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When Peter Hong left the Los Angeles Times on a buyout during the last staff paring, he hinted at a gig to be named. It's this: the former real estate and Metro reporter is now a senior deputy to Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. Specifically, Hong is "Senior Deputy for Agency Review and Support," which sounds a lot like the investigative role that another former Times staffer, Joel Sappell, is performing for Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. Just speculating here, but Hong's last Times gig was covering real estate, and perhaps he got to know Dan Rosenfeld, Ridley-Thomas' senior deputy who was co-founder of the development firm Urban Partners LLC.
Noted: Ridley-Thomas's senior deputy for communications is Aurelio Rojas, the longtime former reporter for the Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Chronicle who was also a childhood friend of Antonio Villaraigosa, back in the Tony Vilar days.