francisco Chronicle, at Dottie’s True Blue Cafe in the Tenderloin: "People eat through their whole meals texting, e-mailing, where they used to read papers,” said owner Kurt Abney. “At the end of the day, we used to have a huge pile of newspapers by the front door that people left behind, but now it’s only a few.” Richard Perez-Pena/NYT
Newspapers are losing readers in Europe too—several French papers are kept alive by public subsidies and local papers in Britain "are folding at an accelerating rate"— but there are signs of life and some optimistic owners. NYT
Rounding up the bad news for the ethic media in California. AP
Next up: angling for the likely special election to replace Assemblyman Curren Price in the 51st assembly district. LAT
One LAO reader emailed that he found the Times' new etiquette columnist a bit cranky toward her correspondents.
Favorite weekend read: Jill Schary Robinson's piece on the closure of the Motion Picture and Television Fund's long-term country home for aging industry veterans in Woodland Hills. LAT
Runner up: Steve Harvey's tales of early baseball in Los Angeles, with a map showing the location of stadiums near Downtown, in Vernon and in Venice in what is today the hippest part of Abbot Kinney Boulevard. LAT
Next runner-up: What makes Manny Ramirez special, by Jeff Bradley in ESPN The Magazine
Not worth the time or the ink: another right-wing fantasy that liberals who loathe Rush Limbaugh just have to listen to him to be in awe of his genius.