Morning Buzz

Morning Buzz: Wednesday 1.19.11

Mark Kelly on learning erroneously that his wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, had died. Plus news and notes from City Hall, the media and more.

Top of the news

Astronaut Mark Kelly said that his wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, spoke at least ten times previously about her fear of being shot at her community meetings. He also talked about hearing the erroneous media reports that Giffords had died while he was en route to Tucson. ABC News

The student who brought a gun to Gardena High on Tuesday and accidentally shot two fellow students will be charged with assault with a deadly weapon. LAT

Politics

AEG’s proposal to build an NFL stadium and events center next door to Staples Center gets its first official airing at City Hall as the City Council’s Trade, Commerce and Tourism committee hears a pair of motions dealing with operation of the Convention Center and the process for stadium talks. Alice Walton tweets at 8:54: "There are at least seven reporters sprinkled throughout this packed room. When was the last time TCT Committee got this kind of turnout?" Blogdowntown, The City Maven, LA Biz Observed

Greg Nelson: "if practice follows form, City Hall will never get beyond the emotional appeal of professional football and ask the bottom-line financial questions that would keep the proposal from draining money from essential city services." LAT op-ed

Councilman Jose Huizar sent an e-mail to his reelection supporters Tuesday defending his office's use of lists that graded civic leaders numerically on their level of support for him. LAT

Sheriff Lee Baca personally met with DA Steve Cooley to discuss how to appeal a prosecutor's decision to reject forgery charges sought by a well-connected businessman who had given Baca expensive gifts and donations. LAT

If the Los Angeles Unified School District had to cover all of its long-term health care promises to current and past employees today, the tab would reach nearly $10 billion, district officials said Tuesday. DN

William Robertson, the city's director of the Bureau of Street Services, submitted his resignation. CityWatch

Meg Whitman is scheduled to make her first public appearance since losing the gubernatorial race at a Jan. 31 women's executive roundtable in Redwood City, but the media barred. SF Chronicle

Media and media people

In the end, Dean Singleton was "overcome by the same forces that have brought chaos to the whole industry: a failure to satisfactorily transition the business from print to multi-platform, and by the depth of the recession, which seems only to have accelerated that transition." Ken Doctor/Newsonomics

Fortune got its story on Steve Jobs seeking cancer treatment in Switzerland in 2009 as an off-the-record comment from an Apple source who has since died. CJR

TheWrap News Inc. on Tuesday announced the acquisition of web-based subscription service ItsontheGrid.com. The Wrap

Sheriff's deputies kept the media out of the Arcadia woodlands site, impeding coverage of protests and tree clearing. Monrovia Patch

Regis Philbin, retiring from ABC, will receive the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California's first-ever "Broadcast Legend Award" at the 61st Annual Golden Mike Awards presentation on Saturday. Kelly Lange and Jose Ronstadt will get lifetime achievement awards.

Will Lewis was reelected president of the Los Angeles Press Club for 2011. Beth Barrett was chosen as vice president.

Robin Givhan, fashion editor at the Washington Post for 15 years, is now a Style and Culture Correspondent for Newsweek and the Daily Beast. Via Gorkana

Here's the L.A. Times obit on former staffer Dale Fetherling, whose death was reported on Tuesday.

More

Former Hollywood producer Joseph Medawar, whose lenient sentence on a 2006 fraud conviction outraged his victims and led to reversal by a federal appeals court, drew a fresh four-year sentence Tuesday for padding his community service hours to go to movies and the gym. LAT

A plausible explanation for why Gardena High School is located inside the city of Los Angeles, not Gardena. (Same for San Fernando High.) The Informer

Frank Gehry was named a professor of architecture at the University of Southern California. LAT

The VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System has posted a draft of the new Master Plan for the West Los Angeles campus online for public comment. The draft can be found at http://www.losangeles.va.gov.

Ron L. Wood, a former Daily News executive, is the new president and CEO of the Valley Economic Alliance. DN

Planning ahead

When Smithsonian Institution Secretary G. Wayne Clough speaks Thursday afternoon at Town Hall Los Angeles at the Millennium Biltmore, he may be asked about a censorship controversy he has been avoiding. LAT Culture Monster

Here's the lineup for the William S. Paley Television Festival March 4-17 in Beverly Hills. Variety

And here's the official lineup for this year's Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. LAT


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