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Topic Archive: Los Angeles
Chief Bratton endorses another candidate — this time in New York City. L.A. Now KPFK suspends "anti-Semitic hatefest" show "La Causa" for six weeks; its followers blame the Jews....
Posted March 26, 2009 05:44 PM
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....
Posted February 4, 2009 01:22 PM
I'm not sure I've seen a rougher pairing on Tavis Smiley's PBS show than last week's match-up of Tavis with Brian Wilson. It could have worked, but didn't. Wilson has...
Posted January 27, 2009 05:31 PM
Dialogue continues about what and who defines the Los Angeles area's hundreds of neighborhoods. Today in the Times, columnist Hector Tobar revisits his home turf in East Hollywood — he's...
Posted January 27, 2009 09:15 AM
Tim Doyle, formerly of Variety and Maria Russo, formerly of The Los Angeles Times, are the lead editors of Sharon Waxman's new Hollywood news website, which officially launched today. A...
Posted January 26, 2009 08:58 AM
Furnell Chatman guests on KPCC's Off-Ramp to talk about leaving KNBC Channel 4 after 35 years and moving back to New Orleans. I'm told he also shares quite a personal...
Posted January 16, 2009 03:10 PM
Glendale police were alerted that a RAV 4 seemed abandoned. Turns out it was rented by Covina Santa killer Bruce Prado on Dec. 19 and was due back yesterday. His...
Posted December 28, 2008 12:29 AM
My KCRW segment on Friday nominated Jane Ellison Usher's resignation as president of the city planning commission as the recent L.A. story that will reverberate the most in local politics....
Posted December 20, 2008 09:29 AM
Among the journalists laid off in today's announcement of cutbacks at National Public Radio are "Day to Day" co-host Madeleine Brand, "News & Notes" host Farai Chideya, senior correspondent John...
Posted December 10, 2008 09:18 PM
Tidbits and blurbs on politics, media and news of the Los Angeles universe. Eli Broad explains his offer to MOCA has no strings, adds a kind of slap at LAT:...
Posted December 3, 2008 04:41 PM
At least 30 state legislators (California's are the highest paid in the U.S. at about $150,000 including perks) have outside jobs, including Monterey Park assemblyman Mike Eng, whose law...
Posted November 28, 2008 12:05 PM
Hollywood bloggers Sharon Waxman and Nikki Finke are disagreeing about the facts of a secret A-list meeting about SAG, and squabbling a bit, so Patrick Goldstein looks into it....
Posted November 26, 2008 02:50 PM
Politics reporter John Schwada blogs at Fox 11 about studies showing that many people found the news media too blatantly favoring Barack Obama during the campaign. Actually, I find all...
Posted November 7, 2008 12:17 AM
Adrienne Crew writes at Native Intelligence about prepping to be a poll worker today at a precinct in Culver City. On the theme, Mark Lacter has Election Day headlines at...
Posted November 4, 2008 09:25 AM
West Hollywood mayor Jeff Prang had a talk with the homeowner, who then relented. LAT Previously: Which Halloween tableau is in poorer taste?...
Posted October 29, 2008 10:20 PM
Looks like the British newspaper speculation that California-born al-Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn is dead was a little off. The former Adam Pearlman turned up Saturday in a new tape talking...
Posted October 5, 2008 12:40 AM
Signs have begun going up in Downtown advising commuters. A funeral procession for Officer Spree Desha will begin at Parker Center at 8:45 am Thursday and move to the Cathedral...
Posted September 16, 2008 01:32 PM
Technical difficulties — as in no Internet connection — at home this morning. So, better late than never... LAT's James Rainey gets up close and kinda personal with Arianna Huffington...
Posted August 27, 2008 12:34 PM
Hey, if Sam Zell and Tribune can colonize the Los Angeles media, why not Arianna Huffington in Chicago? The site launches Thursday. From Romenesko letters: Huff Post bloggers work for...
Posted August 13, 2008 09:59 AM
Russ Stanton just emailed the staff saying the total number of Los Angeles Times editorial staff departures has stopped at 135 instead of the 150 originally threatened. Fewer pages are...
Posted July 30, 2008 03:36 PM
Initial USGS map centers it south of Pomona at 5.8 magnitude. (Expect that to change in the coming hours and days.) Here are the geographic coordinates for the epicenter: 3...
Posted July 29, 2008 11:45 AM
I'd tweet — boy would I tweet — about being stuck for five hours in the Newark airport with flights being cancelled all around due to weather. Looks like the...
Posted July 23, 2008 05:46 PM
John Spano, a former legal affairs reporter and editor who left the Times in the buyouts earlier this year, has landed as an associate with Kiesel Boucher & Larson, a...
Posted July 15, 2008 05:57 PM
Emirates Airlines will land a massive Airbus A380 at LAX on Aug. 5 to conduct ground and flight tests. Sounds like a little PR is on tap too. "The A380...
Posted July 15, 2008 08:41 AM
Controller Laura Chick's auditors looked at 26 city departments and found that 16 have not updated their emergency plans in the past three years. The chief legislative analyst's office had...
Posted July 15, 2008 08:22 AM
Former Los Angeles Times publisher Tom Johnson writes in an email about Ken Reich, the retired reporter who died Monday after posting a blog item critical of the paper's management:...
Posted July 2, 2008 09:44 AM
Villaraigosa scampers over to Obama side National co-chair of the Clinton campaign announced his acceptance that Obama is the party's nominee. "Americans said it's time for change," the mayor said....
Posted June 5, 2008 09:15 AM
Let's assume that the Times forgetting to print the top part of the shark-kills-man story on Saturday — necessitating a reprint in Sunday papers — is not the kind of...
Posted April 28, 2008 11:34 AM
Councilman Tony Cardenas told Controller Laura Chick Friday to "get out of my face." DN LAT reporter Martha Groves describes in first-person detail (plus slideshow) the ordeal of recovering...
Posted March 16, 2008 05:03 PM
"I am ecstatic with no-bullshit excitement and pride in joining The Tribune Company," writes Lee Abrams, hired from XM Satellite Radio. He calls news and information "the NEW Rock n...
Posted March 13, 2008 09:28 AM
In a pop-up window on the Downtown News website, the weekly says: County Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke will endorse Bernard Parks in the race to succeed her, Los Angeles Downtown...
Posted February 6, 2008 07:21 PM
Regional airport panel disbands — again The Southern California Regional Airport Authority, revived in name by Mayor Villaraigosa in 2006, voted to put itself out of business. Lack of interest...
Posted February 1, 2008 09:15 AM
Jay Babcock at Nature Trumps: An L.A. River Blog posts this scene from November, looking upstream from the footbridge toward Los Feliz Boulevard and the burned Griffith Park hills. Click...
Posted January 26, 2008 03:16 PM
Because it feels like a briefs kind of day. Departing eBay chief Meg Whitman is talking to Republicans about her running for Governor in 2010. LAT Small pet turtles are...
Posted January 24, 2008 06:08 PM
"I still have no memory of the trip to Costa Rica or anything that happened," Ron Deaton, once the most powerful figure in City Hall, tells Rick Orlov in the...
Posted January 21, 2008 10:20 PM
That seems to be a popular theme, pegged to the coincidence that yesterday's news about yet another high-level exit from the Times broke on the same day that HBO's popular...
Posted January 21, 2008 03:34 PM
Times publisher David Hiller tells his newspaper's reporter that he did not fire his editor — "Jim and I decided we no longer saw things the same way about how...
Posted January 20, 2008 09:30 PM
Arnold admits his early positions were bogus He says inexperience and naivete were behind things like calling for mass elimination of state departments. (But it fooled enough voters to get...
Posted January 18, 2008 08:55 AM
Here's a nice little story from writer Mark Evanier's blog, called modestly News From Me. Seems he began teaching a humor writing class at USC yesterday, but his car broke...
Posted January 17, 2008 11:12 PM
The LA Weekly has a fun story in today's issue listing, and mapping, 38 places that figure in the music and life of L.A. transplant Tom Petty. Daphne Carr writes,...
Posted January 17, 2008 01:18 AM
Let's have a round of applause for Richard Knerr, a USC graduate whose Pasadena company of fun brought the world the Frisbee, the Hula Hoop, the Superball, the Slip 'N...
Posted January 17, 2008 12:49 AM
Long-retired Bruins legend John Wooden still attends basketball games at Pauley Pavilion — he is 97 years old — and he is hugely popular in the building. But the school...
Posted January 16, 2008 10:10 PM
Barack Obama is stopping in at the Los Angeles Times this afternoon for a meeting with the editorial board. Tonight he has the big fundraiser in Rustic Canyon with the...
Posted January 16, 2008 03:15 PM
Riordan and Hahn veteran Diego Alvarez was appointed Deputy Mayor for Legislative and Intergovernmental Relations. This makes him Mayor Villaraigosa's chief liaison to federal, state and local governments and agencies....
Posted January 16, 2008 09:06 AM
An LA Observed reader who works at Cal State Long Beach stopped by Wilshire Books in Santa Monica and found the store cleared out. "Quietly closed at the end of...
Posted January 14, 2008 10:31 PM
OC Sheriff Carona resigns Facing corruption charges and plunging support, Mike Carona posts on the OC Sheriff's Department website that "it has become clear to me that the interests of...
Posted January 14, 2008 08:56 AM
W does its version of A-list Hollywood for February, with Keira Knightley and James McAvoy on the cover (and in an online slide show) and stories inside such as Gabriel...
Posted January 13, 2008 09:15 PM
Carl Karcher essentially grew a single hot dog cart in Los Angeles into the Carl's Jr. fast-food chain. He and his wife Margaret opened Carl's Drive-In Barbecue in Anaheim in...
Posted January 11, 2008 08:59 PM
Dana Goodyear visits Chateau Scientology in a Letter from California in this week's New Yorker. She followed up with a blog post about a Dianetics spoof written in 1950....
Posted January 11, 2008 04:45 PM
Nancy Cleeland covered labor for the Times and shared in the Pulitzer for coverage of WalMart's global impact. She writes about her latest life turn today at the Huffington Post....
Posted January 11, 2008 01:31 PM
Loyola Law School Dean David Burcham has been named provost at Loyola Marymount, a new position at the law school's parent institution. The new interim law dean is Victor Gold,...
Posted January 11, 2008 12:28 PM
Sara Catania was a reporter for the Times, Daily News and LA Weekly — and watches The Wire on HBO. The experiences left her with the perspective that "to be...
Posted January 11, 2008 09:14 AM
Truncated Morning Buzz today... Clinton in town Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will be in Commerce to speak at the Electrical Training Institute, a facility affiliated with the International Brotherhood of...
Posted January 11, 2008 09:07 AM
Eric Estrin, a striking WGA member, is a moderator at Writer Action, the message board where Writers Guild members hang out to float conspiracy theories, skewer the producers and rip...
Posted January 10, 2008 09:15 PM
John Ziegler didn't just go away at KFI. He went away mad. Ziegler has put up a website called The Real KFI "dedicated to telling the totally true story of...
Posted January 10, 2008 08:25 PM
The New York Times' former Hollywood reporter in the L.A. bureau resigned rather than take an assignment back in New York. She's been writing a book on the global antiquities...
Posted January 10, 2008 07:38 PM
The Los Angeles County coroner still isn't certain why Donda West died on Nov. 10, the day after undergoing cosmetic surgergy, but there was no sign of "surgical or anesthetic...
Posted January 10, 2008 12:19 PM
Cedars-Sinai cited for endangering children State report looking into the over-medication of Dennis Quaid's infant twins and others found "multiple failures by the facility to adhere to established policies and...
Posted January 10, 2008 08:55 AM
It's the end of an era in Hollywood. Johnny Grant, the last of the "honorary mayors" for whom the ceremonial title still meant something, was found dead tonight in his...
Posted January 9, 2008 10:03 PM
Gene Maddaus at the Breeze delves into the decision long ago to spend $700 million building the Green Line light rail for 20 miles from Norwalk to Redondo Beach, then...
Posted January 9, 2008 05:27 PM
If you are Emerald City, the L.A. Times' environment blog, you follow yesterday's post on your friend's bikini crotch with a post today on the underwear your mother gave you...
Posted January 9, 2008 02:40 PM
A live baby was dropped off at a fire station in Norwalk this morning, the first under the Safe Surrender policy in Los Angeles County in 2008 and the 63rd...
Posted January 9, 2008 02:01 PM
Just to follow up up our Sunday report: Dave Reeves, the columnist for Arthur magazine jailed over not reporting a traffic mishap on his bike, has been released. Jenny Burman...
Posted January 9, 2008 09:10 AM
Three L.A. Times editors go online to defend the paper's use of three reporters to cover Ms. Spears' latest public meltdown. "If we had wanted simply to report the facts...
Posted January 9, 2008 09:07 AM
State of Arnold's state Budget cuts to be proposed along with a hike in fees and a constitutional amendment that would impose a spending cap. LAT, DN, Register, Chronicle, Dan...
Posted January 9, 2008 08:55 AM
Safiya Jones, communications director for Councilman Bill Rosendahl, checks out. Her exit email: Dear All, It is with deep respect and gratitude that I say farewell to all of you....
Posted January 8, 2008 11:28 PM
Emerald City is not one of the top 15 blogs for traffic at LATimes.com, or wasn't in December. But the blog, described as "Siel follows the road to green living...
Posted January 8, 2008 05:17 PM
Another round of layoffs hits in Orange County, on top of the cancelled Christmas party and gutted 401-k contributions. Nick Schou at the OC Weekly and ex-Registerian Mayrav Saar at...
Posted January 8, 2008 02:55 PM
John Rabe of KPCC's "Off-Ramp," inspired by Frank Baker's memo to the Los Angeles bureau, ponders how the AP might incorporate more Britney news on the wire. Guess which dispatch...
Posted January 8, 2008 02:43 PM
Tina Daunt posits in her Cause Celebre column in today's Calendar that Hollywood's Hillary contingent is on the verge of buying tickets on the Barack Obama bus. On desks all...
Posted January 8, 2008 02:28 PM
Memo on coverage of faded pop tart Britney Spears from Associated Press' Los Angeles assistant bureau chief: From: Baker, Frank S. Sent: Tue 1/8/2008 11:58 AM To: News - Southern...
Posted January 8, 2008 12:46 PM
Spotted in the Daily Breeze, by staff photographer Robert Casillas....
Posted January 8, 2008 09:10 AM
The L.A. Times' decision to go ahead and distribute Parade magazine's Benazir Bhutto issue as if she were still alive — with an unfortunate cover line — has drawn more...
Posted January 7, 2008 11:17 PM
Dianne Ogden, a longtime music talent coordinator, was one of four women who testified in Phil Spector's murder trial (which ended in a mistrial) that he had threatened her with...
Posted January 7, 2008 10:57 PM
Music Center president Stephen Roundtree said today that the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion will close for renovations in 2013, not 2011 as originally announced. Apparently, offices for displaced staff need to...
Posted January 7, 2008 02:56 PM
Mayor Villaraigosa has appointed new members of the Cultural Heritage comission, Industrial Development Authority and the Los Angeles City/County Native American Indian Commission. Release with bios after the jump....
Posted January 7, 2008 02:16 PM
Curtis Bernard Harris had pleaded no contest to possessing a firearm after kidnapping his estranged wife, but was freed without bail on Dec. 21 pending his formal sentencing to 16...
Posted January 7, 2008 01:51 PM
One of the most unusual, and storied, commercial buildings on Wilshire Boulevard is back on the market. The one-story, ranch-style office complex at the southeast corner of Wilshire and Highland...
Posted January 7, 2008 01:24 PM
One entry in the program for the Towne Street Theatre's upcoming Ten-Minute Play Festival in Hollywood caught my eye. In the TST 2nd Annual Ten-Minute Play Festival, audiences will again...
Posted January 7, 2008 12:46 PM
Examining the Board of Supervisors The five Supes who run Los Angeles County "may offer the best argument for" term limits, LAT opinion chief Jim Newton argues. And Harold Meyerson...
Posted January 7, 2008 08:42 AM
In the eyes of the New York Times, the 96 students in the Colburn School conservatory on Bunker Hill "are among the finest young musicians in the world." The story,...
Posted January 6, 2008 10:56 PM
Arthur magazine's columnist Dave Reeves is serving time in Men's Central Jail over a bike accident, and his friends aren't happy about it. "A series of bizarro events and idiocies...
Posted January 6, 2008 10:00 PM
Over at Native Intelligence, Judy Graeme's third offering on Los Angeles photographers introduces a group of teenagers (and younger) who use borrowed cameras to shoot images of their gritty home...
Posted January 5, 2008 11:58 PM
David Butler was editor of the Daily News in Woodland Hills until Dean Singleton bought the Detroit News and installed Butler as editor and publisher. That was in 2005. Now...
Posted January 4, 2008 11:59 AM
Where's Jay Levin? The founder of last year's one-off magazine RealTalkLA resurfaced this week as an editorial consultant at CityBeat, brought in by parent Southland Publishing. RealTalk's website, meanwhile, is...
Posted January 4, 2008 08:36 AM
Unhappy with the LAPD's new financial disclosure rules for drug and gang cops, the L.A. Police Protective League has bought radio time on KFWB and KABC for an ad that...
Posted January 3, 2008 08:17 PM
The internal watchblog that began after Dan Rather's career meltdown has disappeared from the list of CBS News blogs, and Rachel Sklar at the Huffington Post is disappointed. It's a...
Posted January 3, 2008 03:32 PM
Times publisher David Hiller has let staffers know that he was back home for the holidays but has returned here refreshed and ready to carry out the Sam Zell agenda....
Posted January 3, 2008 10:56 AM
Leno, Letterman et al are back Watch video of all five late-night hosts returning to the air. HuffPost Whole lot of rain on the way Three storms lined up over...
Posted January 3, 2008 08:57 AM
Colin Brown headed to lunch at Clifton's Cafeteria today and encountered the remains of a robbery at the Bank of America on Broadway. That's red dye from the exploding pack...
Posted January 2, 2008 08:10 PM
Ken Ellingwood moves from Jerusalem to Mexico City, and Ashraf Khalil leaves Metro for the Middle East. Memo from Foreign Editor Marjorie Miller after the jump....
Posted January 2, 2008 05:12 PM
The ex-talker at KTLK explains what happened and talks up his future in Los Angeles radio. Marc Germain, popular Los Angeles radio talk show host at KFI and KABC, is...
Posted January 2, 2008 01:58 PM
The New York Observer writes of Nikki Finke, calling her The Media Mensch of the Year: The biggest entertainment story of the year has also turned into the biggest story...
Posted January 2, 2008 08:36 AM
Celeste Fremon asked ten Los Angeles figures their wishes for 2008 and blogged their answers. Some media types are included: [Oscar Garza, editor at Tu Ciudad]: I wish that every...
Posted January 2, 2008 08:29 AM
In the Washington Post Style section's annual what's out and what's in list, Hank Stuever deems Miss Manners out and says the hip new advice column is Gustavo Arellano's !Ask...
Posted January 2, 2008 08:14 AM
Gavin Newsom gets engaged The San Francisco mayor popped the question over the weekend to actress Jennifer Siebel, and she reportedly accepted. That leaves one eligible big-city mayor in California....
Posted January 2, 2008 01:02 AM
It's amazing, really, to look back at all the distraction, disruption and toe-shooting the new Los Angeles Times can pack into a single year. In 2007 alone: The #2 editor...
Posted January 1, 2008 11:38 PM
The Internet has spoken — no Los Angeles story came close to surpassing the interest in Antonio Villaraigosa and his affair with Telemundo rising star Mirthala Salinas. First came the...
Posted January 1, 2008 11:30 PM
Noting the deaths of noteworthy Los Angeles figures and LAO's colleagues and friends in the media is just something we do here. Here are most of the passings that LA...
Posted January 1, 2008 06:29 PM
Marc Germain, the talk radio host formerly known as Mr. KABC and Mr. KFI, has been let go as liberal-talk KTLK's Mr. K. "A total surprise and not my choice...
Posted January 1, 2008 04:30 PM
Question: Where will Mayor Villaraigosa and Chief Bratton drag the media to announce the 2007 crime stats? AKA, a "historic reduction in homicides and violent crime." Presser is Wednesday at...
Posted January 1, 2008 02:59 PM
Happy 2008! Clearing the decks from 2007: Times-basher Patterico is out with his fifth annual Dog Trainer Year in Review, "documenting omissions, distortions, and misrepresentations" by the Los Angeles Times....
Posted December 31, 2007 06:20 PM
John Stodder, the former Fleishman-Hillard executive whose wire fraud and conspiracy conviction is on appeal, blogs about the pressure of facing Christmas with a prison sentence hanging over your head,...
Posted December 31, 2007 06:02 PM
The mother of four who took a politically motivated shot at President Gerald Ford in San Francisco in 1975 got out of the low-security Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin this...
Posted December 31, 2007 04:16 PM
Let's face it, the fun place to be for a politics junkie right now is Iowa. Mayor Villaraigosa flew in Saturday (after skiing in Aspen with his kids, reportedly) to...
Posted December 31, 2007 12:32 PM
Josh Rawitch of the Dodgers gets personal in his blog farewell to Stu Nahan....
Posted December 27, 2007 11:01 PM
Remember when the City Council got around that whole referendum thing by, wink wink, making a few changes to its living wage policy for the LAX-area hotels? It worked. A...
Posted December 27, 2007 10:20 PM
KCRW and KPCC have jumped on this morning's assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Warren Olney's shows, "To the Point" and "Which Way, L.A.?," are both devoting extensive time to the...
Posted December 27, 2007 04:41 PM
KNBC Channel 4 leads the TV stations with six Golden Mikes from the Radio Television News Association, including best newscast writing, documentary ("On the Verge") and investigative story (for its...
Posted December 27, 2007 11:15 AM
The Kings held a moment of silence before tonight's game to honor Stu Nahan, the former sportscaster at channels 4, 5 and 7 and sports talk host on KABC and...
Posted December 26, 2007 10:57 PM
Irv Letofsky, former editor of the L.A. Times Sunday Calendar section and a critic for the Hollywood Reporter, died Sunday of liver cancer at age 76. From the Reporter obituary:...
Posted December 24, 2007 10:25 AM
Still catching up from my unintended, and unwanted, time away from the keyboard... Adam Carolla stays, Danny Bonaduce goes. The Virgin Megastore at Sunset and Crescent Heights will close at...
Posted December 24, 2007 10:16 AM
Valley history buffs were aghast to learn last week that the first hangar built at what's now called Van Nuys Airport was in the process of being torn down. The...
Posted December 23, 2007 04:53 PM
The Tribune Company takeover by Sam Zell prompted Times media columnist Tim Rutten to pronounce the seven years of Tribune ownership at the LAT "a disastrous journalistic experiment...there's no need...
Posted December 23, 2007 12:55 PM
That was quite a front-page correction the L.A. Times ran on Thursday, below the fold under the headline 'Steroid affidavit unsealed.' The Times acknowledged that its own 2006 story implicating...
Posted December 23, 2007 12:30 PM
Robert J. Rosenthal, the former managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, will lead the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Berkeley-based independent reporting group co-founded by Lowell Bergman that has...
Posted December 19, 2007 02:47 PM
The editor's note on page 34 of the new Vanity Fair caught my eye (well, after it was pointed out to me): "In Bryan Burrough's 'showdown at Fort Sumner' (December),...
Posted December 19, 2007 12:50 PM
Tribune Company chairman Dennis J. FitzSimons won't be missed much at the L.A. Times. Here's his farewell missive sent this morning (the typos or misspellings are his, not mine.) From:...
Posted December 19, 2007 09:18 AM
Taking sides in the Supes race The county Federation of Labor comes out for Mark Ridley-Thomas, Supervisor Gloria Molina says she'll help Bernard Parks. L.A. council members Herb Wesson and...
Posted December 19, 2007 08:56 AM
Ed Boks, L.A.'s constantly embattled animal services chief, is still blogging away. He posts today that the "No-Kill Equation" getting a lot of buzz in the animal welfare community...
Posted December 18, 2007 11:55 PM
Times Hollywood columnist Patrick Goldstein got off some good observations about the waning quality, originality and relevance of Oscar race analyzing and gossip. The award announcements make a nice one-day...
Posted December 18, 2007 10:54 PM
With the Zellionaire's takeover of Tribune expected to close this week, the L.A. Times and the Chicago Tribune are reporting that chairman and chief executive Dennis J. FitzSimons could resign...
Posted December 18, 2007 10:31 PM
Tammara at Metroblogging Los Angeles posts about her connection to Laura Huxley, who she used to see around Hollywood Reservoir and who died on the blogger's birthday. Here's our post...
Posted December 18, 2007 09:02 AM
Paying the price We knew Mayor Villaraigosa was going to put the screws on local business and rich guys to pay for his pet projects and causes, but wow. The...
Posted December 18, 2007 08:44 AM
Los Angeles magazine's January issue, landing this week, has pieces on LAT homicide blogger Jill Leovy and on the Wendy McCaw situation at the Santa Barbara News-Press. There's also some...
Posted December 17, 2007 10:25 PM
Leslie Brenner, the Food Editor at the L.A. Times, will move over to become interim editor of the monthly Sunday magazine. There's at least nominally a search on for a...
Posted December 17, 2007 05:58 PM
I'm told by KCET that "Life & Times" will hold down its 7pm time slot until Dec. 28, then give way to Tavis Smiley. Stories this week will include a...
Posted December 17, 2007 05:45 PM
Woman found dead in towed away car — a day later The body of an elderly woman was discovered hidden under the deployed passenger air bag in a crumpled car...
Posted December 17, 2007 08:35 AM
From Tony Jackson at the Daily News: Camille Johnston, the Dodgers senior vice president for communications and chief spokesperson for the past two years, said on Friday that she is...
Posted December 15, 2007 08:55 AM
Tonight's show at 7pm on KCET has Tom Brokaw looking back at the 1960s, Vicki Curry checking in on the Orange County Museum of Art's "Birth of the Cool" exhibit,...
Posted December 14, 2007 06:24 PM
A long story at Editor & Publisher.com on newspaper political blogs ledes with the veteran reporter who co-writes Top of the Ticket, the L.A. Times campaign blog. The story muses,...
Posted December 14, 2007 05:43 PM
The author and widow of Aldous Huxley has died in Los Angeles, according to family friends. She was 96. She was born in Italy and became a top violinist at...
Posted December 14, 2007 05:11 PM
The DWP has decided to dump all the water in Silver Lake and the Elysian reservoir because of unusually high traces of the carcinogen bromate, which formed in the water...
Posted December 14, 2007 04:59 PM
The memo is out on the additions we told you were coming to the Times' web staff — LAist's Tony Pierce and LAO's Veronique de Turenne — plus a couple...
Posted December 14, 2007 04:31 PM
David Rensin writes with affection at Native Intelligence about all the months he spent with Freddie Fields, the agent who died this week, talking about Hollywood and a book proposal...
Posted December 14, 2007 09:04 AM
Congestion pricing in diamond lanes You know all those carpool lanes being built squeezed onto freeways, often requiring a year or two of construction traffic mess? MTA and Caltrans are...
Posted December 14, 2007 08:52 AM
The late, beloved Rhino Records closed on Westwood Boulevard last year, but if you need a fix a pop-up Rhino store has opened on 3rd Street at Laurel. They've got...
Posted December 13, 2007 08:36 PM
Following the lead of sister paper the Daily News, the San Bernardino Sun and Inland Valley Daily-Bulletin got hold of the salaries of county workers out there and decided to...
Posted December 13, 2007 08:18 PM
Five men aged 18 to 27 have been arrested in connection with the Thanksgiving weekend fire that burned 53 homes in Malibu. Authorities said the fire started as an illegal...
Posted December 13, 2007 07:52 PM
The Times found a passage based on internal notes from within the Dodger organization about former catcher Paul Lo Duca. Seems the team may have considered trading him because he...
Posted December 13, 2007 07:50 PM
Seems there is some backstory to today's LA Weekly cover piece on Los Angeles street gang violence by Peter Landesman. It apparently had started as a piece for the New...
Posted December 13, 2007 01:08 PM
LAist was a tad late to the recent Undie Run phenomenon at UCLA, but has sure embraced it fully. Plenty of pics at the blog from last night's thrice-yearly run...
Posted December 13, 2007 12:26 PM
Skipping the Golden Globes Yes, in case anyone cares, the few dozen C-listers who make up the Hollywood Foreign Press Association have again published a list of movies and actors...
Posted December 13, 2007 09:10 AM
The ex-husband and abuser of Tina Turner died at home in suburban San Marcos in the San Diego area. Ike and Tina were a pretty successful act in the 1960s,...
Posted December 12, 2007 02:09 PM
The one-time vaudeville booker who became the agent for Judy Garland, Henry Fonda, Barbra Streisand and other stars died of lung cancer Tuesday at home in Beverly Hills. Fields was...
Posted December 12, 2007 01:32 PM
Evan George has left the Downtown News for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, where he will take over the health care beat and cover insurance lawsuits, health care reform and...
Posted December 12, 2007 09:57 AM
Handicapping Parks vs. Ridley-Thomas The first seriously contested Board of Supervisors race since 1992 — when Kenneth Hahn was replaced — is "going to be a humdinger," says Jaime Regalado,...
Posted December 12, 2007 08:55 AM
No way the mayor's organizers could let this one slip away. Parents and teachers at six LAUSD campuses — including one of the high schools Mayor Villaraigosa attended, Roosevelt —...
Posted December 11, 2007 11:55 PM
Publishers Lunch brings word that Maria Shriver has sold Just Who Will You Be, "presenting life lessons and reflections on what's important in her life, inspired by a poem she...
Posted December 11, 2007 11:28 PM
The L.A. Times is going back to reporter "bureaus" placed around the Los Angeles area, in hopes of flushing out more local news. The paper has had them before, then...
Posted December 11, 2007 03:54 PM
This one is more of a prank than yesterday's scam, also from Shelf Awareness: Kerry Slattery, general manager of Skylight Books, Los Angeles, Calif., has another cautionary tale about an...
Posted December 11, 2007 11:25 AM
Villaraigosa school plan comes to a vote Teachers and parents at Roosevelt, Santee and Jordan high schools, and at Hollenbeck, Stevenson, Markham and Gompers middle schools, vote today on whether...
Posted December 11, 2007 08:50 AM
OK technically it was an editor's note. And the day was Sunday. But it was just pointed out to me. The subject is architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne's piece in Sunday's...
Posted December 10, 2007 10:53 PM
I had to be sure she wanted them, but now it can be told: Vicki Kechekian was the first LA Observed subscriber to email for the tickets to the New...
Posted December 10, 2007 07:56 PM
John Evans, co-owner of Diesel: A Bookstore out in Malibu, told the newsletter Shelf Awareness about a strange come-on at his Oakland store. I guess with everything else they face,...
Posted December 10, 2007 01:42 PM
Somebody at the New York Times bureau in Iraq apparently fell for the old password trick. Read the memo: Gang, The Baghdad Bureau e-mail address nytiraqb@yahoo.com has been compromised and...
Posted December 10, 2007 12:43 PM
Anonymous residents of Rancho Palos Verdes have demanded, through an attorney, that the city produce eleven years of public records — "all documents, communications, e-mail, memos, contracts and other writing...
Posted December 10, 2007 08:33 AM
Digging in for a long strike Patric Verrone's plan at the WGA all along was for a bloody fight over respect, says Michael Cieply in the NYT. Hollywood moves to...
Posted December 10, 2007 12:46 AM
There Will Be Blood was voted the best picture of 2007. Here are the other awards that local critics went for, picked up from the LAFCA website. DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas...
Posted December 9, 2007 11:23 PM
David Rensin rants at Native Intelligence about a close call with a cellphone-gabbing, wide-turning Valley driver, and Jenny Price makes the case for camping in the canyons above Malibu despite...
Posted December 9, 2007 10:45 PM
The defrocked Getty curator of antiquities who has faced criminal charges in Europe finally talks to the media, in the form of Hugh Eakin in this coming week's New Yorker....
Posted December 9, 2007 03:04 PM
No LA Observed on KCRW today since I'm traveling, but I'm told there's another of my segments about the Valley on John Rabe's "Off-Ramp" Saturday at noon on KPCC. This...
Posted December 7, 2007 03:02 PM
Around LAO: Writers talks look bleak, job reports look better, the ports get bigger, and gas gets, if not cheaper, then slightly less expensive. Mark Lacter at LA Biz Observed....
Posted December 7, 2007 10:49 AM
Short and sweet: Tribune Co. uses $500 million in cash to reduce buyout loans and close the $8.2 billion deal by year's end. AP by way of Yahoo. Evacuation of...
Posted December 7, 2007 05:55 AM
A veteran copy editor has been fired by the News-Press after words from the gag front page traditionally composed for a departing employee's send-off ended up on the paper's Web...
Posted December 6, 2007 12:37 PM
I'm out here in the boonies where they've barely heard of the internets. Service is spotty and loading a page takes. A. Really. Very. Painfully. Long. Time. Which means minimal...
Posted December 5, 2007 01:03 PM
A few links to limber up those early-morning fingers: Triple whammy Big surf, big wind, big rain - a big week for weather. David Reyes in the LAT. Unsafe **...
Posted December 4, 2007 05:20 AM
Surf's (almost) up! Say adios to the Lake of the Pacific. Surfline sees a swell swell headed our way. Bonus link here. The games people play Vivendi's purchase of a...
Posted December 3, 2007 01:57 PM
Red Hen, LA's own indie press, is off to an auspicious start tonight with its new writers-in-conversation series, Monday Evenings at the Geffen. Authors Janet Fitch, Sarah Goodyear and Jennifer...
Posted December 3, 2007 01:42 PM
Dear Kevin, So you've decided to work for a few days from the Maui bureau of LAO? Excellent move. Overnight temps here in SoCal have dropped to a brutal 6...
Posted December 3, 2007 11:02 AM
Sicha and two others editors quit the New York news and gossip site, apparently at least partly over a new pay scale. Romenesko rounds up some links....
Posted December 3, 2007 07:16 AM
The OC Weekly's Gustavo Arellano did a guest-host stint last week on KFI — yes the same AM shout station where John & Ken live in fear of the Reconquista...
Posted December 3, 2007 07:11 AM
As I mentioned down below, I'll be out of town all week. In addition to fewer posts from me it means I'm going to miss a couple of events I...
Posted December 3, 2007 12:29 AM
Karl Dorrell's stint as head coach in Westwood isn't over yet — officially — but the Times reports that UCLA has been in contact with at least three potential successors....
Posted December 2, 2007 11:53 PM
All of us at LA Observed Tower congratulate Veronique de Turenne, doyenne of Here in Malibu, who will join the Los Angeles Times staff after the New Year as a...
Posted December 2, 2007 08:56 PM
Takedown of the new Michelin guide for Los Angeles began with Leslie Brenner in the L.A. Times food section back on Nov. 21. Sample: In short, it's amateurish, confusing and...
Posted December 2, 2007 08:45 PM
The Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has picked six journalists to honor at its banquet next April. The winners of SPJ's Distinguished Journalist Award: Beth...
Posted December 2, 2007 08:24 PM
The red flag alert is definitely over. No Morning Buzz today. My KCRW commentary this afternoon at 4:44 will talk about USC and the Coliseum....
Posted November 30, 2007 08:43 AM
Among them is director Oz E. Scott, appointed to the Cultural Heritage Commission. Release with bios follows....
Posted November 29, 2007 12:14 PM
The Signal in Santa Clarita on Wednesday published a column and accompanying editorial cartoon skewering the manipulation of faith and politics. After some readers complained that the cartoon was offensive,...
Posted November 29, 2007 09:36 AM
Villaraigosa accepts the NFL won't come to Coliseum Time to forget the NFL dream and give a USC a long-term deal, the mayor says. LAT Christopher Hawthorne on the Coliseum...
Posted November 29, 2007 09:24 AM
An open letter from Athletic Director Mike Garrett. Excerpt: It gives me no pleasure to write a letter of this kind, but there are issues facing our university that you...
Posted November 28, 2007 09:53 AM
USC alumni don't want to gather on campus Saturday mornings, touch the statue then get on a bus. They want to walk to the stadium. Skepticism abounds over the Times...
Posted November 28, 2007 12:14 AM
The Santa Anas are back and the LAFD has declared a red flag day in the hills for Wednesday. Those who live there know what it means: no parking on...
Posted November 27, 2007 11:40 PM
The Los Angeles Press Club is getting into the non-geographic awards game, announcing it will accept entries (for $35 each) and give out the National Entertainment Journalism Awards next year....
Posted November 27, 2007 11:31 PM
Jon Weisman at Dodger Thoughts: People can minimize it all they want, but these round-numbered birthdays are times that I take stock, and looking at myself, I see a complicated...
Posted November 27, 2007 11:24 PM
No word in the Times web story on when civil rights lawyer Stephen Yagman begins serving his federal prison term for tax evasion, money laundering and bankruptcy fraud. But the...
Posted November 27, 2007 06:45 PM
Sometimes the hiring memos at the L.A. Times yield some insight into the interests an editor brings to the table. In this case, we learn that new California Editor David...
Posted November 27, 2007 02:12 PM
Remember Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, the journalist who quit the L.A. Times in a huffy outburst and resurfaced as a successful novelist? (And who more recently mourned the death of Cathy Seipp.)...
Posted November 27, 2007 11:56 AM
We told you Saturday that Matt Welch had left the L.A. Times editorial page to return to Reason magazine, and said to await further details. Well, here they are via...
Posted November 27, 2007 08:50 AM
Mayor Villaraigosa's office says that Carol Baker Tharp, general manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, has died. The mayor just released this statement: “Carol Baker Tharp loved the City...
Posted November 26, 2007 12:08 PM
Here are quick links to some posts from the weekend, which wasn't all about Malibu fire coverage and the end of Mayor Villaraigosa's affair with Mirthala Salinas. In case you...
Posted November 26, 2007 12:49 AM
The footage on Channel 9 of "super-scoopers" scraping the ocean surface in Santa Monica Bay has been awesome. Fresh fish tonight for the raccoons in the Malibu hills. Couldn't find...
Posted November 24, 2007 01:17 PM
Veronique has updates on the fire at Here in Malibu. Last I heard, 35 structures had burned and 200 more were threatened, mostly in the Corral Canyon area and the...
Posted November 24, 2007 10:55 AM
Katie O'Laughlin of Village Books, one of the city's best and coziest small bookstores, says she's losing the battle against the big boxes and rising rents in her Pacific Palisades...
Posted November 24, 2007 10:25 AM
David Zahniser reports in the Times, based on unnamed sources, that the affair between Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Mirthala Salinas "disintegrated" possibly as long ago as September, right about the...
Posted November 24, 2007 10:10 AM
Residents smelled smoke at about 3:30 a.m. Fire started in Corral Canyon, then swiftly spread wests due to strong winds, which have since died down. Mandatory evacuations from Corral Canyon...
Posted November 24, 2007 07:59 AM
Long weekend equals time to catch up on some L.A. blog reading. Here's a few; may be more later: Jasmyne Cannick drove down Crenshaw this morning to MLK, thinking she...
Posted November 23, 2007 11:04 PM
Baseball blogs are already ridiculing today's Kurt Streeter column in the L.A. Times worshiping at the feet of new Angels center fielder Torii Hunter, a good but not great hitter...
Posted November 23, 2007 12:50 PM
Scott Glover has been a digger on local law enforcement for the L.A. Times. He's moving over to focus his reporting on the U.S. Attorney's Office and the feds, which...
Posted November 21, 2007 11:29 AM
Before a City Council committee voted yesterday to tentatively approve a controversial condo project in Van Nuys Valley Village, a planning staffer for the city called the developer and told...
Posted November 21, 2007 09:07 AM
Nice photo from yesterday's writers guild street rally in Hollywood by Barbara Davidson at the L.A. Times. Strike coverage is pulled together at a compilation page on the LAT website...
Posted November 21, 2007 08:37 AM
Pacifica radio station KPFK is in the midst of an election that, once again, has divided the staff, show programmers and listeners over politics and personality issues. Rival slates are...
Posted November 21, 2007 07:58 AM
LAPD officer struck by hit-and-run Unidentified officer is believed to be in critical condition after being hurt near Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights. NBC4 City electeds split on pay raise...
Posted November 20, 2007 09:10 AM
Bill Nye "The Science Guy," who lives in Studio City, wants a restraining order to protect himself from his former wife, Blair Tindall, author of Mozart in the Jungle: Sex,...
Posted November 19, 2007 11:58 PM
Sure enough, my pals at Los Angeles have somehow come out with another monthly issue — this one containing the magazine's first Walk of Shame Awards. I don't have time...
Posted November 19, 2007 11:28 PM
Writers Guild strikers and their brethren are planning to converge Tuesday afternoon for a rally, accompanied by Alicia Keys. The guild is hoping for a turnout of thousands. Here's the...
Posted November 19, 2007 10:32 PM
In addition to his blog here at LA Observed, Bill Boyarsky is a regular columnist for Robert Scheer and Zuade Kaufman at Truthdig. They actually pay him, unlike here, and...
Posted November 19, 2007 10:25 PM
PhotoFriends.org is the site for the nonprofit organization that supports the Los Angeles Public Library's photograph collection, which is lovingly nurtured (and increasingly put on-line) by Carolyn Kozo Cole. The...
Posted November 19, 2007 09:01 AM
Brian Grazer was "deeply upset by the episode" in which the L.A. Times asked him to guest-edit the opinion section on Sunday, then refused to publish it — and he...
Posted November 19, 2007 08:55 AM
Mayor Bobblehead The Southwest Voter Registration Education Project sells a bobblehead doll of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for $30. It's a fundraiser for the group. Rick Orlov, La Politica More struggles...
Posted November 19, 2007 08:45 AM
OK, just kidding about that. But who knew her older sister is a rabbi on a kibbutz in Israel? I guess you would if you remember Sarah's debut joke on...
Posted November 19, 2007 12:47 AM
Veteran anchor-reporter Linda Alvarez is taking her leave of Channel 2 at the end of the month, concluding 14 years at the station. Here's the so-long email and invitation she...
Posted November 18, 2007 11:36 PM
The writers strike has inspired a frenzy of non-stop posting by Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily. (I shudder to think of the condition of her office.) Since Friday morning...
Posted November 18, 2007 11:25 PM
Axel Koester grabbed this scene (for the New York Times) of photographers swarming actress Mandy Moore's arrival at a Beverly Hills restaurant. The term paparazzi increasingly encompasses not only the...
Posted November 18, 2007 09:10 PM
Ted Johnson, the Variety managing editor who writes the trade's politics blog, Wilshire & Washington, posts about Sen. Hillary Clinton's appearance Saturday at a local environmental gathering: At [a] global...
Posted November 18, 2007 02:40 PM
An email correspondent caught me up with angryasianman.com by Phil Yu, a 27-year-old Korean American who was the subject of a story last month (!) in the Washington Post. The...
Posted November 18, 2007 02:36 PM
No Morning Buzz, sorry. * Where did the time go?: Before you know it, Friday turns into Sunday......
Posted November 16, 2007 08:13 AM
Michael Aguirre began "investigating" San Diego's PBS station after cancellation of a show where he was a frequent guest. As soon as light was cast on his stunt, he dropped...
Posted November 16, 2007 08:07 AM
Times Publisher David Hiller uses his in-house blog to refute Joe Scott's blind item that reported the LAT building is for sale. I guess most Times editors don't keep up...
Posted November 15, 2007 01:12 PM
Yeah, LAPD won't map where Muslims live Who didn't see this coming? The department dropped the plan, but will still do outreach. "Muslim Americans were very disturbed and concerned about...
Posted November 15, 2007 09:20 AM
Heidi Klum tries to appear charmed at the gift of pumpkin bread from Councilman Tom LaBonge, but most of the Victoria's Secret Angels seem — let's call it wary. Perhaps...
Posted November 14, 2007 10:11 PM
Political blogger Joe Scott, citing buzz among major real estate brokers, says the Tribune Co. intends to sell the square block of Downtown where the Los Angeles Times sits for...
Posted November 14, 2007 07:45 PM
Councilman Jose Huizar, downtown advocate Brady Westwater and, especially, the owner of several of the former movie palaces on Broadway are featured in a Wall Street Journal story today that...
Posted November 14, 2007 01:09 PM
Last night's was the final show for the talker who came with a bit of a checkered past from Kentucky and had some run-ins here, including with fellow KFIers John...
Posted November 14, 2007 12:15 PM
Coroner investigating Donda West's death The mother of Kanye West died under mysterious circumstances a day after undergoing cosmetic surgery from high-profile Brentwood plastic surgeon Jan Adams. The Medical Board...
Posted November 14, 2007 08:50 AM
Shopping mall developer Rick Caruso nicked the owners of the Glendale Galleria for $15 million in punitive damages today, on top of the $74 million he picked up last week....
Posted November 13, 2007 07:28 PM
Judith Regan today sued News Corp for $100 million over her firing last year and charged that a senior executive urged her to mislead federal investigators about her relationship with...
Posted November 13, 2007 05:34 PM
Larry Mantle this morning took on one of the lesser issues of our time, but one that's still interesting and perplexing for locals: should we refer to freeways by their...
Posted November 13, 2007 12:41 PM
Times media columnist Tim Rutten is moving to the opinion pages, where he began his L.A. Times career [* nope, I'm told he began in the old View feature section.]...
Posted November 13, 2007 12:07 PM
Ciudad's culinary guide to Latin dining in the November issue ranges from La Casita Mexicana in Bell to La Super-Rica Taquería in Santa Barbara, and has good things to say...
Posted November 13, 2007 01:20 AM
Monday was bring your family to the picket line day. The Tuesday target for Writers Guild media attention is Universal. The talent scheduled to appear outside the main gates on...
Posted November 12, 2007 11:02 PM
L.A. Times photographer Luis Sinco has been immersed in the life of former Marine Cpl. James Miller since the horrible day in 2004 when Sinco snapped this photo during a...
Posted November 12, 2007 10:15 PM
USC's Norman Lear Center and pollster John Zogby tested for the link between political leaning and taste in entertainment. They conclude that 37% of the nation bleeds red, 39% fit...
Posted November 12, 2007 04:53 PM
It's hiring memo day at the L.A. Times. First, before he became the Wall Street Journal Hollywood columnist and a Sitrick and Company troubleshooter, John Lippman covered the television biz...
Posted November 12, 2007 03:53 PM
I'm observing the holiday today — have been all weekend, actually — but I couldn't resist this. AP's photographer and caption writer can be excused for not knowing their local...
Posted November 12, 2007 12:05 PM
LAPD plans to map Islamic neighborhoods "We are looking for communities and enclaves based on risk factors that are likely to become isolated. . . . We want to know...
Posted November 9, 2007 08:15 AM
Want to know how editorial cartoonists work? The Daily News' Patrick O'Connor posts early sketches, talks about his process for deciding on a topic and even tells the occasional tale...
Posted November 8, 2007 02:57 PM
The FBI has sent a notice to law enforcement warning of possible Al-Qaeda threats against shopping malls in Los Angeles and Chicago this holiday season, but quickly followed up to...
Posted November 8, 2007 01:42 PM
During today's discussion of the expansion at Holy Cross hospital in the Northeast Valley, Councilman Richard Alarcon made City Hall reporters sit up in their chairs and look at each...
Posted November 7, 2007 11:40 PM
Fun little item on Rich Hammond's Kings blog for the Daily News. Even though the players supposedly had the day off, they were called to the rink at 7:30 am....
Posted November 7, 2007 10:21 PM
The surfers get edgy when the big waves roll in as they did today, "sleek and steely and cold, spitting out sets like a Tommy gun." Here in Malibu Also:...
Posted November 7, 2007 10:00 PM
Busier-than-usual day for me away from the blog. Here's what has caught my eye: Would you believe $40 million more for the new LAPD headquarters that is despoiling the view...
Posted November 6, 2007 12:51 PM
Andrés Martinez, the former LAT editorial page editor, has teamed up with the Washington Post website on a twice-weekly online political advice column. (His former deputy in Los Angeles, Michael...
Posted November 5, 2007 09:57 PM
Points to photographer Gary Leonard for getting the front position at this morning's Joe Torre investiture at Dodger Stadium. But who's Gary giving the evil eye? Also: Catching up on...
Posted November 5, 2007 08:20 PM
The New Yorker's Connie Bruck examines the personality that is Sam Zell and his deal to acquire Tribune, and comes up with some earthy quotes and notable observations. Zell on...
Posted November 5, 2007 09:15 AM
Late-hour talks broke down over the weekend, so the Writers Guild of America went on strike at midnight New York time and is preparing to set up picket lines all...
Posted November 4, 2007 11:54 PM
The bureau in Los Angeles will close at the end of the year, the San Diego Union-Tribune staff was told yesterday. No word on what happens to the remaining personnel....
Posted November 3, 2007 10:14 AM
The parking ban and shuttle bus system at the renovated Griffith Observatory is history as of today. Although the mayor says 650,000 patrons have visited since the observatory reopened a...
Posted November 3, 2007 10:05 AM
No LA Observed on KCRW this afternoon — I had to take the day off. Purely by coincidence, I will be on KPCC's "Off-Ramp" tomorrow at noon, beginning an occasional...
Posted November 2, 2007 04:36 PM
The DWP was told it could not have a preliminary injunction blocking the Daily News from publishing salary info on nearly 8,500 workers on the paper's website. A hearing was...
Posted November 2, 2007 09:18 AM
While his columnist ex-colleagues at the L.A. Times fall over themselves to pronounce Joe Torre just what the Dodgers need, J.A. Adande is now a national columnist for ESPN. His...
Posted November 2, 2007 12:29 AM
After posting Wednesday's item about the newspaper that couldn't decide if it was the Los Angeles Sun or the Los Angeles Star, I heard from Editor in Chief Jeremy Meyer....
Posted November 2, 2007 12:09 AM
The Washington Post team in Los Angeles is losing their bureau aide to National Public Radio [actually KCRW, see below] and would like to hire another pretty quickly. If it's...
Posted November 1, 2007 11:36 PM
The District's Rebecca Schoenkopf got to know Sheriff Mike Carona in her OC Weekly days — he once sent her a bottle of wine and chocolate for her son —...
Posted November 1, 2007 11:25 PM
Brian D’Arcy, head of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, is going to eat David Nahai's lunch at the Department of Water, Alan Mittelstaedt argues in his CityBeat...
Posted November 1, 2007 11:11 PM
In January the Sacramento Bee baffled people by going against the trend and moving its online political coverage behind the pay wall — a high wall at $499 a year....
Posted November 1, 2007 10:54 PM
Before Joe Torre's hiring — as the most expensive Dodgers manager ever — became official today, Jerry Crowe in the LAT noted that his pre-Yankees ledger was nothing to brag...
Posted November 1, 2007 10:31 PM
Writers talks break down at deadline Writers Guild could be moving closer to striking Hollywood, and all that that entails. Variety, LAT, Deadline Hollywood Daily UCLA professor explains her work...
Posted November 1, 2007 08:58 AM
Martin J. Smith and Barbara Thornburg were, I think, the last senior editors at the Los Angeles Times Magazine to pre-date and survive the West experiment. Anyway, Smith is finally...
Posted October 31, 2007 09:11 PM
The Craigslist posting is looking for recent college grads and interns — code words for low to no pay. Worse, the ad can't decide if the paper is the Sun...
Posted October 31, 2007 09:05 PM
Pajamas Media's Ron Rosenbaum has got some chatter going with an item that hand-wrings about media gossip that the L.A. Times is sitting on an explosive story about sex and...
Posted October 31, 2007 12:20 PM
"Scary Larry" is one of the Variety entries in the battle of the media offices at the Wilshire Courtyard complex on the Miracle Mile. The L.A. Business Journal, Entravision and...
Posted October 31, 2007 08:46 AM
Three's a crowd Headline on the Daily News website says "Orange County Sheriff Carona, his wife, and alleged mistress expected to surrender in federal corruption case." The OC Weekly's R....
Posted October 31, 2007 08:37 AM
In a piece about how San Francisco's Castro district won't be the place for dressing up like Larry Craig tonight, the New York Times says gay enclaves are becoming less...
Posted October 31, 2007 12:26 AM
Here's some of what the LA Observed contributors have been posting while I've been away from the desk: Mark Lacter was on the Dodgers drama this afternoon at LA Biz...
Posted October 30, 2007 11:57 PM
Should the Valley get lower electric rates? It's an old, and potentially divisive, debate. The DWP is considering separate rates in summer that give the Valley a break since the...
Posted October 30, 2007 08:35 AM
Joe Torre says there's nothing to it, but the New York Post says there is and the L.A. Times cites two major league sources who say the Dodgers are talking...
Posted October 30, 2007 12:21 AM
The Times reports, apparently alone, that Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona has been indicted on federal corruption charges. Former Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo already has pleaded guilty and is cooperating,...
Posted October 30, 2007 12:16 AM
Another theater is going dark. Landmark is leaving the NuWilshire in Santa Monica, though it seems the chain wanted to stay but was kicked out by an owner intent on...
Posted October 29, 2007 11:52 PM
The Tribune-owned pop culture and listings site for Los Angeles is looking to hire full-time editors, as soon as possible. They want a copy editor, photo editor, general editor, Style...
Posted October 29, 2007 08:18 AM
Hmm, guess it was all pre-arranged. Mayor Villaraigosa today will nominate H. David Nahai for the vacancy at the head of the Department of Water and Power. He quit the...
Posted October 29, 2007 08:12 AM
New talk station debuts This is the day that Michael Jackson returns as host on KGIL 1260 AM, a station with too weak of a signal to be much of...
Posted October 29, 2007 12:17 AM
Brian Grazer (that's him on the left, pre-big hair) and his younger brother Gavin, who has nepotistic roles in several of Brian's movies, have a complicated relationship. Complicated enough that...
Posted October 28, 2007 11:49 PM
From the author's Op-Ed in the New York Times: The fires have come to Los Angeles again and there is only one thing certain, and it is an obscene horror:...
Posted October 28, 2007 11:28 PM
An LA Observed reader who didn't receive his L.A. Times on Sunday went to the paper's website and was amused to see these competing notices on the same page. Emphasis...
Posted October 28, 2007 10:44 PM
Ron Deaton made it official that he won't be returning to the top job at the Department of Water and Power. He either resigned (Times) or retired (Daily News) —...
Posted October 26, 2007 08:47 PM
Bratton begins second term Bagpipes serenade at the chief's swearing-in ceremony. LAT Urges more tough questions "L.A. Sniper" Alan Mittelstaedt liked the hard questions that Times editorial page honcho Jim...
Posted October 26, 2007 07:30 AM
Ash that supposedly fell from the sky in the San Diego area has been put up for sale on eBay, with a starting bid of $9.30 for a baggie full....
Posted October 25, 2007 10:23 PM
The Los Angeles Business Journal isn't losing people as fast as it did there for awhile, but there is a new defection. Todd Cunningham, the assistant managing editor, is jumping...
Posted October 25, 2007 10:07 PM
Christy Porter was a photojournalist in Kentucky when the little paper where she worked did hard investigations of local sacred cows like the university basketball program. She moved to L.A....
Posted October 25, 2007 09:47 PM
Today's LAT devotes a story — and three bylines — to casting doubt on the claims of a million fire evacuations that the paper reported earlier. For one thing, many...
Posted October 25, 2007 07:28 AM
L.A. County Supervisor Mike D. Antonovich adjourned the Supes meeting with a motion to mourn the reduction of live news coverage at Channel 5. It apparently got his goat that...
Posted October 24, 2007 11:48 PM
Now the finger pointing With the fires claiming at least 1,165 homes in Southern California, some firefighters are saying the region wasn't prepared. "It is an absolute fact, had we...
Posted October 24, 2007 08:46 AM
Local freelancer Michael Goldstein wonders at his blog, Monday Morning Media Quarterback, if the Huffington Post is getting its money's worth out of unpaid fire blogger Kristen Reeves: Newspapers are...
Posted October 23, 2007 11:10 PM
Michael Schneider at Franklin Avenue puts all the newspaper front pages together side by side — for headlines we've got an Inferno, an Armageddon, a Firestorm and a Hell on...
Posted October 23, 2007 10:40 PM
This shot was gathered from satellites on Monday afternoon. If you've got the bandwidth, NASA has a 1.2 MB high-res version for you. There's also video taken from Space Shuttle...
Posted October 23, 2007 09:58 PM
The Daily Journal's Sandra Hernandez reports that attorneys for immigrants being held in the U.S. facility are livid. In the wake of a series of scandals including the death of...
Posted October 23, 2007 12:25 PM
The PBS TV and FM station in San Diego is informing other stations that "our transmitter site was engulf[ed] by the fire. We are off the air completely." The FM...
Posted October 23, 2007 12:07 PM
'That was my garage' Larry Himmel, a reporter for KFMB in San Diego, reported on video as flames burned down his own home. KTLA video Journalists on the scene Veronique...
Posted October 23, 2007 08:46 AM
Editorial judgment or just luck? I dunno, but the big story on the cover of the November issue of Los Angeles (ignore John Cusack) is Dave Gardetta's post-mortem on last...
Posted October 22, 2007 10:45 PM
I've nothing to add on the wildfires that are burning homes by the hundreds across Southern California, but you've got to see — and appreciate — this photo on the...
Posted October 22, 2007 10:06 PM
Today's issue of The New Yorker has an excerpt from Steve Martin's forthcoming memoir, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life, in which he talks about starting out as an actor...
Posted October 22, 2007 01:07 AM
Fire closures Public schools in Malibu, Topanga and Canyon Country are closed for the day, as well as Pepperdine and College of the Canyons. Hard to believe, but the weather...
Posted October 22, 2007 01:03 AM
Veronique de Turenne is monitoring the Malibu situation, where Pepperdine students have been evacuated to a campus center, Malibu Presbyterian Church and the visual landmark Malibu castle have been destroyed,...
Posted October 21, 2007 10:29 AM
It's going to be windy in a big way this weekend. The National Weather Service this morning posted an upgraded high wind warning for the whole area through Monday, with...
Posted October 20, 2007 11:36 AM
Full surrender by Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, who held a press conference in Phoenix this afternoon to admit it was stupid to arrest New Times founders Jim Larkin and...
Posted October 19, 2007 09:16 PM
Rising gas prices, tanking stocks, and a sinking feeling among TV fans as the writers' strike edges closer to reality. Mark Lacter has that (and more) in LA Biz Observed....
Posted October 19, 2007 01:03 PM
Michael Lacey (right) and Jim Larkin, the founders and top dogs at Village Voice Media, were taken in at home by deputies after their Phoenix New Times weekly disclosed yesterday...
Posted October 19, 2007 07:59 AM
Now that Rebecca de Mornay is on HBO all the time, it figures somebody would ask, "what became of the old Wally George 'Hot Seat' shows on Channel 56?" That...
Posted October 19, 2007 12:49 AM
Google Stephen Colbert for President and the first listing (other than news about the announcement of his, uh, candidacy) is Colbertocrat.com. That's the website that launched a petition last year...
Posted October 19, 2007 12:27 AM
I haven't checked this out, but the source who tipped me has never steered me wrong. The report is that the L.A. Times held a little internal silent auction yesterday...
Posted October 19, 2007 12:13 AM
Jay Clendenin, a freelancer in Washington, DC, and Liz O. Baylen, a freelancer in New York, are joining the L.A. Times photo staff. Photo editor Colin Crawford's memo also posts...
Posted October 18, 2007 11:45 PM
I missed this in the news last week. Or rather, let's say it got way underplayed — just a brief buried in the LAT Calendar section. The news is that...
Posted October 18, 2007 11:33 PM
The newest feature on the Los Angeles skyline is something old. Congratulations to Amy Inouye, the artist whose years-long project to reunite L.A. with Chicken Boy became reality this morning...
Posted October 18, 2007 02:10 PM
Dean Singleton, the biggest owner of newspapers in the L.A. area, has sent his employees an eight-page status report on the health of the industry that is both upbeat and...
Posted October 18, 2007 09:25 AM
A new book released this week, The Driver: My Dangerous Pursuit of Speed and Truth in the Outlaw Racing World, describes a wild cross-country drive that broke the previous record...
Posted October 17, 2007 10:48 AM
Staph superbug kills more than AIDS A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association says methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, has spread well beyond hospitals and prisons...
Posted October 17, 2007 08:30 AM
Disney announced a $1.1 billion makeover of California Adventure to make it, well, more like Disneyland. They also plan to add a replica of the old Carthay Circle Theater, where...
Posted October 17, 2007 12:16 AM
Times reporter Peter Hong sat through the whole first act of The People vs. Phil Spector, but he found a way to leave at intermission. He's transferring to the LAT's...
Posted October 16, 2007 01:39 PM
Westwood Village's Mann National closed in April, reopened a little later as an indy screen and apparently locked the doors again on Oct. 7. Not that anybody noticed. Cinema Treasures.org...
Posted October 16, 2007 01:28 PM
Victims of our geography As more people live beyond the mountain ranges that ring metro Southern California, expect more traffic chokes of the sort that followed the I-5 tunnel closure...
Posted October 16, 2007 08:45 AM
Things got tense at the big post office near LAX for taxpayers trying to meet last night's deadline for filing IRS returns (on the six-month automatic extension.) MIckey Kaus blogs...
Posted October 16, 2007 08:16 AM
The ill-considered move to make AM 1260 a classical music station has officially failed, and owner Saul Levine is planning to resurrect the call letters KGIL and become a talk...
Posted October 15, 2007 08:57 PM
Quick hits today: Fox Business Network launches Neil Cavuto is managing editor and on the air. Romenesko Jay Leno doesn't want to go Fears at NBC that he could take...
Posted October 15, 2007 08:40 AM
* 8 am update: Lanes were open in both directions this morning. Caltrans district chief Douglas Failing said the southbound lanes of the freeway would be opened through Newhall Pass...
Posted October 15, 2007 12:13 AM
Author and journalist Ann Louise Bardach writes in today's Washington Post that a friend advised her to stay off US Airways — "It's the worst airline in the history of...
Posted October 14, 2007 11:57 PM
The Pacifica FM station in town has found out who the new interim general manager will be: it's Jim Lafferty, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles...
Posted October 14, 2007 11:45 PM
La Fonda de Los Camperos has been fighting eviction from its historic building at Wilshire and Carondelet, but the restaurant and its world-famous Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano are...
Posted October 14, 2007 11:20 PM
Ian McKellen frenzy has reached $1,700 a seat for his appearance with the Royal Shakespeare Company in "King Lear" opening Friday at UCLA's Royce Hall. Top list price: $90....
Posted October 14, 2007 11:47 AM
Don't plan on sailing in or out of Los Angeles on Interstate 5 (or the Antelope Freeway, for that matter) any time soon. Last night's conflagration in the truck tunnel...
Posted October 13, 2007 04:03 PM
The Pacifica radio station paid former general manager the equivalent of nine months’ salary, or $63,268, to part ways, former KPFK hand Marc Cooper reports in the LA Weekly. The...
Posted October 11, 2007 11:15 PM
This shot of Angels Flight in its old location beside the 3rd Street tunnel is one of the photographs in the exhibition of "Julius Shulman's Los Angeles" at the Central...
Posted October 11, 2007 10:59 PM
This one's not voluntary. Dave Shulman, who has columnized at the Weekly since 1998 — first as Sitegeist, more recently as Column Dave — was informed today that the run...
Posted October 11, 2007 10:48 PM
Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez has been taking a pounding in the Times for his extravagant spending with money stuffed in his pockets by the interests who grease lawmakers in this...
Posted October 11, 2007 10:34 PM
The big three local network TV stations will still be in the Valley, but NBC made official what's been talked about for awhile: the station is moving most of its...
Posted October 11, 2007 09:32 AM
Lara Loewenstein gave up her gig as the sex columnist for the Daily Bruin last year, graduated from UCLA and now has a blog where she ruminates on that phase....
Posted October 10, 2007 10:27 PM
This could be good — or not. Times Publisher David Hiller, who likes to explain at length his view of the emerging media world, has decided to blog it. But...
Posted October 10, 2007 04:43 PM
Based on the coverage, the department's long-awaited report blames bad command decisions, gaps in officer training and a small splinter group of trouble-making demonstrators for the May Day melee in...
Posted October 10, 2007 08:45 AM
Remember that episode back in March when Andrés Martinez resigned as editor of the Times editorial pages after the publisher, David Hiller, didn't back him in the Brian Grazer...
Posted October 10, 2007 08:02 AM
In one of those glib, fast-moving pronouncement pieces that magazines are in love with, Details pronounces the suburbs hip in the November issue. The sidebar anoints Montrose as a worthy...
Posted October 9, 2007 09:48 PM
Sam Zell was in Beverly Hills today and more or less swore that he has no plans to sell the Los Angeles Times, assuming that he gets hold of Tribune,...
Posted October 9, 2007 09:32 PM
The last time that Kitty Felde's one-act play "Man With No Shadow" was staged in Los Angeles, the lead actress was Lana Clarkson. Now that the play is opening October...
Posted October 9, 2007 09:21 PM
It's May Day in October, as Chief Bratton reports on the costly events at MacArthur Park. Also Sheriff Baca, a threat of water rationing, and some bloggers observed. Plus more....
Posted October 9, 2007 08:42 AM
Ever wonder how those bright, not very insightful little blurbs about restaurants, shops and nightlife get onto all the city search websites you mostly don't read? They come from people...
Posted October 8, 2007 11:00 PM
Couple of new ones to me, just as Daniel Hernandez prepares to decamp to Mexico City. Abel Salas, who has written for the New York Times, L.A. Times Magazine and...
Posted October 8, 2007 10:51 PM
This reorganization was announced Friday, but since I wasn't paying attention then — and I want to have the moves noted in the archives — here it is a couple...
Posted October 8, 2007 10:11 PM
Nice post by Deanne Stillman at Native Intelligence on the passing of Tawn Mastrey, once "the voice of heavy metal" in Los Angeles on the old KNAC-FM. Deanne interviewed her...
Posted October 8, 2007 01:17 AM
I always enjoy sitting down with the LA Weekly Best Of L.A. issue, and I'm sure I'll get to the new Armageddon-themed one that runs an imposing 376 pages. However,...
Posted October 5, 2007 08:32 AM
Richard S. Chang, writing in today's New York Times Wheels section about the pleasures of driving a stick shift: I was living in Los Angeles. Even though stopping and starting...
Posted October 4, 2007 10:38 PM
On the same day that the Daily News unveils a newly designed website, the comic strip Funky Winkerbean kills off main character Lisa Moore with cancer. On Oct. 21, the...
Posted October 4, 2007 09:04 AM
L.A. broadcasting fixture Gary Franklin died at 79, at home in Chatsworth. He first became known as a street reporter on KFWB, ending his reports with a signature sign-off "Car...
Posted October 4, 2007 08:56 AM
Some politics, some media, some books...click to go on in....
Posted October 4, 2007 08:44 AM
Quick round-up today on the region-wide immigration raids, Antonio's plan for the telephone tax, what the feds see wrong at the fire department and more....
Posted October 3, 2007 08:54 AM
Real-estate developer Jeffrey Greene, one of L.A.'s least-public billionaires, and New York real-estate executive Mei Sze Chan were married last weekend at his 27-acre Beverly Hills estate. Columnists Rush and...
Posted October 2, 2007 10:35 PM
Variety deputy editor Anne Thompson says the season for newspapers to crank up their Oscars-Globes-etc blogs is fast approaching. She gives a rundown on who's doing what at the big...
Posted October 2, 2007 10:10 PM
Mark Frauenfelder, Xeni Jardin and the rest of the very successful Boing Boing blog team launched tv.boingboing.net tonight. Xeni explains on the site: The idea is simple. Explore the same...
Posted October 2, 2007 09:06 PM
Meredith Artley, executive editor of LATimes.com, has sent the staff another periodic update on the site. Traffic is creeping back up, and there are plans this month for more blogs...
Posted October 2, 2007 01:53 PM
Gina McIntyre, managing editor for features at the Hollywood Reporter, is moving to the L.A. Times as an assistant entertainment editor. The memo on that follows. And as we noted...
Posted October 2, 2007 12:07 PM
Union deal at City Hall, the WGA asks for a strike OK, saving an old Van Nuys building and how to take your picture with Chicken Boy — plus why...
Posted October 2, 2007 08:45 AM
Lauritzen died today of a brain tumor, according to the Board of Education and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. He lost his reelection campaign for the board earlier this year. Lauritzen had...
Posted October 1, 2007 10:00 PM
Given the option of Riverside or the greener pastures of a fresh start, mayoral paramour Mirthala Salinas opted for...not Riverside. A couple of Los Angeles TV crews were on hand...
Posted October 1, 2007 09:48 PM
Betsy Morgan is leaving as general manager of CBSNews.com to lead the HuffPost. Arianna Huffington remains editor in chief and co-founder Kenneth Lerer moves up to chairman of the board....
Posted October 1, 2007 09:35 PM
Corn is one of those writers who seemed like he might be at The Nation forever. But he's jumping to a newly powered-up Mother Jones presence in Washington. He'll be...
Posted October 1, 2007 03:15 PM
Council President Eric Garcetti has been close to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa since the new administration took over in 2005, even though Garcetti actually endorsed then-Mayor Jim Hahn for reelection. Now...
Posted October 1, 2007 02:59 PM
First there was GOOD magazine. Now there's GOOD Digital, announced today by founder and COO Ben Goldhirsh. The new unit will be headed by Craig Shapiro, formerly in charge of...
Posted October 1, 2007 12:39 PM
Jim O'Shea, coming up on one year since he inherited the top job at the L.A. Times, is shaking things up a bit. In a memo posted in full below,...
Posted October 1, 2007 12:22 PM
Still looking for the mayor's million trees, more fallout from the Yom Kippur inspection in Hancock Park, new arrivals Downtown and a lot more....
Posted October 1, 2007 08:45 AM
Transportation planners get mounds of daily data from all the sensors installed beneath Los Angeles streets, but they throw it all away after a few days. The Times reports that...
Posted September 30, 2007 11:31 PM
With another of its occasional Sunday packages railing about city salaries, the Daily News posts online a database listing the name and salary of all 8,500 workers at the Department...
Posted September 30, 2007 11:04 PM
Former mayor Richard Riordan endorsed Rudy Giuliani for president, despite feeling "Giuliani is too liberal for the solid, right-wing Republicans in California, that part of the party." Washington Post...
Posted September 30, 2007 08:17 AM
KCAL9 and CBS2 anchor Dave Clark starts November 1 as anchor of the top-rated morning news at Channel 2 in San Francisco. His email to friends says "I have spent...
Posted September 29, 2007 09:45 PM
The band will headline a benefit concert at the Gibson Amphitheatre on Oct. 14 to raise money for rebuilding the Garfield High School auditorium that burned down this year. A...
Posted September 29, 2007 09:20 PM
Mayor Villaraigosa has dumped Department of Transportation chief Gloria Jeff and replaced her with longtime City Hall hand Rita Robinson. Jeff lasted a year and a half, after being presented...
Posted September 28, 2007 04:19 PM
Sorry, big deadline looming. No time for more this morning. Mayor Villaraigosa tells interviewer Michael Eisner that he had a conversation with Sen. Hillary Clinton about his extramarital affair. Help...
Posted September 28, 2007 08:24 AM
Emily Banneker at Blogging.la is bummed that L.A. Freeway Kids, the 1984 Olympics-era mural that adorned a south wall of the Hollywood Freeway (or Santa Ana, depending on your interpretation)...
Posted September 27, 2007 11:13 PM
In his talk today at Town Hall Los Angeles, Times publisher David Hiller said he may launch a free tabloid patterned after the Tribune's Redeye in Chicago. The Reuters story...
Posted September 27, 2007 09:31 PM
Author Denise Hamilton and Eating L.A. blogger Pat Saperstein did a fun road trip recently, visiting many of the local dining spots patronized by Hamilton's lovelorn newspaper reporter protagonist, Eve...
Posted September 27, 2007 09:09 PM
Phil Wallace mourns the demise of the morning sports talk show with NBC4's Fred Roggin, the Times' T.J. Simers and Simers' daughter Tracy. Dan Patrick, the former ESPN Radio talker,...
Posted September 27, 2007 09:02 PM
The family of Lana Clarkson said through its attorney that "we support the decision of the district attorney in this case and we will be present at the retrial. We...
Posted September 27, 2007 12:40 PM
Spector reaction abounds, plus Dominick Dunne, Zev Yaroslavsky and a BIG gift to Claremont McKenna College — and Fishbowl LA as tool again....
Posted September 27, 2007 09:41 AM
While I've been dilly-dallying on other projects and trying to get over a nasty cough, LA Observed contributors have been busy. Not Mark Lacter, though — LA Biz Observed is...
Posted September 26, 2007 11:58 PM
Readers of LA Observed are not just intelligent, discerning and sexy, they are also helpful (and well traveled, apparently.) David Hackett caught my mention last night of spotting the American...
Posted September 26, 2007 09:54 PM
Phil Spector's homicide trial ended this afternoon in a mistrial, with the DA's office vowing to try again. The final count was reportedly 10-2 in favor of conviction. Earlier, the...
Posted September 26, 2007 05:48 PM
A 1,000-page manuscript, The Development of Los Angeles City Government -- An Institutional History 1850-2000, will be delivered to the City Council this morning. The researchers pored through the municipal...
Posted September 26, 2007 09:32 AM
We've got Biggie Smalls, Antonio Villaraigosa, Frank McCourt, Derek Fisher and a bunch of other news topics. Click to head on in....
Posted September 26, 2007 09:15 AM
The latest media to discover the luxury denim industry in downtown L.A. is the New York Times, which focuses Wednesday on Bread Denim and draws the obligatory bigger meaning: Its...
Posted September 25, 2007 11:39 PM
Writer Frank Coffey's spoof site eTrueSports.com is now in video on YouTube....
Posted September 25, 2007 11:19 PM
Wendy McCaw finally took the witness stand to defend her reign of error over the Santa Barbara News Press. She contended that two veteran reporters were fired because of biased...
Posted September 25, 2007 11:05 PM
The Advocate, feeling pretty good after celebrating its 40th anniversary, is proud that news features editor Sean Kennedy scored an interview with Sen. Hillary Clinton at the recent Logo/Human Rights...
Posted September 25, 2007 10:47 PM
The Tribune Company has come up with a new tactic to cut costs and annoy the hell out of its employees — again. It seems that everyone on the staff...
Posted September 25, 2007 10:31 PM
Tom Tugend in the Jewish Journal has more details on the incident where city building inspectors ordered an Orthodox shul to halt its services on the eve of Yom Kippur,...
Posted September 25, 2007 10:14 PM
As the NYT's Sharon Waxman forecast in August, officials in Italy are dropping their civil case against former Getty antiquities curator Marion True. It's tied to a resolution of the...
Posted September 25, 2007 09:55 PM
Don Barrett at LARadio.com has uncovered several file folders with contracts, memos and other documents that show how KRLA deejay Bob Eubanks came to present the Beatles' first Los Angeles...
Posted September 25, 2007 12:05 PM
KPCC put its weekly Hollywood journalist roundtable segment Call Sheet on hiatus several months ago — not, I hope, because I guested on it a couple of times. Now the...
Posted September 25, 2007 10:53 AM
Our erstwhile video contributor has a couple of gigs taking away his time and his physical presence from L.A. One pursuit, as executive director of Why Tuesday, bears some fruit...
Posted September 25, 2007 09:42 AM
A director gets jail, Dodgers beat writers finally tell what they know, two more Marina eateries fail and it's awards day: Emmys, Ovations, genius grants and a stamp for Ruben...
Posted September 25, 2007 08:49 AM
Larry Harnisch at The Daily Mirror blog dug this photo out of the Times news archives and asks, what are these guys doing? The year, 1957, is a big...
Posted September 24, 2007 08:26 PM
If Mirthala Salinas stays with Telemundo Channel 52 it will be as the station's general assignment news chaser in the Inland Empire, not as the star political reporter and sometime...
Posted September 24, 2007 08:13 PM
Proposals to fix neighborhood councils, Mayor Villaraigosa's few thousand trees initiative, Seymour Hersh on blogs and much, much more for a catch-up Monday morning....
Posted September 24, 2007 08:22 AM
Mayor Villaraigosa signs off on a deal brokered by Council President Eric Garcetti. It's less, obviously, than the $2.7 million Pierce and the City Council agreed to last year, but...
Posted September 21, 2007 06:55 PM
Reporters assigned to the Phil Spector trial have to do something while they're waiting on the jury. Steven Mikulan covers the scene in the LA Weekly: In the courtroom, a...
Posted September 21, 2007 06:45 PM
Geffen and Spielberg, Lincoln Place, Mary Mapes on Dan Rather and a whole bunch of other topics covered today. Click to go on in....
Posted September 21, 2007 08:16 AM
At a Radio and Television News Association panel of news directors last night at UCLA, Bob Long of NBC 4 got most of the laughs — and sounded the most...
Posted September 20, 2007 10:16 PM
Marc Cooper is joining the Huffington Post as special correpondent and will direct coverage of the 2008 political campaigns for OfftheBus.net, a co-venture of the Huffington Post and NewAssignment.net, NYU...
Posted September 20, 2007 10:54 AM
Veronique de Turenne didn't take the official snail mail seriously until it talked about "warrant for your arrest" and "$950 fine." But all's well that ends well. Here in Malibu....
Posted September 20, 2007 09:29 AM
Well, in a manner of speaking. Richard Montoya of Culture Clash has been named an Annenberg Film Fellow at the Sundance Institute to work on the film version of the...
Posted September 20, 2007 08:49 AM
Busy morning elsewhere. Light posting day....
Posted September 20, 2007 08:35 AM
The Times lost its School Me blog and column when Bob Sipchen quit to edit the Sierra Club magazine in San Francisco and co-blogger Janine Kahn went to the OC...
Posted September 19, 2007 11:11 PM
Just for fun I checked Google News to see how many news websites used "the Juice is loose" in their reports on O.J. Simpson making bail. Surprisingly few: just Access...
Posted September 19, 2007 09:49 PM
He claims the network ruined his career. (You want to laugh, right?) Mark Lacter strikes the right tone: As defendants, the suit names CBS and its CEO, Leslie Moonves; Viacom...
Posted September 19, 2007 04:08 PM
I was misinformed: Yale Galanter, O.J. Simpson's attorney, is not the former husband of City Councilwoman Jan Perry. That would be Douglas F. Galanter. I had it wrong in today's...
Posted September 19, 2007 03:06 PM
Bill Plaschke's column today urges the Dodgers to quit haranguing KFWB host Bob Harvey over his post-game show. Here was the post I put up Monday about the team's Josh...
Posted September 19, 2007 09:05 AM
Where Bill Clinton and Antonio Villaraigosa were when the lights went out in Brentwood last night, plus Southwest goes kid unfriendly, a new Times feature on mundane things and a...
Posted September 19, 2007 08:55 AM
In response to today's Breeze article on new computerized traffic signals across the South Bay, an LA Observed reader wrote to the Breeze reporter, Gene Maddaus: I noted in the...
Posted September 18, 2007 08:14 PM
Jill Ishkanian is the ex-senior reporter in Los Angeles who quit US Weekly to form Sunset Photo and News and was accused last year of breaking into the magazine's editing...
Posted September 18, 2007 02:34 PM
Split is 7-5 (but we don't know which way) and the foreman tells the judge he doesn't think they can reach a verdict on Phil Spector's guilt or innocence. Judge...
Posted September 18, 2007 02:10 PM
Some 100 journalists and others who attended last week's Mothers Against Drunk Driving national awards luncheon in St. Louis came down with food poisoning. MADD's email to participants: I hope...
Posted September 18, 2007 01:53 PM
Oh my God. Spotted in Valencia (also seen over the weekend in malls all over the Valley.) Photo: Daily News / David Crane...
Posted September 18, 2007 08:54 AM
Costly news for Wesley Snipes, a big reward in that infant murder, covering the Emmys like someone cares and more charges against Leland Wong — plus cold rain coming this...
Posted September 18, 2007 08:51 AM
New programming as The CineFamily launches Oct. 25 at the Fairfax Avenue theater, which gets a bigger screen, new projection and sound systems and leather sofas. Revival films will be...
Posted September 17, 2007 10:46 PM
The newly reinstated dean-to-be of the future UC Irvine law school will be next year's commencement speaker at the rival Chapman University law school. The dean there, John Eastman, has...
Posted September 17, 2007 09:01 PM
Daily News television blogger David Kronke had a bad run-in with some nuts (he's allergic) at this weekend's pre-Emmy tea thrown by BAFTA and the BBC. Kronke refers to himself...
Posted September 17, 2007 06:10 PM
Columnists and other material that was behind the pay wall will be free as of Tuesday night. The New York Times is even opening up its archives back to 1986....
Posted September 17, 2007 05:57 PM
Liberal legal scholar and pundit Erwin Chemerinsky will become dean of the new UC Irvine law school after all. Chancellor Michael V. Drake spent the week in North Carolina —...
Posted September 17, 2007 11:39 AM
Where else do you get Tom LaBonge, O.J. Simpson and Sally Field in the same blog post?...
Posted September 17, 2007 08:12 AM
Another big exit from the Los Angeles Times, and another hit to the paper's national profile. Washington columnist Brownstein is joining Atlantic Media, publisher of The Atlantic and National Journal,...
Posted September 17, 2007 07:19 AM
There's talk of UC Irvine's chastened chancellor re-offering the law school deanship to Erwin Chemerinsky. Orange County conservative Hugh Hewitt says the offer should be made. LAT, Register More...
Posted September 16, 2007 11:21 AM
Marc Duvoisin, the LAT's assistant managing editor for writing and projects, gets a boost to deputy managing editor for all projects at the paper. Memo from Managing Editor John Arthur...
Posted September 14, 2007 05:26 PM
Friends are being told that LA Weekly staff writer Judith Lewis gave notice today and will leave by the end of the year, after finishing up some stories. That means...
Posted September 14, 2007 04:22 PM
The dead blue whale drifting off the Santa Babara coast drew so many onlookers yesterday that U.S. 101 was blocked for a time. It rolled onto shore this morning at...
Posted September 14, 2007 03:31 PM
Missed these in yesterday's flood of email — new appointees by Mayor Villaraigosa to the Cultural Heritage Commission and other city boards. Details after the jump....
Posted September 14, 2007 10:23 AM
Turns out Supervisor Mike Antonovich has a hand in the Erwin Chemerinsky debacle, more signs that water rationing is coming, and O.J. is questioned in Vegas — plus YouTube video...
Posted September 14, 2007 08:44 AM
A three-judge panel of the state's Second District Court of Appeal sided with local groups and the city of Santa Monica and ordered that construction activity stop on phase two...
Posted September 13, 2007 11:12 PM
UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge blogs about applying to remodel his Los Angeles home and being informed by the bureaucracy that, on paper, his house doesn't exist. Nor does his...
Posted September 13, 2007 08:45 AM
Some pretty amazing numbers on non-English speaking, more parsing of yesterday's Erwin Chemerinsky story, some City Hall moves and more....
Posted September 13, 2007 08:38 AM
David Lauter, a veteran of Metro and the foreign desk, gets the job as editor over all news coverage within the state of California. Different title than his predecessor: Janet...
Posted September 13, 2007 07:26 AM
Bill Boyarsky went back to the ethics commission yesterday for the first time since his fellow commissioners didn't elect him president. In fact, nobody seconded his nomination. They didn't let...
Posted September 12, 2007 01:55 PM
Constitutional law scholar and media quotemeister Erwin Chemerinsky was all set to be named dean of the new UC Irvine law school — he even signed the contract — but...
Posted September 12, 2007 12:54 PM
Radar Magazine's October issue offers a hundred of the most overhyped people, places and things — and L.A.'s own* David and Victoria Beckham make the top of the list and...
Posted September 12, 2007 12:37 PM
Last week the political anony-blog Claremont Insider posted the pay and benefits totals for a whole bunch of Claremont city employees, based on year-end pay stubs found on the city's...
Posted September 12, 2007 09:06 AM
Steve Barr gets Locke High, a late-night bill for Anschutz and more gang woes for the Valley. Plus a little imitation-cum-flattery from the New York Times....
Posted September 12, 2007 07:47 AM
Ratings for last year's Oscars with Jon Stewart hosting were abysmal, but the New York Times' Michael Cieply reports that he's the choice again. An announcement is expected Wednesday. I...
Posted September 12, 2007 06:47 AM
PeopleJam, a self-help website due to launch this month by Hollywood execs Robert Tercek and Matt Edelman, has already been dinged for the lame name and "sickly sweet" approach. Now...
Posted September 12, 2007 06:20 AM
If you didn't get enough of corporate exec-turned-dumpster diver Madeline Nelson in the lede of yesterday's L.A. Times front page story, you can always see more quotes from her in...
Posted September 12, 2007 05:51 AM
Memo to the staff from Editor Ron Kaye: Everyone: I'm very pleased to announce that Judi Erickson has been named City Editor. She succeeds Barbara Jones who is coordinating content...
Posted September 11, 2007 11:21 AM
Another outrage on Skid Row, NBC's plans to exploit its Spector juror, today's 9-11 commemorations and the new book on important Angeleno Franklin Murphy — and more....
Posted September 11, 2007 08:37 AM
The city of Beverly Hills wants to poke around in the visitor logs of LAist because of comments to a post last week that detailed an encounter between an angry...
Posted September 10, 2007 06:14 PM
From the September issue of Los Angeles magazine: In Josh Kun's "The Ballad of Music Man Murray," which appeared in the July issue, it was indicated that Jimmy Durante appeared...
Posted September 10, 2007 02:15 PM
Downtown's usually dark neon signs atop the old Rosslyn Hotel towers were relit last night for a film shoot. Eric Lynxwiler and friends rushed out to capture the sight. Via...
Posted September 10, 2007 01:18 PM
The Oscar-winning actress and former Mrs. Ronald Reagan (when he was a SAG Democrat) never let her true age be pinned down. Katie Harris reports at Bloomberg that Wyman died...
Posted September 10, 2007 10:58 AM
The Phil Spector Show moves into its third act, in and out at City Hall, TMZ-TV goes live and the latest on paralyzed LAPD officer Kristina Ripatti — and much...
Posted September 10, 2007 08:05 AM
Talk about culture shock. The LA Weekly is leaving its longtime physical and spiritual home on Sunset Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood for a sad stretch of Sepulveda Boulevard...
Posted September 10, 2007 01:21 AM
Remember when former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan was so perturbed at the L.A. Times that he dallied with starting his own rival paper? He even produced a prototype of...
Posted September 10, 2007 01:03 AM
Recent chatter in the L.A. Times newsroom had co-managing editor Leo Wolinsky in trouble with the forces of Tribune over his overtures to suitors Eli Broad and David Geffen and...
Posted September 10, 2007 12:56 AM
I'm jet-lagged and hacking loud enough to frighten the neighbors, but they tell me it's my turn to blog. Huge kudos and thanks to Veronique de Turenne, Jenny Burman and...
Posted September 10, 2007 12:49 AM
Undercover Black Man gives free reign to his enthusiasm for Larry David on the eve of Curb's new season -- today's post also offers some stellar links and a treat....
Posted September 8, 2007 01:41 PM
We now return you to your previously scheduled level of high-quality journalism. You know - actual reporting with depth, research, nuance, and fully dressed people. No more Governator references. No...
Posted September 7, 2007 03:46 PM
Just to prove my point this has been a weird week... Paris Hilton sues Hallmark over a "That's hot!" card. The Smoking Gun. Bisexual dating show coming to MTV. ABC...
Posted September 7, 2007 02:50 PM
Remember Francisco Linares, the South Bay homeowner sentenced to six months in jail for building a fence without a permit? No orange jumpsuit for him on Monday - if he...
Posted September 7, 2007 01:02 PM
The WSJ anoints Carpinteria as the new jet set getaway. (This after the NYT did the same for Oxnard earlier this summer.) Oops - 104,000 fewer new jobs than predicted...
Posted September 7, 2007 11:11 AM
Robot farmers, Arnie versus the GOP, nuns get the boot, Phil and Kobe agree, and a baseball card sells for $2.8 million. Bring weekend fun that much closer by clicking...
Posted September 7, 2007 06:00 AM
Janet Clayton says goodbye, and that "a cigar is just a cigar." To my dear friends and colleagues in Metro and around the paper: Jim and I are announcing today...
Posted September 6, 2007 05:43 PM
She writes a memo welcoming four new staffers (see below) to the LAT, then writes another memo, with her resignation. Mark Lacter at LA Biz observed has details, as well...
Posted September 6, 2007 03:03 PM
Four new multi-lingual reporters hired, according to a memo from AME Janet Clayton: Ari Bloomekatz, already on board, is a Spanish-speaking UCLA grad and intern-turned-staffer. Jean-Paul Renaud, from the South...
Posted September 6, 2007 02:21 PM
Less than a day after Mary Chagnon's fatal heart attack at age 90, her Hollywood landlord, eager to re-rent the apartment, stripped it of everything she owned. Illegal? Unfeeling? That's...
Posted September 6, 2007 10:30 AM
Police surveillance, valiant dogs, no more Mt. Whitney outhouses, and a view of KPFK that includes the word "hazmat". A deeply peculiar mix of stories near the end of a...
Posted September 6, 2007 06:00 AM
Luciano Pavarotti has died. Violinist.com, which includes a link to the tenor's last public performance, writes: Luciano Pavarotti has gone to the great stage in the sky. He succumbed to...
Posted September 6, 2007 12:12 AM
Amy Saralegui, who served as advertising director of Emmis Communications' Texas Monthly will replace Alan Klein as publisher of the company's Los Angeles Magazine. According to today's press release: Saralegui,...
Posted September 5, 2007 09:40 PM
Mark Lacter's got Vanity Fair's Power List, and reaction to Apple's decision to drop prices for the iPhone. LA Biz Observed. Eric Savitz, who was in SF for Apple's product...
Posted September 5, 2007 03:34 PM
Patt Morrison's eponymous daily KPCC talk show, which shines a light on culture and politics, goes to two hours beginning Monday. More time means lots more stories for the popular...
Posted September 5, 2007 02:05 PM
Wonder what's in store at Disney Hall when Esa-Pekka leaves the building? Check out this video of Gustavo Dudamel, or as expat (and perpetually homesick) LA native David Kipen likes...
Posted September 5, 2007 10:24 AM
A KTLA anchor jumps ship, sheriff's deputies in the hot seat, Barbie's behind (not my words) and a "nasty, naughty boy." (Again, not my words.) All that and Britney, too!...
Posted September 5, 2007 06:12 AM
Some tidbits, because it's just too hot to write actual paragraphs. LAT's Douglas Frantz now at Conde Nast Portfolio, according to Romenesko. Car hits driver in Beverly Hills. Only the...
Posted September 4, 2007 04:33 PM
That streak of light in your rear view mirror this morning? Mark Lacter at work. On KPCC this morning, then in LA Biz Observed with a full helping of news...
Posted September 4, 2007 02:05 PM
Robert Greene blogs on the LAT site about why our city's birthday gets lost in the shuffle, and what it was like to take that long, long walk on Sunday....
Posted September 4, 2007 12:42 PM
Need an excuse to extend the holiday eating binge a few more hours? Our city turns 226 today. Cake for everybody! LA City Nerd has the details and links galore,...
Posted September 4, 2007 10:21 AM
Heat, fire, a blog fight, and a van that drives itself. A modest start to the short week. Ease your sunburned hand on over to the link....
Posted September 4, 2007 05:07 AM
Every writer should know about the web site, landandfarm.com. There is no better way to procrastinate motivate yourself. Here's Paradise Ranch, a 119-acre property once owned by Cecil B. DeMille....
Posted September 3, 2007 02:33 PM
How can you not click through to a post with a line like this: If a couple of college goofballs decide to produce a gangsta-rap video called "Produce Paradise," smacking...
Posted September 2, 2007 03:52 PM
An earthquake (4.7 today in OC) and a potato salad recipe at the ever-eclectic LAist. Another public SoCal beach you won't see this weekend. Or next weekend. Or any...
Posted September 2, 2007 10:44 AM
No banker's hours here at LAO. (Though we do go weekend casual.) Jenny Burman celebrates the reopening of an Echo Park cafe. David Davis puts Beckham's woes (and salary) into...
Posted September 1, 2007 04:43 PM
Injunction against sonar testing near Channel Islands suspended. A federal appeals court allowed the Navy on Friday to resume using underwater sonar blasts in anti-submarine warfare tests off Southern California...
Posted September 1, 2007 04:19 PM
A few fun holiday reads (and videos) to clear the palate between bbqs and brewskis: They say it there, it comes out here Inland Empire news anchor reports the local...
Posted August 31, 2007 02:15 PM
Parents talk about Kid Nation, high-flown sales pitches for 'artists lofts', and - we're shocked, shocked! - speculators make up the majority of mortgage defaults. It's LA Biz Observed...
Posted August 31, 2007 12:39 PM
Headed for the beach this weekend? Rather not swim with salmonella? Try Heal the Bay's new Beach Report Card texting service, launched yesterday. Say you’re driving to Surfrider in Malibu...
Posted August 30, 2007 07:14 PM
A bison attack, Orwellian surveillance, hard times at King-Harbor, and it's hot hot hot in LA. Not a bad line-up for the last day of August. Join us......
Posted August 30, 2007 07:08 PM
Dear Kevin, It's a week into the new direction here at LAO and so far, not too bad. We've managed not to burn the place down and have even gotten...
Posted August 30, 2007 03:23 PM
Labor Day crunch, KTLA land and buildings for sale, and seedy airport lounges. And more! Check in with Mark Lacter in LA Biz Observed. David Davis links to chats with...
Posted August 30, 2007 11:49 AM
LAT's style and fashion section, Image, finds a regular spot in the rotation with Booth Moore as editor and chief critic. Michalene Busico, deputy features editor who oversaw Image's launch,...
Posted August 30, 2007 09:38 AM
Feral pigs, bad spinach, no parking, and Antonio's got a thing for uniforms. Entrez....
Posted August 30, 2007 06:42 AM
Paul MacCready, the internationally acclaimed engineer known as the father of human-powered flight, died at his home in Pasadena on Aug. 29. He was 81. MacCready was perhaps best known...
Posted August 29, 2007 06:13 PM
Tidbits from the Times we missed the first time around. (Hey, can you think straight before sunrise?) Steve Lopez spanks the Governator for cutting mental health programs to save money,...
Posted August 29, 2007 03:38 PM
The great white shark living in a portable pen off the coast of Malibu for the last few weeks is now on view at the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Outer Bay...
Posted August 29, 2007 01:24 PM
Mark Lacter's got details on rising temps, rising incomes, fewer Californians with health insurance, and more changes to Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers plan another $70 million in renovations on the...
Posted August 29, 2007 10:26 AM
The WSJ (kind of) starts a Sam Zell rumor, the CoCo Times wins a peek at paychecks, wacky guy starts Burning Man a bit early, and AT&T stops time. Who...
Posted August 29, 2007 06:49 AM
Francisco Linares, a South Bay resident who built "a fence, a retaining wall, a patio and a few concrete columns" is going to county jail for six months for doing...
Posted August 28, 2007 03:52 PM
That lunar eclipse early this morning was spectacular. Check out these lovely photos, shot by Travis Longcore, science director for the Urban Wildlands Group....
Posted August 28, 2007 01:13 PM
The bidding is open for Barry Bonds' record-tying/breaking home run ball. David Davis in SoCal Sports Observed has the details on what else is for sale in the mid-September auction....
Posted August 28, 2007 01:01 PM
Eva Georgia steps down as general manager A glowing memo for the embattled GM as she takes her leave. Here's LAT coverage on the background of the tumultuous tale, which...
Posted August 28, 2007 09:35 AM
Five days ago [see previous posts here and here] The E.W. Scripps Co. announced that its publisher at the Ventura County Star, Tim Gallagher, would be stepping down to start...
Posted August 28, 2007 09:18 AM
Bumping jets at LAX, gardens on wheels on Skid Row, and Wonder Bread leaves LA. Enter for info....
Posted August 27, 2007 08:38 PM
Take a hike Nearly four months after a wildfire burned more than 800 acres in Griffith Park, three hiking trails in our lovely urban wilderness are open again, KABC reports....
Posted August 27, 2007 02:27 PM
It's a national contest, right? The Association of Food Journalists (AFJ) announces 42 winners in its Awards Competition 2007. They received their awards at a reception and banquet held on...
Posted August 27, 2007 12:23 PM
That's the news at Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood. A federal judge today has effectively blocked that subpoena for NYC journalist John Connolly's Verizon phone records which Anthony Pellicano's defense was...
Posted August 27, 2007 12:23 PM
Mark Lacter's on the job with new posts at LA Biz Observed. David Rensin has a new favorite viral marketing campaign for...All Bran? He explains in Native Intelligence. Jenny Burman's...
Posted August 27, 2007 11:10 AM
NYT beats the pack with the first story....
Posted August 27, 2007 05:36 AM
It's only Monday morning and already we've got sleight-of-hand in City Hall, a winning debut for the Dodgers' newest pitcher, a really big bus, a censored penguin, and a sentence...
Posted August 27, 2007 05:35 AM
*MONDAY UPDATE: A report from Editor & Publisher's editor-at-large, Mark Fitzgerald. Ventura County Star Publisher Tim Gallagher's column on Sunday answered some (but not many) of the questions raised by...
Posted August 26, 2007 01:49 PM
Countrywide as boiler room? That's how Mark Lacter sees it in LA Biz Observed, where he parses the details of a NYT piece about the Calabasas-based mortgage lender....
Posted August 26, 2007 12:19 PM
Dip into the new post on Native Intelligence by Erika Schickel....
Posted August 25, 2007 02:53 PM
Jenny Burman has the details in Chicken Corner....
Posted August 25, 2007 09:54 AM
*Update Saturday, Aug. 25, 2007 — A bylined story published Saturday in The Star rehashed Friday's Web site announcement with a couple quotes from outside the company and a bit...
Posted August 24, 2007 04:41 PM
New art gallery in Westlake neighborhood According to the web site: rampART is a community art gallery in the flourishing art district near MacArthur Park in downtown Los Angeles. Focus...
Posted August 24, 2007 03:37 PM
Alicia Unger, the ">Azteca America reporter who was shoved hard into a cargo crate during one of Mayor Villaraigosa's more exciting press conferences, ">filed an injury claim against the city...
Posted August 24, 2007 02:52 PM
You know it if you've traveled the 101 east toward Downtown: The most gloriously weird and inspired sign in Los Angeles, Western Exterminator's Coral neon lettering and a long string...
Posted August 24, 2007 02:03 PM
Plenty, judging from the batch of e-mails that stacked up soon after Eric Estrin's request for something new to call the LAT. Some replies weren't printable, but most reflect affection...
Posted August 24, 2007 11:35 AM
Seems the best thing about Fox's series "Anchorwoman" was Mary McNamara's review of the dopey reality show. If you hate women, men, Texas, Los Angeles, television news and any of...
Posted August 24, 2007 10:49 AM
We've got news, opinion, gossip posing as news and (it's Friday!) a naked guy. Click click......
Posted August 23, 2007 02:46 PM
The wooden table from the board room at the New York Times sells to a Canadian antiques dealer for $5,000. (Globe and Mail) It is a 26-foot, four-pedestal mahogany dining...
Posted August 23, 2007 02:07 PM
Une petite update to this morning's item about Jason Reid heading off to cover football for the WaPo. The mention about the LAT's sports section losing two African American reporters...
Posted August 23, 2007 01:48 PM
A mix of news and, well, gossip, to ease you through the a.m.:...
Posted August 23, 2007 09:39 AM
A medical doctor from Dana Point has a long-board solution for fostering friendship between Israelis and Palestinians. According to a Richard Boudreaux LA Times story today, the doctor, Dorian Paskowitz,...
Posted August 23, 2007 09:08 AM
Dear Kevin, We've been thinking it over here in the main office of LA Observed and we're taking the site in a new direction. Less LAT and more TMZ. Maybe...
Posted August 22, 2007 02:37 PM
Sincere condolences on Maxwell Schneller's loss -- the LAist contributor's bicycle was stolen, all of it except for the tire that was locked to a pole, as the photo will...
Posted August 22, 2007 02:26 PM
LA Times' Column One today recoats the ethnicity picture of Los Angeles Spanish bluebloods. According to various people who have looked into their own genetic pasts, a significant portion of...
Posted August 22, 2007 01:43 PM
Some items in the news: Sam Zell's offer to perhaps overpay at $34 a share for the Tribune Company was accepted today by shareholders in Chicago, but at the L.A....
Posted August 21, 2007 09:20 AM
The Hollywood Reporter's legal site gives up the ghost as a standalone publication effective, well, immediately. Coverage of Hollywood's legal movers and issues will become a "dedicated channel" on THR.com,...
Posted August 20, 2007 05:26 PM
The September issue has a long story by Jesse Katz on the scuffle at Royce Hall between a freelance writer (Rachel Neuwirth) and an anti-war UCLA Hillel rabbi (Chaim Seidler-Feller)...
Posted August 20, 2007 02:25 PM
Since the U.S. government appears to be sharing his email with journalists, the Times' Chuck Philips figures it's only fitting to get out the rest of the story. It begins...
Posted August 20, 2007 12:08 PM
There's queasiness about the Zell deal with Tribune, a who's who of L.A. political lawyers, a debate over sexual athletes and a new dispatch from New York on Theresa Duncan...
Posted August 20, 2007 08:52 AM
Today's Times Opinion section runs another piece proclaiming the blogosphere lacking — this time in factual political reporting. It read to me as if journalism professor Michael Skube wasn't familiar...
Posted August 19, 2007 09:45 PM
Michael Deaver worked for Ronald Reagan in the governor's office and in the White House and was known both as a clever image shaper and one of the insiders who...
Posted August 19, 2007 08:07 PM
In Friday's story about actor Steven Seagal feeling burned by the Pellicano scandal, Chuck Philips of the Times reported that U.S. Attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek "declined to comment" on questions...
Posted August 19, 2007 07:58 PM
When Dean Hill began as a reporter for United Press International he watched the construction of the downtown state building's parking structure outside the bureau window. More recently, he watched...
Posted August 19, 2007 07:36 PM
Geoff Mohan takes over the Times environment desk for Frank Clifford, who left via buyout to work on another book. Clifford had national status in the LAT's hierarchy of desks,...
Posted August 19, 2007 07:21 PM
The National Labor Relations Board unanimously rejected a challenge by owners of the Santa Barbara News-Press and ruled that the union vote by newsroom staffers last year was proper. The...
Posted August 19, 2007 08:56 AM
The Huffington Post's better commenters can now become bloggers for the site. Arianna explains. The editor of USC's Online Journalism Review really didn't like this morning's Times editorial about...
Posted August 17, 2007 03:41 PM
Elizabeth Guider, the new editor of The Hollywood Reporter, is out of state but ordered the trade's website to take down this morning's story by Ray Richmond about Merv Griffin's...
Posted August 17, 2007 01:55 PM
Jason Middleton has something to say about Lesley Balla's dig at LA.com earlier this week. He emails: Normally, I wouldn't respond to a competitor's blog posting, but there are some...
Posted August 17, 2007 09:13 AM
He did not pay anyone to threaten reporter Anita Busch and pretty much loathes PI Anthony Pellicano, says the actor whose name was prominently mentioned when the feds first began...
Posted August 16, 2007 11:51 PM
Former ICM co-president Ed Limato is moving back to the William Morris Agency, as Nikki Finke reported earlier in the week. LImato spent ten years at WMA between stints at...
Posted August 16, 2007 04:03 PM
Ex-Times columnist J.A. Adande has resurfaced as the NBA columnist for ESPN.com, a move that David Davis comments on at SoCal Sports Observed. Adande's first column talks about why he...
Posted August 16, 2007 02:30 PM
Alex Ben Block reports at Hollywood Today that production of "Desperate Housewives" has been kicked out of Stage One at Universal Studios and that talks are underway for "The Tonight...
Posted August 16, 2007 11:35 AM
Rosendahl's traffic hyperbole, Home Depot loses in Sunland, Mirthala has a new boss at Telemundo 52 and more on that lack of Spanish posters at LACMA's Latin America exhibit —...
Posted August 16, 2007 08:57 AM
City editor Jennifer Hamm is leaving the Daily Journal for a communications gig at law firm Skadden Arps. Here's the newsroom memo from Daily Journal editor Martin Berg: It was...
Posted August 15, 2007 10:53 PM
Lesley Balla helped in 2003 to launch LA.com as an informed, even sassy hub of opinionated takes on Los Angeles. She doesn't like what has happened now that the Daily...
Posted August 15, 2007 02:55 PM
L.A.'s most famous hard-to-catch alligator slipped out of his enclosure at the Los Angeles Zoo last night, but was re-incarcerated after a short walk on the wild side. Donna Littlejohn...
Posted August 15, 2007 11:48 AM
Sickcandy has given it up: Sickcandy was a blog published from May 15, 2003-July 4, 2007. It died for several reasons, including (but not limited to) me not wanting to...
Posted August 15, 2007 09:15 AM
Analyzing the LAX computer glitch and the failure of King-Harbor hospital, the Valley's West Nile breeding ground, Beckham claims he'll play and a close-up of KCRW's guy who calls with...
Posted August 15, 2007 08:48 AM
Pedophile Jack McClellan is staying behind bars, charged with violating a court order to keep away from children. He pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $150,000 bail. He's...
Posted August 14, 2007 05:31 PM
Smoke was spotted a little after 4 pm in the brush west of Griffith Observatory, but the threat of flames spreading appears to have passed. The observatory was evacuated as...
Posted August 14, 2007 05:17 PM
Now I see better why Rich Kane returned to the OC Weekly as managing editor. Two years ago, he predicted the newly launched OCSqueeze would last two years. Well, yesterday...
Posted August 14, 2007 04:32 PM
The transsexual sportswriter formerly known as Mike Penner is interviewed by host Madeleine Brand on tomorrow's NPR show. It airs at 9 am on KPCC-FM or can be heard online....
Posted August 14, 2007 03:36 PM
Sam Zell doesn't yet have control of the Tribune Company — and tried to reassure a skeptical stock market today that he will — but he's billed as the special...
Posted August 14, 2007 03:24 PM
Jaime Cardenas has been covering soccer as a Times sports intern. He apparently impressed enough to stay — and inspired Sports Editor Randy Harvey to put some writing into his...
Posted August 14, 2007 01:52 PM
Reporter Chip Yost simply asked if the self-professed pedophile Jack McClellan wanted to talk after his release from UCLA custody last night — and he did, says Channel 5 executive...
Posted August 14, 2007 11:35 AM
Down to $24.87 in mid-day trading today, almost ten dollars below what Sam Zell is supposedly going to pay for the struggling company. It's the lowest value for Tribune stock...
Posted August 14, 2007 09:33 AM
Former L.A. Times feature writer-turned-novelist Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez had been a victim of journalist Cathy Seipp's gratuitous mean side, and gave it back to her. But she was sad to learn...
Posted August 14, 2007 08:47 AM
The largest pre-industrial metropolis in the world, in today's Cambodia, relied on elaborate waterworks — and died away in the 16th century after "overpopulation and deforestation filled the canals with...
Posted August 13, 2007 10:55 PM
Channel 5's Prime News plans to run selected old commentaries by the late anchor Hal Fishman all week. Tonight it was Hal weighing in on Snoop Dogg being arrested a...
Posted August 13, 2007 10:29 PM
If you figured Shea Hillenbrand's baseball career was over after he was cut loose twice this season by contending teams — the Angels and Padres — then you'll be surprised...
Posted August 13, 2007 10:14 PM
Federal regulators completed their latest evaluation of Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital and decided it can't meet meet minimum standards for patient care. That means an end to federal funds...
Posted August 10, 2007 02:19 PM
One of TMZ's cellphone video spies caught up with Mayor Villaraigosa and Mirthala Salinas doing some shopping at Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks. The report says that — no surprise...
Posted August 10, 2007 11:14 AM
About 100 hillside residents came to the community meeting on burglary at Hotel Bel-Air. An LAPD officer shot and killed a domestic abuse suspect who was choking the officer's...
Posted August 10, 2007 09:06 AM
The Times has a piece tomorrow saying that Mayor Villaraigosa and some other local electeds use more water at home than normal people — in some cases much more. OK,...
Posted August 9, 2007 11:34 PM
There's no question that CP Smith, A1 editor of the Orange County Register, was caught on camera picking his nose behind a TV set in the newsroom. Also no dispute...
Posted August 9, 2007 05:59 PM
Jim Bates, the deputy editor on the entertainment-tech desk in the Times' Business section, is jumping into the crisis PR game at Sitrick and Company. He has the second-longest tenure...
Posted August 9, 2007 04:58 PM
The reeling Dodgers had a couple of things go right today. First, they scored — five times. That hadn't happened in a while. They got a home run, from Rafael...
Posted August 9, 2007 01:39 PM
Former L.A. Times reporter and editor George Ramos has stepped down as chairman of the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo journalism department. No explanation was given in the report in...
Posted August 9, 2007 01:06 PM
Retired L.A. Times garden editor Robert Smaus has moved to the Pacific Northwest and says goodbye to the soil of Rancho Park in a piece today. He's probably advised more...
Posted August 9, 2007 11:31 AM
Man-Ling Williams, 27, was arrested late last night on suspicion of murdering her husband and two young sons in the family home. Neal Williams, 27, had been found yesterday morning...
Posted August 9, 2007 11:18 AM
There's some chuckling going on in Singleton newsrooms over the front page of Tuesday's Wednesday's sports section in the San Gabriel Newspaper Group papers, San Bernardino Sun and Inland Valley...
Posted August 9, 2007 11:07 AM
Steve Wasserman and Robert Scheer are together again. The former Los Angeles Times book editor, now managing director of the New York office of Kneerim & Williams at Fish &...
Posted August 9, 2007 10:49 AM
David Markland posts at Metroblogging L.A. that the circa-1925 Rialto Theatre on Fair Oaks Avenue will be shuttered by its operator, Landmark Theatres. It's a single-screen theatre listed on the...
Posted August 9, 2007 08:45 AM
This morning's quake, another Hal Fishman tribute, MOCA admits what they denied last week, and unhappy departures at LA.com — plus Reggie the alligator gets his own show at the...
Posted August 9, 2007 08:36 AM
The jury weighing Phil Spector's guilt or innocence will head out to Alhambra tomorrow to view the foyer where Lana Clarkson died. Special correspondent Linda Deutsch of the Associated Press...
Posted August 8, 2007 05:48 PM
Jessica Guynn will cover Google, Yahoo and other Silicon Valley media companies from the Times' San Francisco bureau. She comes from the SF Chronicle and lives in Berkeley with Art...
Posted August 8, 2007 04:08 PM
The Lakers blog still leads the pack — followed by Show Tracker — and the Henry T. Nicholas sex story beat out the Antonio Villaraigosa sex story for visitor traffic...
Posted August 8, 2007 01:45 PM
KTLA reporter Eric Spillman writes on his official blog that "My colleague Hal Fishman died prematurely. If he had gone in for some routine tests, he might still be with...
Posted August 8, 2007 11:10 AM
Denser downtown sails through, Pedro Guzman comes home from Baja, Dymally takes the Fifth and yet another Theresa Duncan story....
Posted August 8, 2007 08:45 AM
KTLA's Prime News team remembered and praised their late anchor and managing editor Hal Fishman for the first half of the broadcast tonight. When they finally broke for the news,...
Posted August 7, 2007 11:00 PM
Anyone who has watched the regular KOCE reports from the Register newsroom in Orange County knows it's hard enough to get print schlubs to give good television. It's even more...
Posted August 7, 2007 05:25 PM
If there was one art exhibition where you'd think LACMA would be sure to mount information in Spanish, it would be "The Arts in Latin America, 1492-1820" that opened...
Posted August 7, 2007 12:02 PM
Controller Laura Chick says that "in our enthusiasm to put his expert abilities to work again for the city of Los Angeles, we lost sight of how this contract would...
Posted August 7, 2007 08:49 AM
Navy told to turn off its sonar for the whales, Marc Cooper reacts to the KPFK story and more....
Posted August 7, 2007 08:46 AM
The face of KTLA news died this morning at home, the station announced. Fishman was 75 and had suffered from colon and liver cancer and an infection. He last anchored...
Posted August 7, 2007 08:12 AM
How often do TV stations get to send their nightside crime-and-mayhem crews to a community meeting of angry, frightened citizens at the Hotel Bel-Air? Never! On Thursday night, the rich...
Posted August 6, 2007 10:25 PM
Directors of the Pacifica station at 90.7 FM expect to issue a statement of support for Eva Georgia, the general manager who faces sexual harassment actions from two women on...
Posted August 6, 2007 09:38 PM
Downtown's under-construction Nokia Theatre has booked its opening night for October 18. The theatre, part of the L.A. Live complex going up across 11th Street from Staples Center, promises that...
Posted August 6, 2007 09:16 PM
Bill Booth wrote in Saturday's Washington Post that while he can't necessarily judge the beauty of Joe Bravo's artistry, the world is starting to "come around to knowing eccentric genius...
Posted August 6, 2007 01:17 PM
TJ Sullivan snapped the mayor on his cellphone in Westwood Village last week and culled through your caption suggestions. His favorites at Native Intelligence include: "Just tell Rocky to get...
Posted August 6, 2007 12:37 PM
The copy desk for the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper group in the LANG empire — that's the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star-News and I think they include Whittier —...
Posted August 6, 2007 11:01 AM
The mother of Slate blogger Mickey Kaus has put up a website to protest development plans for Roxbury Park in Beverly Hills. Peggy Kaus goes for a different style: there's...
Posted August 6, 2007 10:56 AM
The last bastions of incivility are disappearing from of one of traveling rock and roll’s mightiest icons — the Hyatt West Hollywood, Laurel Canyon author Michael Walker blogs. The hotel...
Posted August 6, 2007 08:56 AM
Mayor Villaraigosa on forgiveness, up close and personal with school board prez Monica Garcia, and L.A.'s cheapest valet parking — plus more, of course....
Posted August 6, 2007 08:37 AM
Douglas Anne Munson, author of an L.A. noir trilogy that opened with the admired Dogtown, has champions in Michael Connelly, Carolyn See, John Rechy and Jonathan Kellerman. Also in Denise...
Posted August 5, 2007 11:19 PM
Poet and New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear has begun Postcard from Los Angeles on the magazine's website. Her first blog post is an homage to the late Elizabeth Stromme,...
Posted August 5, 2007 10:38 AM
Jacob Adams, the man thought to have been mauled to death by dogs at the Brentwood home of Ving Rhames, is listed as the screenwriter of a current Rhames film...
Posted August 4, 2007 06:31 PM
New shorts will be tacked on to the end... Updated: A 19-year-old handyman at Oakland's Your Black Muslim Bakery told police he killed Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey over stories...
Posted August 4, 2007 12:06 PM
Jack McClellan, the self-proclaimed pedophile who has become notorious for hanging around local young girls and posting pictures on his website, flew to Chicago yesterday. Before he left, he was...
Posted August 4, 2007 10:14 AM
Doctors treating Fishman for yesterday's collapse found colon cancer that has spread to his liver, according to KTLA interim news director Rich Goldner on the Times website. "Hal is awake...
Posted August 3, 2007 04:42 PM
Republicans in Los Angeles are being offered $15 to show up at an upcoming taping of the "Half Hour News Hour" on Fox. From the email: The Half Hour News...
Posted August 3, 2007 04:24 PM
New York Times reporter and globe-trotting book researcher Sharon Waxman gives her side in response to some blog criticism of a post about ex-Getty curator Marion True. Waxman blogs, in...
Posted August 3, 2007 03:59 PM
KCRW swings into fund drive mode today, so the LA Observed commentary that usually airs at 4:44 pm on Friday won't be heard. Same thing next week. If you want...
Posted August 3, 2007 03:44 PM
Mayor Villaraigosa and his people are getting pricklier about his, um, situation. Out at the Port of L.A. today, the mayor tried to give a press conference about the environment,...
Posted August 3, 2007 03:28 PM
Los Angeles Times Editor Jim O'Shea didn't like reading a New York Times editorial suggest that the LAT has suffered "sharp reductions” in its national and foreign coverage. O'Shea sent...
Posted August 3, 2007 03:14 PM
Light day for a Friday with the LAPD turning to official videos, yet another Duncan-Blake story and more....
Posted August 3, 2007 09:13 AM
KTLA announced at the top of its 10 pm news — and on its website — that anchor Hal Fishman was in the hospital suffering from a serious infection. He...
Posted August 2, 2007 11:54 PM
Mirthala Salinas gets two months without pay for reading the news stories about Mayor Villaraigosa's marital breakup, but will keep her job at Telemundo 52. She apparently informed superiors about...
Posted August 2, 2007 11:48 PM
Tim Swanson will leave Portfolio to take over as film editor in the Times' Calendar section. He's formerly of Premiere and Variety. Memo below:...
Posted August 2, 2007 03:59 PM
Two stories — from Fashion News Daily and on the Guardian's website — say that MOCA will be including a new Louis Vuitton boutique in the Takashi Murakami retrospective that...
Posted August 2, 2007 03:33 PM
The boss announces firings in the Orange County Register's "content center" and asks people not to compile lists of the departing. Memo below. Question: They have a hockey rink?...
Posted August 2, 2007 03:23 PM
Former Assemblyman Paul Koretz put himself in the running for the 5th council district race that will be fought the next two years over the seat to be vacated by...
Posted August 2, 2007 02:59 PM
Henry Nicholas speaks a little, Marcus Allen comes back to City Hall through the consultants' door, Eric Garcetti profiled......
Posted August 2, 2007 08:16 AM
Ever wonder why KNX Newsradio didn't do much news in the late morning? Wonder no more. Bob McCormick's three-hour block talking about business will be dropped on August 13, in...
Posted August 1, 2007 10:59 PM
When Luke Ford blogged (accurately) in January that Mayor Villaraigosa had stopped wearing his wedding ring and hadn't been seen with his wife in months, the information came from Daily...
Posted August 1, 2007 10:28 PM
Time Inc. has told the staff of Business 2.0 to put aside the previous talk about the magazine shutting down and to begin work on an October issue. The suits...
Posted August 1, 2007 02:39 PM
Hard to believe now, but the biggest industry in the Los Angeles area used to be aircraft and rocket manufacturers and the smaller firms that supported them. Places like Santa...
Posted August 1, 2007 09:06 AM
The mayor spent how much to get his people on the school board? That and more after the jump....
Posted August 1, 2007 09:04 AM
Italian officials just announced a deal with the Getty museum to return 40 disputed pieces from antiquity, including the 5th century B.C. statue of the goddess Aphrodite. She will remain...
Posted August 1, 2007 08:45 AM
Zone coverage of the Santa Clarita and Antelope Valley will be eliminated, with resulting job losses via buyouts. The MediaNews bean counters have managed to almost make a pessimist of...
Posted July 31, 2007 11:38 PM
It really is the summer of adultery. I'm told this billboard has gone up at Wilshire and San Vicente (east not west) La Cienega and San Vicente my informant now...
Posted July 31, 2007 03:57 PM
The New York Police Department confirmed this afternoon that the body found by a New Jersey fisherman last month was that of missing artist Jeremy Blake. They're calling it a...
Posted July 31, 2007 02:44 PM
PEN USA has chosen the winners of its 2007 literary awards for writers and journalists in the West. Among the local winners is Cynthia Kadohata, who won in children's literature...
Posted July 31, 2007 02:20 PM
Our post earlier this month on Hollywood tabloidist-turned-author Marlise Kast and her pursuit of blissful contentment inspired Luke Ford to interview her for his blog. Or was it the picture?...
Posted July 31, 2007 12:50 PM
Sharon Waxman of the NYT bureau here continues to blog about her book research around the Mediterranean (with a stop for a swim on the Greek island of Paros.) Her...
Posted July 31, 2007 12:31 PM
Times story on Supervisor Burke's mansion catches the DA's eye, the city wants to count traffic better, and Green Dot founder Steve Barr thinking national again — plus a lot...
Posted July 31, 2007 08:49 AM
Jonathan Diamond is leaving the City Attorney's press office after a bit more than two years. He had been assistant managing editor at the Los Angeles Business Journal, and plans...
Posted July 30, 2007 03:10 PM
From the email in-box: Quarterback Matt Leinart has agreed to pay Brynn Cameron $15,000 in monthly support for the child they spawned together at USC. Corina Villaraigosa is already billed...
Posted July 30, 2007 01:45 PM
Editor and writer Glenn O'Brien pens a final entry at The Wit of the Staircase, adding photographs of Duncan and Jeremy Blake and some Steely Dan lyrics that were read...
Posted July 30, 2007 12:52 PM
Paul Karl Lukacs has concluded his traveling sabbatical from the life of a Hollywood lawyer. He blogged from Thailand during the coup, reviewed a book from Jakarta and dropped in...
Posted July 30, 2007 12:17 PM
Elizabeth Guider, a 18-year vet at Variety who has been sliding down the masthead lately, has jumped to The Hollywood Reporter as Editor. Most recently she was an editor at...
Posted July 30, 2007 11:54 AM
Geoff Boucher was in San Diego to cover Comic-Con when he encountered some toughs on the sidewalk in the Gaslamp Quarter. In the 15 years I have been writing for...
Posted July 30, 2007 07:43 AM
Bergman, one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died on the Swedish island of Faro. Nine Oscar nominations, but no statue. NYT obituary, IMDB bio Also: Tom Snyder,...
Posted July 30, 2007 07:34 AM
This has been a bad day for the Los Angeles Police Department. Detective George "Mike" Selleh of the Mission station was killed about 3:30 am while riding his motorcycle to...
Posted July 29, 2007 10:26 PM
Nice personal piece on Wen Roberts, the sports photographer who died this week, by David Davis at SoCal Sports Observed. Roberts was probably the photographer who captured Jerry West in...
Posted July 28, 2007 11:40 PM
Editor Ron Kaye is still apologizing for cutting some comics beloved by the Daily News' declining (and apparently aging, based on their choice of comics) print readership. His latest editor's...
Posted July 28, 2007 11:24 PM
Dakota Communications political consultant Rick Taylor didn't like having his tactical memo exposed by the group fighting a Home Depot store in the Sunland area. So, in a not so...
Posted July 28, 2007 11:04 PM
Summer time and the blogging is easy... Big story on KNBC at 5 pm with Controller Laura Chick accusing Playa Vista head Steven Soboroff of trying to bully her into...
Posted July 27, 2007 05:47 PM
Former LA Weekly publisher Michael Sigman has optioned the film rights to that piece about Washington lobbyists in Harper's by reporter Ken Silverstein, who posed as a customer to nab...
Posted July 27, 2007 05:07 PM
Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke admitted to the Times (after changing her story) that she doesn't live in the district where she represents most of black Los Angeles, but in...
Posted July 27, 2007 08:58 AM
A memo from political adviser Rick Taylor lays out Home Depot's plans to stack a City Council meeting next week with supporters of the store's desire to open a new...
Posted July 26, 2007 08:55 AM
The mayor's leverage with NBC and Telemundo, a possible discovery of Jeremy Blake's body and the return of L.A. Sniper — and a whole lot more....
Posted July 26, 2007 08:46 AM
Half of the team at KCRW's Friday afternoon staple Left, Right & Center have sold new books. Matt Miller, author of The Two Percent Solution, placed The Tyranny of Dead...
Posted July 25, 2007 11:46 PM
In a piece at Artnet called "L.A. Confidential," writer Emma Gray surveys local galleries and also gives credit to journalist Jori Finkel, a sometime contributor to the New York Times,...
Posted July 25, 2007 11:12 PM
One of the writers at the San Pedro blog Life on the Edge details some of the withering away occurring at the South Bay Daily Breeze since Copley sold the...
Posted July 25, 2007 01:10 PM
Sherman Torgan's son posts on the theater's website that programming is cancelled until further notice: Sherman was my father and my best friend, and his passing has left me and...
Posted July 25, 2007 12:57 PM
Brynn Cameron versus Matt Leinart, that Spanish burglar goes down, and the names of the LAT managing editor candidates. Plus more inside....
Posted July 25, 2007 08:05 AM
The L.A. Times got around to chasing last week's story on the suicide of Theresa Duncan and possible death of Jeremy Blake, leading with the angle that other reports have...
Posted July 25, 2007 12:56 AM
An LAFD firefighter was rescued tonight after plunging through the roof of a commercial building on fire in the Jefferson Park area. He was saved by other firefighters and taken...
Posted July 24, 2007 09:32 PM
The losing candidates are apparently being told that John Arthur is getting the Times managing editor nod after all. A few weeks ago his name circulated, but after that he...
Posted July 24, 2007 05:23 PM
Recurring outages in the South of Market Street area of San Francisco have knocked Craigslist, Netflix, Technorati and other websites offline at times this afternoon....
Posted July 24, 2007 04:15 PM
George Miller, who is 69, was the subject of a legal tussle over access to files kept by the Los Angeles Archdiocese. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Cardinal Roger Mahony's...
Posted July 24, 2007 03:08 PM
I'm guessing she won't get any rehab endorsement deals any time soon....
Posted July 24, 2007 11:14 AM
Is a young Spaniard L.A.'s most prolific home burglar? Should there be laxer rules for building downtown? Did Greece win in getting back an ancient wreath from the Getty? Those...
Posted July 24, 2007 08:57 AM
Lindsay Lohan, fresh off a second stint in rehab, was booked in Santa Monica this morning on suspicion of drunken driving and felony possession of cocaine. She also got nabbed...
Posted July 24, 2007 08:10 AM
San Bernardino Sun sports columnist Paul Oberjuerge seems to have a bit of a thing about Christine Daniels, the transgender sports scribe for the L.A. Times. Oberjuerge encountered Daniels in...
Posted July 23, 2007 11:21 PM
The August issue of Los Angeles is the annual Best of LA theme job. This time 196 is the magic number, don't ask me why. The picks go from best...
Posted July 23, 2007 08:52 PM
The Sunday Viewpoint cartoon showing Mayor Villaraigosa frolicking naked with Mirthala Salinas in the "Garden of Telemundo" is now online at the Daily News website. That's Cardinal Roger Mahony...
Posted July 23, 2007 01:03 PM
Nice of a little overnight rain to clean the sky. This time of year our murky air is mostly old-fashioned smog, stuck in the basin and cooked by the summer...
Posted July 23, 2007 08:28 AM
The L.A. Times PR staff has taken to sending pitch emails to journalists bragging about stories the paper wants credit for breaking in the Sunday paper. Pickings must have been...
Posted July 23, 2007 08:23 AM
Mayor Villaraigosa's thank you campaign, a candidate in the 5th council district and entries on a whole lot more. Click for the Monday buzz....
Posted July 23, 2007 08:16 AM
The cover of Sunday's Viewpoint section in the Daily News is a full-page color illustration showing a naked and grinning Antonio Villaraigosa, fig leaf strategically in place, taking a bite...
Posted July 22, 2007 10:57 PM
A portion of Reseda with large lots wants to rename itself Reseda Ranch to help fend off developers and instill some community pride. If the City Council agrees to let...
Posted July 22, 2007 11:09 AM
Consecutive reader comments on Gothamist regarding the suicide of Venice blogger Theresa Duncan (and the apparent death of her lover, Jeremy Blake) illustrate the poles of emotion we expect from...
Posted July 22, 2007 01:34 AM
Earl Ofari Hutchinson blogs at Friendly Fire: Telemundo officials say that they will make a decision within the next few days whether to fire Mirthala Salinas or not. They shouldn’t....
Posted July 22, 2007 12:59 AM
Writer and activist Jasmyne Cannick blogs that her neighborhood of Historic West Adams is more than big houses and the Ray Charles studio: I kid you not, most of the...
Posted July 21, 2007 02:10 PM
Updated at the bottom through the weekend... Former LAT religion writer William Lobdell describes his born-again awakening, attempted conversion to Roman Catholicism and finally his disillusionment with God and religion...
Posted July 21, 2007 12:35 PM
Bob Sipchen left the L.A. Times last month after working as an education columnist, editorial writer (where he won a Pulitzer Prize) and founding editor of both the Current and...
Posted July 21, 2007 11:18 AM
A medical examiner in New York told perfumer Anya McCoy that the autopsy results will be known in about six weeks. McCoy says that Jeremy Blake, Duncan's longtime boyfriend, found...
Posted July 20, 2007 02:49 PM
In addition to yesterday's flurry of moves, and a couple of others we broke the news on Tuesday (and Monday), here are the latest transactions: The Times grabbed OC Weekly...
Posted July 20, 2007 12:55 AM
Writer, filmmaker and perfume aficionado Theresa Duncan has not posted at her Venice-based blog, The Wit of the Staircase, since July 10. She gave no indication of taking a break,...
Posted July 19, 2007 10:03 PM
David Beckham is giving La Opinión exclusive Spanish-language access for print and the web, the paper says. Content and photos will be in the paper tomorrow, with video on the...
Posted July 19, 2007 05:20 PM
David Lazarus is joining the L.A. Times in August to write a Business section column. Let's hope the San Francisco Chronicle, his current employer, knew before the house ad popped...
Posted July 19, 2007 03:55 PM
Today's arrival of Gustavo Arellano's ¡Ask a Mexican! column in the Sacramento News and Review was greeted by three stories in that upstate alt-weekly, including a dishy tell-some piece by...
Posted July 19, 2007 03:43 PM
Barry Bonds clubbed home runs number 752 and 753 today in Chicago, leaving him two behind Henry Aaron....
Posted July 19, 2007 02:55 PM
Sherman Torgan died yesterday of a heart attack while bicycling in Santa Monica. Hollywood Elsewhere, LAist and GreenCine Daily have reports....
Posted July 19, 2007 02:19 PM
Glenn Bunting took the buyout from the L.A. Times last month and signed on at Sitrick and Company. Guess he makes his old colleagues nervous. Check out this email that...
Posted July 19, 2007 01:57 PM
Two or three men dressed in black and ski masks have targeted Bel-Air, Holmby Hills and Encino in the evenings and on weekends. Their take in the past year includes...
Posted July 19, 2007 01:47 PM
Alan Mittelstaedt, who left the LA Weekly in the Jill Stewart changeover, joins CityBeat today as News Editor, the same title he had at the Weekly. Dean Kuipers went...
Posted July 19, 2007 12:02 PM
Big sale at the Archdiocese, Babydol Gibson shows up at the criminal courts building and a first review of Harry Potter — plus Victoria Beckham in the Valley, Matt Groening...
Posted July 19, 2007 08:22 AM
The union-backed project employing eight former reporters at the Santa Barbara News-Press to cover local news didn't make it. The staff posted a note saying that after three months, they...
Posted July 18, 2007 08:41 AM
Westfield plans to erect a $750 million outdoor retail complex connecting the Topanga and Promenade malls in Woodland Hills. Included in The Village will be a 300-room hotel, 150 condominiums...
Posted July 18, 2007 08:32 AM
I'm told that Women's Wear Daily confirms in today's paper that editors pulled a recent story on Hollywood journo Nikki Finke off the paper's website. (It's not on Lexis/Nexis or...
Posted July 18, 2007 01:12 AM
Business Week has a story focusing on more than a dozen bloggers who are making decent money with their sites, including the L.A. women behind the juicy GoFugYourself. "For Heather...
Posted July 18, 2007 12:39 AM
The onetime maven of media mixers sold mediabistro.com today for $23 million. The buyer is Internet research firm Jupitermedia, which wants the company for the revenue from jobs ads and...
Posted July 17, 2007 09:35 PM
Strong words from financial analyst Jim Cramer at The Street.com about the pending Tribune Company sale. Make that red flags and warning sirens: You have to feel terrible about what's...
Posted July 17, 2007 07:59 PM
Art Marroquin is leaving City News Service for the Daily Breeze, where he will take over the LAX and Port of Los Angeles beat. That's a major beat for the...
Posted July 17, 2007 05:14 PM
Lots of L.A. city council members are happy about this — a judge rejected a challenge to the ballot measure that extends their term limits. Voters in Los Angeles passed...
Posted July 17, 2007 04:06 PM
KTLA News Director Jeff Wald informed his department this morning that he's leaving the station to spend more time his family. Wald's wife died suddenly last December, and he has...
Posted July 17, 2007 11:25 AM
Newly reunited at Los Angeles Magazine with his former editor Kit Rachlis, Moehringer explains at the end of a long profile of an obscure musician he admires how it was...
Posted July 17, 2007 10:46 AM
His kidney stone left the building, so Mark Lacter is back at the LA Biz Observed desk. The Morning Headlines led today with the Dow dancing with 14,000. Mark also...
Posted July 17, 2007 10:16 AM
Invitations have gone out for a Sept. 8 Barack Obama fundraiser at Oprah Winfrey's home in the Santa Barbara area. The ante for entry is the usual $2,300, but those...
Posted July 17, 2007 09:25 AM
There's an agreement in principle for Rupert Murdoch to buy Dow Jones for $5 billion, but the Bancroft family's approval is still too close to call. It goes to a...
Posted July 17, 2007 08:05 AM
The Cardinal Mahony show tops the news, with District Attorney Steve Cooley and the newspapers all over his case. Also a chat with Aaron Sorkin, and more when you click...
Posted July 17, 2007 07:55 AM
The staff at the LA Weekly was informed that Kate Sullivan is out and the new music editor is Randall Roberts, who was sent west from Village Voice Media's Riverfront...
Posted July 16, 2007 11:55 PM
NBC 4 led tonight's late newscast with a five-minute piece by Ana Garcia reporting that Mirthala Salinas got the only one-on-one interview with Mayor Villaraigosa during a trip to New...
Posted July 16, 2007 11:23 PM
Zócalo has added a new speaker for September: author and Angeleno James Ellroy. They say he'll discuss "60 years of the secret history of Los Angeles in raucous, freewheeling and...
Posted July 16, 2007 10:32 PM
Chris Weinkopf at the Daily News opinion blog gets Cardinal Roger Mahony on the phone. Sample: I pressed him further: What is he taking responsibility for? What specifically did he...
Posted July 16, 2007 03:59 PM
The Tribune begins them soon too, and there the memo trying to convince everybody that readers really want them comes from the publishing group president. Times staffers here got their...
Posted July 16, 2007 02:41 PM
The half-hour that Warren Olney hosts on KCRW at 7 pm Monday through Thursday "remains an abiding presence in the landscape of local news," Sean Mitchell writes in a freelanced...
Posted July 16, 2007 02:27 PM
Elsewhere on the site: David Davis has a good interview with David Zirin, the provocative progressive writer who is author of Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise...
Posted July 16, 2007 08:44 AM
Cardinal Mahony apologizes but doesn't satisfy, the mayor skips out on personal questions, and much more in a good rich Monday installment of Morning Buzz. Click for entry....
Posted July 16, 2007 08:17 AM
Howard Bragman of Fifteen Minutes Public Relations, co-founder of what used to be Bragman Nyman Cafarelli, talks with the Los Angeles Business Journal's Anne Riley-Katz about being a celebrity PR...
Posted July 15, 2007 05:33 PM
Dan Laidman, the Copley News reporter at L.A. City Hall, throws another entry on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's pile of undesirable press clippings in today's San Diego Union-Tribune: When Mayor Antonio...
Posted July 15, 2007 04:48 PM
Jacob Bernstein, offspring of Nora Ephron and Carl Bernstein, tried in the July 6 Women's Wear Daily to comprehend the Nikki Finke phenomenon. He writes that "Finke has vaulted to...
Posted July 15, 2007 02:07 PM
Laurie Pike, the style director at Los Angeles Magazine, lives here but owns three flats in Paris and runs an English-language blog for ex-pats and visitors. The New York Times...
Posted July 13, 2007 03:57 PM
Fed up with delays in opening the filled-and-waiting swimming pool at the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, activists have posted their own Craigslist ad to help the city hire the necessary...
Posted July 13, 2007 03:25 PM
Publisher David Hiller just dropped a "mid-year business update" on L.A. Times staffers that has fresh bad news: "Revenue was down 10% in the second quarter, and cash flow down...
Posted July 13, 2007 01:38 PM
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa heard boos when he stepped to the microphone at today's media debut of new Galaxy member David Beckham in Carson. It really came through on TV, and...
Posted July 13, 2007 12:48 PM
Director Susan Pinkus, who's staying, issues a statement after the jump. In addition to the senior staffers she names, something like 90-odd interviewers who work as needed when there is...
Posted July 13, 2007 12:19 PM
Sharon Waxman is on leave from the Hollywood beat at the New York Times bureau on Wilshire to write a book about museums and the international antiquities market. She's currently...
Posted July 13, 2007 11:51 AM
Beckhams hit L.A., David Zahniser's first Times byline and more — just click below for the Morning Buzz....
Posted July 13, 2007 09:10 AM
While researching his forthcoming biography of the late California political leader Jess Unruh, Bill Boyarsky delved into the story of how reporter Paul Weeks covered the civil rights era at...
Posted July 12, 2007 03:31 PM
Sheri Epstein, the assistant to KPFK General Manager Eva Georgia, will file suit this week in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging race and disability discrimination and retaliation, say lawyers for...
Posted July 12, 2007 03:07 PM
With all the gushing about David Beckham and his wife coming to town, it's nice to see the Venice-based eTrueSports — "Dedicated to taking scraps of truth and turning them...
Posted July 12, 2007 11:47 AM
Abigail Goldman has covered the retail beat for the Times' Business section even though she loathes shopping. They are moving her to a newly created beat "focused on the crossroads...
Posted July 12, 2007 11:29 AM
The new chain-ified print version of LA.com will run in the Daily News, Daily Breeze, Press Telegram and other papers in the group, says Laura Stegman at her PRLosAngelesMediaMoves blog....
Posted July 12, 2007 09:10 AM
Motivated by yesterday's fun video of Broadway shot in the 1980s, Los Angeles photographer Robert Pacheco sent along his photo essay of Downtown in the 1970s. In his black-and-white...
Posted July 12, 2007 08:59 AM
Antonio makes Jay Leno's monologue again, plus cameras at stop signs now (not put there by traffic cops) and much more. Click to head on in....
Posted July 12, 2007 08:32 AM
The Daily Dish is blog number 25 at LATimes.com, not counting the phantom USC sports blog that hasn't appeared yet. The DD carries contributions from pretty much all the staffers...
Posted July 11, 2007 11:54 PM
It's not as classic as Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles, but a YouTube user named Meadowlawn has posted a video of downtown's Broadway district as viewed from a car heading...
Posted July 11, 2007 10:37 AM
Kent Couch of Oregon flew 193 miles on a lawn chair attached to helium balloons, emulating the startling 1982 flight over San Pedro by the late Larry Walters. Here's the...
Posted July 11, 2007 08:43 AM
Ron Burkle's move on the Wall Street Journal, Italy's snit with the Getty and the passing of a longtime L.A. journalist. Those items and more after the jump, so click...
Posted July 11, 2007 08:29 AM
No, not on the couch like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Just in the monologue, which Leno opens this way tonight: Welcome to Los Angeles. Or as our mayor calls it, "Sex and...
Posted July 10, 2007 06:33 PM
Former Los Angeles city administrative officer William Fujioka, 55, was hired today by the Board of Supervisors as the county’s chief executive officer, at an annual salary of $310,000. He...
Posted July 10, 2007 06:19 PM
The actor whose familiar face graced these pages last year died Monday night at home in Brentwood. He was 102 years old. In January 2006, we and a couple of...
Posted July 10, 2007 06:08 PM
Hector Villalta, a rookie officer in the West L.A. station, was arrested Saturday on suspicion of sexual assault. A female companion complained the assault occurred after they came home from...
Posted July 10, 2007 04:22 PM
Today's Daily Journal front page carries the story of Ted A. White, an attorney who quit abruptly as a $115,000-a-year immigration judge in Los Angeles before completing his first year....
Posted July 10, 2007 11:32 AM
Here's some of what you can find around the site today: Paddle boats will remain for rent at Echo Park "as long as I am a councilmember," Eric Garcetti says....
Posted July 10, 2007 08:25 AM
The mayor tries to stay on message, the $165 million Beverly Hills estate, another bookstore closes...and more. Click to go on in....
Posted July 10, 2007 08:03 AM
Ex-UCLA basketball coach Steve Lavin apparently took a cue from the airlines and overbooked his own wedding. He has been scheduled to marry Mary Jarou on August 17 in front...
Posted July 10, 2007 12:08 AM
Amy Alkon, the syndicated Advice Goddess and blogger, was the first reader to identify Charles Dickson's Martin Luther King Memorial in Watts. The sculpture bears the text of King's August...
Posted July 9, 2007 11:55 PM
LARadio.com reported that longtime news reporter and anchor Chris Stanley was escorted from the radio station last Thursday after "a major blow-up of some sort." KNX program director David G....
Posted July 9, 2007 11:38 PM
Department of Water and Power general manager Ron Deaton is in an intensive care unit in Costa Rica "with his family by his side" after suffering what a DWP statement...
Posted July 9, 2007 01:32 PM
FourStory is "fact-based housing advocacy with a human perspective," and with fiction and a manifesto. It reads in part: This site had its genesis over a year ago with the...
Posted July 9, 2007 12:20 PM
The first issue of h Magazine has Julie Delpy on the cover, a piece on the Suicide Girls and Elizabeth Johnson in the editor's chair. She writes, "At h Magazine,...
Posted July 9, 2007 08:25 AM
There's a cool story behind this piece of street art located somewhere in Los Angeles. Be the first to email with the location and win an LA Observed Insider subscription,...
Posted July 9, 2007 01:57 AM
Today is supposed to kick off the next phase where Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa repairs his image with a flurry of staged feel-good events, starting with another photo-op promise to fix...
Posted July 9, 2007 01:40 AM
Steven Maviglio, deputy chief of staff to Speaker Fabian Núñez, called the LA Weekly's Marc Cooper the state's worst political journalist on the state Democrats' website. Cooper calls it a...
Posted July 8, 2007 11:16 AM
Rick Wartzman, former editor of West magazine and the LAT's Business section, takes over Monday as director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. The institute runs programs and...
Posted July 8, 2007 11:10 AM
It's Buzz Lite today: Reilly talking to Fox Former NBC Entertainment head Kevin Reilly is in talks to become chief of programming for the Fox network. Variety Good news for...
Posted July 6, 2007 08:40 AM
From Steve Lopez in the Times: If embattled City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo has any sense at all, he'll call a press conference today and get some credit for never having...
Posted July 6, 2007 08:06 AM
No surprise here: Telemundo Channel 52 today put Mirthala Salinas on leave while the broadcaster looks into the ethical questions around her affair with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. "As we have...
Posted July 5, 2007 03:36 PM
Brenda Lee only received $2,500 in punitive damages today from the jury that earlier awarded her $6.2 million for suffering discrimination as a black lesbian in the Los Angeles Fire...
Posted July 5, 2007 02:59 PM
A memoir, noted at Publishers Lunch: "Director of strategic alliances for global think tank, TalentSmart, Lac D. Su's THE CRIP WALK, a coming-of-age memoir about his life as a first-generation...
Posted July 5, 2007 08:20 AM
Erik Himmelsbach didn't enjoy last night's fireworks show at CBS Studio City. It set him back thirty bucks and he wants to share the experience: Like most Americans, we believe...
Posted July 5, 2007 07:59 AM
Welcome back from the holiday. Click below for the Buzz....
Posted July 5, 2007 07:45 AM
Telemundo has been covering the mayoral affair and media ethics dust-up involving its own reporter, and seems very interested in hearing what listeners think. At the bottom of the web...
Posted July 4, 2007 10:15 PM
KCRW (89.9 FM) has turned over most of its schedule today to specials on American music, leading this morning with the stories of Sly Stone and Paul Simon, followed by...
Posted July 4, 2007 11:13 AM
I will be on NPR's Day to Day this morning talking with host Alex Cohen about fallout, if any, from the Villaraigosa-Salinas relationship. I think there will be some, for...
Posted July 4, 2007 08:56 AM
Jonathan Gold at his best, in a eulogy to Al Langer: Glance at their faces a moment after they bite into a Langer’s pastrami sandwich for the first time: thick...
Posted July 3, 2007 11:13 PM
Mirthala Salinas got around in the club of Latino elected officials. David Zahniser, still at the LA Weekly, reports tonight that the mayor's current main squeeze previously dated Council President...
Posted July 3, 2007 10:39 PM
Eric Longabardi of ERS News.com reports that before Mirthala Salinas became involved with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, she was the girlfriend of his good friend and close ally, Speaker Fabian Núñez....
Posted July 3, 2007 05:49 PM
The city council voted unanimously today to keep Eric Garcetti in the president's chair. Councilwoman Wendy Greuel also stays as pro tem. Garcetti re-appointed Jan Perry to the position of...
Posted July 3, 2007 12:32 PM
Chris Weinkopf, editorial page editor of the Daily News, is a conservative and a Catholic. On the paper's opinion blog, he just called on Mayor Villaraigosa to give up his...
Posted July 3, 2007 11:47 AM
Geoff Kelly edited at the Daily News and Times and most recently was on the desk at the International Herald Tribune in Hong Kong. He died there last week after...
Posted July 2, 2007 04:46 PM
Alan Klein, president and publisher of Los Angeles magazine since 2001, is jumping to Modern Luxury Media as president and publisher of Angeleno. Los Angeles, as I understand it, just...
Posted July 2, 2007 04:16 PM
I keep hearing from LA Observed readers who pass along email from RealTalk LA saying the magazine is in dire financial straits -- suspended operations, bills unpaid, uncertain future. But...
Posted July 2, 2007 02:26 PM
Greg Hernandez writes the only mainstream media blog in town (that I know of) devoted to gay Hollywood. His Out in Hollywood on the Daily News website is also one...
Posted July 2, 2007 12:25 PM
The actress uses her second contribution to the Huffington Post fray to decry the proliferation of "elimination-based" shows. "I understand there is a good side, a jubilant winner getting their...
Posted July 2, 2007 11:44 AM
We've got Rocky, Antonio, Paris, Orlov and Hymon, Robert Heinlein, Daniel Pearl and more — just a typical Monday at Morning Buzz. Click to come on in. (And thanks for...
Posted July 2, 2007 08:32 AM
For the past few days, the Times has been promoting the re-appearance of columnist Al Martinez in the California section and, sort of, admitting that the paper feels it screwed...
Posted July 2, 2007 12:46 AM
The Daily News went out front Sunday with San Bernardino Sun columnist Paul Oberjuerge's worshipful interview with Vin Scully, who has announced Dodgers games since 1950 — including eight seasons...
Posted July 1, 2007 11:47 PM
All those residential and commercial developments that planners and politicians like to promote near transit lines make getting around harder, since most occupants choose to drive and the businesses attract...
Posted July 1, 2007 11:28 PM
This week's LA Weekly letters page is more interesting than usual. Aside from the reader feedback there's a box announcing "an immediate opening for a full-time staff writer," presumably to...
Posted July 1, 2007 10:45 PM
In response to the London bomb discovery, Mayor Villaraigosa wishes to reassure us all that Los Angeles is safe. His statement: Scotland Yard's immediate action to discover and dismantle a...
Posted June 29, 2007 11:17 AM
Both FishbowlDC and The Huffington Post are reporting this morning that Page One editor John Arthur has been promoted to managing editor of the L.A. Times, citing sources. Arthur is...
Posted June 29, 2007 07:55 AM
Two more refugees from West magazine who took buyouts to leave the Times have landed, both of them at Los Angeles. J.R. Moehringer comes on as writer-at-large. He is the...
Posted June 29, 2007 07:29 AM
Well now we know where (soon to be ex) L.A. Times managing editor Doug Frantz is going. He is returning to Istanbul as Middle East bureau chief for the Wall...
Posted June 28, 2007 04:20 PM
The first (of two!) new Pinkberry's in Brentwood hasn't been open much more than a week. But today at noon, the shop was shut down by a water main break....
Posted June 28, 2007 02:44 PM
Garden expert Lili Singer acknowledges that the opossums that roam Los Angeles at night look like bloated rats, but she's a fan nonetheless. The first Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana) was...
Posted June 28, 2007 10:43 AM
The Nation's Jon Wiener commiserates this week over the LA Weekly becoming less international, lefty and political. It's the other media takeover story in Los Angeles...When the Weekly was bought...
Posted June 28, 2007 09:00 AM
An artist went out early Sunday morning and mounted unauthorized plaques at three bars that have been gentrified. At Cha Cha, the plaque reads "Former site of Le Barcito." KPCC's...
Posted June 28, 2007 08:57 AM
How about some Morning Buzz? After the jump....
Posted June 28, 2007 08:50 AM
Now that the L.A. Times has given up on the idea of a readable and substantive Sunday magazine, Angelenos have to look elsewhere for deeper, well-written feature pieces out of...
Posted June 27, 2007 11:53 PM
Earlier this month, Marti Buscaglia was announced as the new publisher of the Orange County Register. Not going to happen. Current publisher N. Christian Anderson III said today that she...
Posted June 27, 2007 02:10 PM
Don't Let the Lipstick Fool You will be "an uplifting memoir profiling the author's personal and professional life," says Publishers Lunch. Dafina bought it for publication next May. Leslie won...
Posted June 27, 2007 08:43 AM
The San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group, part of the LANG empire, is moving people around and creating new positions. Larry Wilson fills the new job of Public Editor and will...
Posted June 27, 2007 08:40 AM
A David Hockney color offset lithograph, Untitled (Two Apples and a Lemon), that was a free insert in the Herald Examiner decades ago sold at auction this weekend for $1,200....
Posted June 26, 2007 10:47 AM
Bloomberg critic Linda Yablonsky is the latest to fly in, praise Michael Govan and visit some galleries. Excerpt of her piece: You just never know where genius may lurk. Chances...
Posted June 26, 2007 08:40 AM
Click below for the Paris Hilton-is-free edition....
Posted June 26, 2007 08:26 AM
Slate.com has gone multimedia and unveiled a daily online video magazine. Slate V is based in the magazine's brand-new Venice offices and is headed up by Andy Bowers, the former...
Posted June 25, 2007 05:42 PM
Good California poll numbers for Hillary and Rudy. Top of the Ticket FishbowlLA continues its run of Q-and-A's with LA Observed contributors by throwing 20 questions at Bruce Feirstein....
Posted June 25, 2007 04:19 PM
The founder of Langer's Deli died Sunday in Agoura from complications of being 94 years old. He is survived by his son Norm Langer, daughter Laurie Bernie and grandchildren. Previously:...
Posted June 25, 2007 02:30 PM
Jonathan Gold's latest list for the LA Weekly, from Abode to Woodlands....
Posted June 25, 2007 01:06 PM
Mary McNamara moves over from writing features for Calendar. To: The Staff From: Lennie LaGuire, Senior Calendar Editor We're delighted to announce that Mary McNamara, one of our most accomplished...
Posted June 25, 2007 11:25 AM
Monday's usual meaty helping of news and observations, after the jump....
Posted June 25, 2007 08:15 AM
Purging of top names at the San Francisco Chronicle continues. With a bunch of painful newsroom cuts still to come, Deputy Editor Narda Zacchino has decided the time is right....
Posted June 25, 2007 12:05 AM
Don Barrett has been informing and entertaining local radio buffs at LARadio.com for ten years, but it sounds as if the thrill is gone. He posted last week that while...
Posted June 24, 2007 10:24 PM
Now Michelle Delgadillo has business tax problems, but abruptly took care of them Friday in advance of a new round of stories. LAT, DN Popular progressive and previously faceless...
Posted June 23, 2007 12:46 PM
Anderson Jones, a freelance film critic who formerly reviewed for E! Online and made appearances on the "E! True Hollywood Story," died after suffering a heart attack at a promotional...
Posted June 23, 2007 12:22 PM
Civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman was just convicted of tax evasion, money laundering and bankruptcy fraud. The possible tab for nineteen counts: 80 months in federal prison. I'll just assume...
Posted June 22, 2007 04:18 PM
Al Martinez has been told that his Monday column will start in the Times' California section on July 2. It's the compromise solution reached by Times editors who got caught...
Posted June 22, 2007 10:24 AM
One of those days, sorry. Do check out Mark Lacter's Morning Headlines at LA Biz Observed. This afternoon at 4:44 pm on KCRW, I'll be talking about the Rocky Delgadillo...
Posted June 22, 2007 08:30 AM
Now this should get interesting. LA Weekly political reporter David Zahniser, the hottest property on the City Hall beat, is jumping to the L.A. Times to cover Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa....
Posted June 21, 2007 11:29 PM
Remember all the free publicity that obscure weekly Pasadena Now got for saying it would out-source local reporting jobs to India? Well, now the paper has an ad on Craigslist...
Posted June 21, 2007 12:06 PM
The wunderkind director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art tells the LA Weekly's Tom Christie how he intends to change the face of the city, and talks about...
Posted June 21, 2007 11:59 AM
It's illegal to turn right onto La Brea from Clinton Avenue during rush hour, and so many Hollywood traffic cops lie in wait that it has become fun entertainment for...
Posted June 21, 2007 11:50 AM
Tom Philp, who won a Pulizer Prize for the Sacramento Bee in 2005, will become an "executive strategist" with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The Bee will miss...
Posted June 21, 2007 11:37 AM
Writers Dan Neil and Charles Perry of the L.A. Times (and former LAT film critic Manohla Dargis) are on MSNBC's list of 144 journalists who donated to political campaigns between...
Posted June 21, 2007 09:12 AM
Today's Times relegates the obituary of Mexican music legend and big-time Los Angeles crowd pleaser Antonio Aguilar — "the Roy Rogers of Mexico" — to the obits page. In the...
Posted June 21, 2007 08:54 AM
LAPD Chief William Bratton was on the panel as KPCC reporter Patricia Nazario brought many in the audience to tears describing her encounter with a Metro Division officer (and his...
Posted June 21, 2007 08:49 AM
Congratulations to Sean Roderick, who graduates today in the top tier of her class at Santa Monica High School. She begins at UCLA in the fall, and her parents are...
Posted June 21, 2007 08:47 AM
Catherine Elsworth, who holds down the Silver Lake bureau for the Daily Telegraph, would really like to test drive the new iPhone. But she was told by Apple that only...
Posted June 20, 2007 11:56 PM
For Richard A. Aust of Lake Forest, the LAT's decision to scale back West magazine to a monthly was the last straw. If they are only going to serve him...
Posted June 20, 2007 11:49 PM
A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that former Fleishman-Hillard executives Doug Dowie and John Stodder should remain free on bail while their cases are...
Posted June 20, 2007 11:24 PM
The bulldozer came today for that circa-1911 model home built to help sell the new town of Van Nuys. In those days, Van Nuys and two other farm towns —...
Posted June 20, 2007 04:25 PM
Word out of the Santa Monica courthouse is that Michelle Delgadillo came in this morning, pleaded no contest and received twelve months probation on top of paying fines. Stories forthcoming....
Posted June 20, 2007 02:38 PM
The 30-year-old daughter of former VP Al Gore lives near downtown with husband Paul Cusack, writes for "Saturday Night Live" and "Futurama" and has a new novel, Sammy's House, coming...
Posted June 20, 2007 09:10 AM
Business was fine, but the building was sold and co-owner Ben Weinstein got a good offer for what Scott Timberg calls in the Times about $10 million worth of inventory....
Posted June 20, 2007 08:56 AM
Michelle Delgadillo, wife of the city attorney, has an outstanding warrant for her arrest for failing to appear in court nearly nine years ago on charges of driving without insurance,...
Posted June 20, 2007 07:59 AM
The last of the West magazine senior writers to remain with the L.A. Times, Lynell George is moving back to her roots in Calendar. Here's today's memo from Lennie LaGuire,...
Posted June 19, 2007 11:36 PM
This month's Los Angeles Magazine admires Rick Caruso, creator of The Grove and upcoming shopping malls in Glendale and Arcadia, praised like this in editor Kit Rachlis' letter: "No one...
Posted June 19, 2007 11:05 PM
The pages get narrower by an inch-and-a-half on August 6. From the memo at the New York Observer's Media Mob: There are few design changes that will be obvious to...
Posted June 19, 2007 03:45 PM
The Police Commission vote on a second term is unanimous. LAT, CBS2, DN...
Posted June 19, 2007 03:35 PM
New York mayor Mike Bloomberg's people aren't too happy with Antonio Villaraigosa's people right now. Page Six at the NYP says that "humiliated staffers in Mayor Bloomberg's office were forced...
Posted June 19, 2007 01:21 PM
BBC correspondent David Willis' attempt to break into Hollywood as an actor has finally come to an end. But not before his ambitions crested with a call to be an...
Posted June 19, 2007 08:35 AM
First take on the news, after the jump....
Posted June 19, 2007 08:20 AM
OK, it's in New York City. But I'm just saying. WABC...
Posted June 18, 2007 05:27 PM
Publishers Weekly leads today's Deals with Los Angeles Magazine staff writer Jesse Katz selling The Opposite Field to Crown in a preempt "said to be worth major dollars." Katz will...
Posted June 18, 2007 08:54 AM
One of the last Monty's steakhouses is closing after 66 years with just a week's notice to employees. The sale closed early, says the management. The site on Fair Oaks...
Posted June 18, 2007 08:26 AM
Hearst Corp. is demolishing the old Herald Examiner press buildings downtown to make way for residential towers. The landmarked Julia Morgan-designed offices at 1111 S. Broadway (shown here in the...
Posted June 18, 2007 01:07 AM
The Times editorial page launched a Rocky Watch box this morning that counts the days until City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo "comes clean" about who was driving his city-owned GMC Yukon...
Posted June 18, 2007 01:03 AM
Full load after the jump, and I do mean a full load....
Posted June 18, 2007 12:55 AM
Melissa Grego, managing editor at TelevisionWeek, posts to a blog-driven column reporting on her lunches with Hollywood figures. She started it up in January and most recently has dished on...
Posted June 17, 2007 11:39 PM
Longtime L.A. Times staff writer Mark Arax and the paper reached an undisclosed settlement of their public dispute about a story he wrote about the Armenian genocide that was spiked,...
Posted June 17, 2007 11:25 PM
Signs announcing a new Pinkberry in Brentwood Village (next to DiVino and across from Maria's) still claim the tarty frozen treat that makes Angelenos queue up is frozen yogurt. No...
Posted June 17, 2007 09:56 PM
Here at LA Observed we like to be thought of as getting to the meat of many issues. So, following up on last week's birthday for Langer's, here's an excerpt...
Posted June 17, 2007 09:26 PM
The L.A. Press Club bestowed its yearly awards last night at the Biltmore. Here are the top winners: Joseph M. Quinn Award - Judy Woodruff, PBS President's Award - Gustavo...
Posted June 17, 2007 03:53 PM
A tribute to the history of the gardeners — Landscaping America: Beyond the Japanese Garden — opens on Sunday at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. This multimedia...
Posted June 15, 2007 12:14 AM
I'm away on business today, so there's no Morning Buzz. My KCRW commentary this afternoon speaks to the context of media reports on Mayor Villaraigosa's marriage. It airs at 4:44...
Posted June 15, 2007 12:05 AM
The famous deli at MacArthur Park celebrates its 60th anniversary on Friday with proclamations from elected officials, free prizes and, I assume, a fair bit of succulent pastrami changing hands....
Posted June 14, 2007 10:29 PM
Producer and author Tom Teicholz hit on a pretty good way to give his next book a shot at a favorable reception. He devoted his column in the Jewish Journal...
Posted June 14, 2007 03:44 PM
Pinkberry's popular frozen concoction isn't yogurt in the eyes of the law in California, but the makers would like to fix that. Alexa Hyland in today's Daily Journal chronicles the...
Posted June 14, 2007 01:10 PM
There are no Hall of Famers in the Dodgers dugout anymore. Murray was let go as hitting coach and replaced on an interim basis by recently retired infielder Bill Mueller....
Posted June 14, 2007 12:42 PM
On the Times Op-Ed page, Patt Morrison doesn't want to know any more about the Villaraigosa marital troubles. But Steve Lopez writes in the Times that it's time for Mayor...
Posted June 14, 2007 09:10 AM
Jim Newton, new editor of the Times editorial pages, explains to Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell why the paper on Monday called for a ceasefire and peace talks. "I see...
Posted June 14, 2007 09:05 AM
Bunch of morning news after the jump....
Posted June 14, 2007 09:04 AM
According to Babeland, the sex toy store on Melrose, Joel Stein will co-teach an oral sex workshop later this month. “I feel it's time to give back after taking so...
Posted June 13, 2007 05:46 PM
The L.A. Times readers' representative is telling people who email about the treatment of veteran columnist Al Martinez that his column will resume — only on Mondays and somewhere in...
Posted June 13, 2007 01:52 PM
Philip Anschutz could import his Examiner chain of local give-away newspapers to Los Angeles by the end of the year, according to Media Life, citing "a newspaper industry source familiar...
Posted June 13, 2007 08:38 AM
The radio host and author pens a Times Op-Ed piece about showing his niece around Los Angeles, even though he did get lost for a while. Everybody knows the comedy...
Posted June 13, 2007 08:27 AM
David Zahniser asks the questions in a piece the LA Weekly posted early on its website: Since he brought it up and all, what is he taking responsibility for? On...
Posted June 12, 2007 11:12 PM
Catching up on my feeds, I noticed that Jonah has shut down LA Blogs.com. Franklin Avenue has a suitable tribute to the site that introduced many of the city's fine...
Posted June 12, 2007 10:46 PM
Corina Villaraigosa, the mayor's estranged wife, cites irreconcilable differences in her court filing. She seeks spousal support and primary custody of Natalia, the couple's fourteen-year-old daughter. Antonio Jr. is 18...
Posted June 12, 2007 07:40 PM
It's amazing what basking in the Paris Hilton media glare can do for your profile. Even Radar Online is now covering Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, posting today about...
Posted June 12, 2007 10:38 AM
Today's New York Times reports on the rapprochement between LAPD chief William Bratton and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who "had not spoken to each other in 10 years....
Posted June 12, 2007 08:19 AM
Whole bunch of good stuff, hidden after the jump....
Posted June 12, 2007 08:06 AM
A federal jury acquitted former LAPD sergeant and Fox News reporter Roderick Bernsen of inappropriate sexual contact in a cruise ship sauna. End of the case, though Bernsen said: "My...
Posted June 11, 2007 03:37 PM
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa knows how to draw a crowd. His news conference this morning to discuss his marriage was reportedly packed. "I take responsibility for what is happening and I...
Posted June 11, 2007 01:37 PM
John McKeon didn't last long in Woodland Hills — he bounced Tracy Rafter and took over just last October. No word yet where he's headed. The new guy, Ed Moss,...
Posted June 11, 2007 01:17 PM
Former editorial writer Andrew Malcolm handles the West Coast, Washington bureau editor Don Frederick the east for Top of the Ticket. What can one more blogger bring to the nation's...
Posted June 11, 2007 01:09 PM
L.A. folk historian Charles Phoenix and National Public Radio producer Steve Proffitt are driving to Tulsa, Oklahoma in Phoenix's 1961 Pontiac Bonneville and filing reports for "Day to Day." Their...
Posted June 11, 2007 12:57 PM
Kurt Streeter, a Metro reporter at the Times whose lengthy narrative pieces have sometimes focused on athletes, is moving to the sports staff as a columnist and feature writer. He's...
Posted June 11, 2007 12:33 PM
In 2002, crisis PR mogul Michael Sitrick and Cardinal Roger Mahony met with Times editors trying to squash an investigation of the archdiocese by then-reporter Glenn Bunting. Today, Bunting joined...
Posted June 11, 2007 12:23 PM
CBS2 anchor Paul Magers' former home in the Minneapolis area — called by one blogger a "grand-to-ostentatious Lake of the Isles mansion" — is in the news back there because...
Posted June 11, 2007 09:21 AM
Nice online gallery and slideshow from graduating high school senior Annarose Mittelstaedt. Her website slideshow includes a Google Earth tour of the sights. Photo: Annarose Mittelstaedt...
Posted June 11, 2007 08:38 AM
The "best of" season isn't quite over. Los Angeles Magazine's is coming, but first comes Ciudad with the "best of Latino L.A." An online poll helped dub El Carmen the...
Posted June 11, 2007 08:29 AM
Matthew Garrahan, the Financial Times' man in Los Angeles, reported Sunday that Apple is in advanced talks with Hollywood’s largest movie studios about "launching an online film rental service to...
Posted June 11, 2007 08:15 AM
Big helping for Monday, served up after the jump....
Posted June 11, 2007 07:59 AM
The Times' Christine Daniels now writes a sports blog, Day in L.A., full time for the paper's website. Paris Hilton announces she won't appeal her jail time, a day...
Posted June 10, 2007 08:52 PM
Back in 2005 the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin retracted a statement about former NFL star Bo Jackson and steroids. It wasn't enough. This weekend on its website home page, the...
Posted June 10, 2007 06:28 PM
When Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini concluded his live press conference announcing that Paris Hilton was back in custody, one of the media types yelled out: "Thank you, Mr. Manilow."...
Posted June 8, 2007 05:54 PM
Remember back in February when Mayor Villaraigosa summoned the Times to Getty House to deny blogger Luke Ford's report that his marriage was kaput? Curiously, Corina was not part of...
Posted June 8, 2007 04:49 PM
The brief West magazine experiment at the L.A. Times ends with the June 17 restaurant issue — and with it apparently goes the tradition of a serious Sunday magazine at...
Posted June 8, 2007 01:40 PM
Paris Hilton was dragged out the courtroom — weeping and screaming for her mother — and remanded back to the county jail in Lynwood. Unclear to me in all the...
Posted June 8, 2007 01:24 PM
A jury yesterday recommended that Frank Lima should receive compensation from the city of Los Angeles after he argued that he suffered retaliation for refusing to give preferential treatment to...
Posted June 8, 2007 09:10 AM
Click below for the Buzz. My weekly LA Observed commentary airs on KCRW (and on kcrw.com) at 4:44 pm this afternoon during NPR's "All Things Considered."...
Posted June 8, 2007 09:05 AM
Paris Hilton can phone in this morning's court appearance after all. Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini, who has been speaking for Judge Michael Sauer, gave no reason for the change....
Posted June 8, 2007 08:26 AM
The feds have put King-Harbor hospital on notice again that all federal funds may be pulled because the emrgency room keeps putting patients in "immediate jeopardy." It's the fourth time...
Posted June 7, 2007 11:58 PM
The former editor of the Los Angeles Times editorial pages will be joining the New America Foundation as an Irvine Senior Fellow. Martinez, you'll remember, resigned in a huff after...
Posted June 7, 2007 07:44 PM
You definitely get the feeling the Paris Hilton backlash is a lot bigger than Sheriff Baca gambled on — and the storm is just beginning. Judge Michael Sauer wants Hilton...
Posted June 7, 2007 05:31 PM
Yes! Sometimes things just work that way. The DN editorial page staff has launched a new blog where editor Chris Weinkopf (from the right), editorial writer Mariel Garza (leftier) and...
Posted June 7, 2007 02:58 PM
Cynthia Littleton reports on her Variety blog that the LAPD has closed off Wilshire Boulevard outside the Screen Actors Guild, meaning it's also right outside Variety, E!, KNX-KFWB and the...
Posted June 7, 2007 02:42 PM
Annie Hundley arrived just last summer to run valleynews.com, the citizen journalism part of the Daily News website. Not any more, says this staff email from editor Ron Kaye: everyone:...
Posted June 7, 2007 01:31 PM
Paris Hilton was fitted with an ankle bracelet and released to house arrest after serving the four-plus days in county that are more typical for her kind of offense. The...
Posted June 7, 2007 08:08 AM
Thursday night's benefit concert for the Academy of Music at Hamilton High will feature David Foster as emcee, Kenny G, trumpeter Chris Botti, the horns of Blood Sweat and Tears...
Posted June 6, 2007 10:19 PM
Highway crews and flagmen working on the widening of California 138 across the Mojave Desert have taken so much physical abuse from motorists that the stretch between Lancaster and Victorville...
Posted June 6, 2007 10:03 PM
In rewriting an L.A. Times investigation about Beverly Hills detox doctor David Kipper, the New York Post dropped the careful wording used by the LAT and said flat-out (and inaccurately)...
Posted June 6, 2007 09:44 PM
Windows Steaks & Martinis, the restaurant with the amazing views atop what's now called the At&T Center, closes July 31. There has been talk of the office building going residential....
Posted June 6, 2007 04:06 PM
The latest internal missive from Executive Editor Meredith Artley says there were 77.9 million page views at LATimes.com in May, which they think is a record for the Times website....
Posted June 6, 2007 03:29 PM
City Editor Barbara Jones is being reassigned as part of a strategy to reconfigure how the L.A. Daily News gathers and delivers its content, online and in print. And, of...
Posted June 6, 2007 03:01 PM
Andrew at Here in Van Nuys blogs about a home in Studio City where the front exterior has been completely sheathed in 16-by-16 inch marble squares. It strikes him like...
Posted June 6, 2007 02:43 PM
Wanda Langstom had 120 rats in her house, many of them living in cages. She also had 25 rabbits, six parakeets, a quail, a cockatiel and a Shar-Pei/chow mix. Authorities...
Posted June 6, 2007 09:04 AM
Sorry, other demands intervene. But Mark Lacter's morning headlines at LA Biz Observed include items on the Tesco stores that are coming to L.A., HBO, Ron Meyers and the Port...
Posted June 6, 2007 08:55 AM
State Assemblywoman Nell Soto, who is 80, has been out with a bad case of pneumonia since March — not that the political media has noticed. The San Gabriel Valley...
Posted June 5, 2007 11:14 PM
Frances Dinkelspiel, author of a forthcoming book on L.A. pioneer Isaias Hellman (her great grandfather), tallies up the toll of veteran Chronicle editors who are exiting. She writes: You know...
Posted June 5, 2007 10:57 AM
We keep it tucked after the jump so the page stays cleaner. Click the link to head on in....
Posted June 5, 2007 08:25 AM
The L.A. Times website is finally going 24-7 (ish) with the addition of a couple of overnight editors. They will scan the wires and, in theory, keep the home page...
Posted June 5, 2007 12:17 AM
The Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills (and New York) becomes the Paley Center for Media today. The New York Times reports: By no longer calling itself a...
Posted June 4, 2007 11:37 PM
Budget pressures are the stated reason for ending Rick Wartzman's weekly California & Co. column in the Business section. But as usual with the L.A. Times these days, there's a...
Posted June 4, 2007 06:54 PM
Franklin Avenue spotted handwritten signs today on 6th Street near the mayor's mansion in Windsor Square posted to beseech drivers, Burma Shave-style, to SLOW... THE... F**K... DOWN! Photos at the...
Posted June 4, 2007 06:09 PM
Rip Rense was a reporter at the old Valley News and the late Herald Examiner, and keeps an online archive of the original L.A. Daily News at his website. He...
Posted June 4, 2007 05:54 PM
Longtime L.A. radio and television personality Tom Hatten left KNX Friday after delivering the entertainment report for many years. He became familiar to a generation of Southern California kids as...
Posted June 4, 2007 05:47 PM
Paris Hilton turned herself in at the Men's Central Jail downtown on Sunday night — after attending the MTV Movie Awards — and was driven to her temporary new digs...
Posted June 4, 2007 08:02 AM
Reader Leon Kaspersky will be taking his family to Sunday's debut performance in Pasadena of Peter Schickele's "Three Cellos," courtesy of the Pacific Serenades chamber ensemble. Leon was the first...
Posted June 1, 2007 05:10 PM
This is the day for farewell messages down at the Times. A selection of emails to colleagues from the bought out and the otherwise leaving follows after the jump (with...
Posted June 1, 2007 01:20 PM
We reported before that L.A. Times Schwarzenegger reporter Peter Nicholas was leaving Sacramento for the Washington bureau. Now here's the memo from bureau chief Doyle McManus and national editor Scott...
Posted June 1, 2007 12:57 PM
The Sacramento Bee's subscriber-only Capitol Alert reports today on a nasty fight between Valley assemblyman Lloyd Levine and his former chief of staff, Stuart Waldman. Levine fired the aide last...
Posted June 1, 2007 12:42 PM
The free monthly from Southland Publishing (CityBeat, Pasadena Weekly) is "devoted to the revival of Downtown and the 'New' Eastside." Inside New Angeles are an interview of historian Mike Davis...
Posted June 1, 2007 09:09 AM
Christopher Hawthorne doesn't think much of the new Landmark Theatres as architecture, but his review details some touches like the three "Living Room" theaters with sofas, love seats and ottomans....
Posted June 1, 2007 09:04 AM
A quick look at today's news — and Al Martinez's final regular column for the Times — tucked away after the jump....
Posted June 1, 2007 08:58 AM
That dognapped German shepherd from yesterday is back with its owner, according to Here in Malibu. No word on the bleached blond Mercedes driver, except that all the signs posted...
Posted May 31, 2007 05:36 PM
The Times' Sacramento blogger Robert Salladay, who took the buyout, signed off this afternoon. Political Muscle will continue in some guise, he writes. From his farewell post: The Political Muscle...
Posted May 31, 2007 05:10 PM
The former city comissioner, already waiting trial on bribery and other charges, will be arraigned tomorrow on a new conflict of interest felony that stems from his time on the...
Posted May 31, 2007 04:21 PM
The former CNN and ABC Good Morning America/Sunday anchor will be a HuffPost editor at large overseeing the site’s new Living Now section and help shape overall content. Release after...
Posted May 31, 2007 10:52 AM
Times publisher David Hiller says the revenue picture is dire. Sounds like he's looking to restore the suburban zoning that his Tribune predecessors did away with, plus he announces a...
Posted May 31, 2007 10:46 AM
The L.A. Weekly's David Zahniser is out with a cluster of stories on one of the least talked-about big stories in Los Angeles: the push by planners, pols led by...
Posted May 31, 2007 08:56 AM
The Bush Administration has settled on Thomas O'Brien, chief of the criminal division for the U.S. attorney's office here and a former gang prosecutor in the district attorney's office, to...
Posted May 30, 2007 10:27 PM
Veronique de Turenne at Here in Malibu says signs are posted everywhere about the year-old German shepherd taken by a 50-ish overweight woman with bleached blond hair who drove a...
Posted May 30, 2007 06:55 PM
The Kinseygram, the L.A. Times blog by Calendar editor Kinsey Lowe that offered a morning roundup of entertainment news, has been quietly killed and the evidence obliterated from the LAT...
Posted May 30, 2007 06:11 PM
The vote counters finally called it a day and proclaimed Georgia Mercer the winner in the March 15 runoff election for the L.A. Community College District. She edged challenger Roy...
Posted May 30, 2007 05:52 PM
Brooks Barnes is leaving the Wall Street Journal's television beat to cover the business of Hollywood in the New York Times bureau here. He is replacing New York-bound Laura Holson....
Posted May 30, 2007 05:16 PM
The Metro staff at the Times will lose fifteen reporters and editors on Friday, spurring a couple of internal moves and plans to hire some replacements. Three staffers — Jenifer...
Posted May 30, 2007 08:39 AM
Today's Buzz lurks below the fold — just click the link to get there. There are also some new letters at We Get Email....
Posted May 30, 2007 08:25 AM
There has been a lengthy discussion at Asymptotia, one of L.A.'s smarter blogs, about the burning issue of whether or not the narrators at the Griffith Observatory planetarium shows should...
Posted May 29, 2007 11:42 PM
For reasons known only to the Internet gods, an LA Observed post from 2005 peeking into the backyard of the Playboy mansion has suddenly started getting hits again. More than...
Posted May 29, 2007 08:53 AM
Or did the LAT pass? Mickey Kaus of Slate compared Times coverage of the Lindsay Lohan crash and arrest with the same-day coverage in the New York Post. Guess which...
Posted May 29, 2007 08:25 AM
"Still the same place, with the same address, the same mission, and the same attitude that has always made HuffPost such a great read," Arianna Huffington says in this morning's...
Posted May 29, 2007 01:29 AM
The L.A. Police Protective League acknowledges "missteps" by the LAPD during the May 1 melee at MacArthur Park and yesterday proposed more and better training for offices and commanders —...
Posted May 29, 2007 01:11 AM
Does it seem like reader email over the Al Martinez shove is getting more mean? Check out the new stuff. Martinez himself is scheduled to guest on KPCC's "Patt Morrison"...
Posted May 29, 2007 01:06 AM
OK, the holiday is over. Click below for the Morning Buzz....
Posted May 29, 2007 01:02 AM
The House of Records on Pico at 33rd Street claims to be — despite its Santa Monica location — "Los Angeles' oldest record store," founded in 1952. Don't know about...
Posted May 28, 2007 09:31 PM
Patrick McGreevy, a fixture at City Hall for the L.A. Times, is transferring to the buyout-impacted Sacramento bureau. Memo after the jump....
Posted May 25, 2007 02:11 PM
Unless something startles me out of my stupor, News & Chatter will be taking off until after the holiday. Keep an eye open for fresh posts on the other great...
Posted May 25, 2007 09:30 AM
Lisa Napoli came home from the doctor's office so annoyed she typed up these notes. The Boobs As overheard by Lisa Napoli Scene: The very crowded, very small waiting room...
Posted May 25, 2007 09:18 AM
LA Observed subscribers are being offered tickets to another musical premiere, this one the debut performance of composer Peter Schickele's new work Three Cellos with the Pacific Serenades chamber ensemble....
Posted May 25, 2007 09:05 AM
Times editor Jim O'Shea emails the staff to report that 57 editorial staffers will be leaving, some voluntarily and some given the Al Martinez treatment. The Los Angeles Times Poll...
Posted May 24, 2007 05:58 PM
The LA Weekly's Steven Mikulan has been covering the Phil Spector trial like a theater performance, observing the development of characters and scenes. Hey, you may as well. I just...
Posted May 24, 2007 09:17 AM
Curtis Hazell, the third-ranking official in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office and college roommate of DA Steve Cooley, says he did not begin dating stripper Donna Novarro until...
Posted May 24, 2007 08:59 AM
The news is hidden after the jump for aesthetic reasons. Click to go on in....
Posted May 24, 2007 08:51 AM
How's this for a tangible book prize? Charles Rappleye, formerly of the LA Weekly, won the $50,000 George Washington Book Prize, "honoring the most important new book about America's founding...
Posted May 23, 2007 11:54 PM
Anzack's family in Torrance was notified by the Army that his body had been found floating in the Euphrates river near Baghdad. The 20-year-old was one of three soldiers who...
Posted May 23, 2007 11:26 PM
Real Talk LA may claim they will be out with a second issue soon and all is cool, but in addition to emails from magazine higher-ups informing customers and friends...
Posted May 23, 2007 08:26 PM
Columnist Al Martinez has been with the Los Angeles Times more than 30 years and, despite being exiled to the back of the features section several years ago, is one...
Posted May 23, 2007 07:52 PM
Four Daily News reporters — Jason Kandel, Brent Hopkins, Rick Coca and Rachel Uranga — are contributing items to It's a Crime, with a Valley bias to the mix. Roll...
Posted May 23, 2007 08:40 AM
The most successful and most entertaining pro team in Southern California isn't the Lakers or the Dodgers. And it certainly isn't the Kings. SoCal Sports Observed Photo: AP/Chris Carlson...
Posted May 23, 2007 01:06 AM
Staffers at the Los Angeles Times were more than a bit shocked when they got to work Tuesday. Posted on the elevator walls were large photos of selected sports columnists...
Posted May 23, 2007 12:52 AM
This time it's the city of Claremont getting all umbraged up about the Claremont Insider, recounted on the blog of San Garbriel Valley Tribune city editor Edward Barrera. Previous: Foothill...
Posted May 23, 2007 12:34 AM
The L.A. Phil is treating another LA Observed subscriber to this weekend's late-night premiere of Pravda. Daniel Evans and a guest will be in the audience at Disney Hall, probably...
Posted May 23, 2007 12:23 AM
How about a little Buzz with your coffee? Click the link to join in....
Posted May 22, 2007 08:30 AM
Before this morning's parade of defendants began at the LAX courthouse on South La Cienega, the court reporter in Department B sat down at her station and lovingly placed a...
Posted May 21, 2007 11:58 PM
Jenny Burman was invited out this morning by Dodgers VP Howard Sunkin. They had a good chat at the Rodeo Grill on Sunset about baseball, the fan experience and neighbor...
Posted May 21, 2007 11:30 PM
Nothing punctuates buyouts under the threat of layoffs like some new hires. While the top suits contemplate how many of last week's rush to the exits to accept, two additions...
Posted May 21, 2007 04:06 PM
So many local media sources emailed me last week with reports of the impending demise of Real Talk that I mentioned the scuttlebutt while trying to reach founder Jay Levin...
Posted May 21, 2007 12:17 PM
Colin Brown's Flickr stream of the burn area includes several scorched animal skeletons, including this deer that looks to have gotten snagged in a tree. Not for the squeamish. Via...
Posted May 21, 2007 10:14 AM
Come on in by clicking the link. Also: Last week on News & Chatter Last week on LA Biz Observed Recently on Native Intelligence...
Posted May 21, 2007 08:02 AM
KCRW has invited me to join the roster of commentators that air in the afternoons during NPR's "All Things Considered." General manager Ruth Seymour, who has been mentioned here more...
Posted May 21, 2007 12:37 AM
Phew, there was quite a rush to claim the free tickets to the Saturday, May 26 world premiere of Pravda at the Walt Disney Hall. I had to wait to...
Posted May 20, 2007 11:56 PM
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson won't announce Monday at the L.A. Press Club after all. His campaign sent out an urgent notice that the Millennium Biltmore downtown is where he'll...
Posted May 20, 2007 02:49 PM
Rumors are rampant that Real Talk LA, Jay Levin's new magazine, missed payroll this week and has shut down after one issue that hasn't been widely seen. Queries are...
Posted May 18, 2007 09:13 PM
KNBC's undercover camera has caught more car repair scammers. This time, Grover's web snared EZ Lube, "California's fastest growing lube and tune chain." Says the Channel 4 website: Under the...
Posted May 17, 2007 02:58 PM
A suspicious item in checked baggage has closed part of the airport for the second time in less than 24 hours. The LAPD says its bomb squad is en route....
Posted May 17, 2007 12:45 PM
Today's San Gabriel Valley Tribune reports on the rise of the anonymous Foothill Cities Blog (note new name) and the controversy over its coverage of politics in Pomona. City officials...
Posted May 17, 2007 11:36 AM
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will formally declare his candidacy for president on Monday at the Los Angeles Press Club. Not many newsworthy announcements made there any more. Aides say...
Posted May 17, 2007 10:45 AM
The June issue of Los Angeles has John Powers' first Open City column since he left LA Weekly and LA Biz Observed's Mark Lacter on salaries around town, from Vin...
Posted May 16, 2007 03:50 PM
Fans of "The Sopranos" spent all day Monday comparing notes on what an exultant Tony Soprano screamed at the end of Sunday night's intense episode. The LAT's television writer Paul...
Posted May 16, 2007 10:54 AM
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Speaker Fabian Núñez and radio host El Piolin are billed as participants in a Thursday procession and candlelight vigil for immigration reform at MacArthur Park. They gather...
Posted May 16, 2007 08:58 AM
Election results, media moves and a lot more Wednesday buzz after the jump....
Posted May 16, 2007 08:56 AM
The L.A. Philharmonic is again making two tickets available free to LA Observed Insiders for a special performance at Disney Hall. On Saturday May 26, starting at 10 pm and...
Posted May 16, 2007 12:19 AM
Author Clive Cussler owes Crusader Entertainment $5 million in damages over the film Sahara, but the jury also ruled that Crusader owes Cussler about $8.5 million for the rights to...
Posted May 15, 2007 05:16 PM
Felipe Fuentes, the former chief of staff to 7th district councilman Alex Padilla, is on today's ballot running in the special election in the 39th assembly district to replace Richard...
Posted May 15, 2007 03:58 PM
Memo out of the Daily News building in Woodland Hills: We're pleased to announce that Jason Middleton is joining LA.Com as Editor. Jason came to the Daily News in January...
Posted May 15, 2007 03:44 PM
* Updated with later information; names will be underlined as I get confirmations, but all of these are on lists circulating in the Times newsroom. Senior Calendar Editor Lennie LaGuire,...
Posted May 15, 2007 12:54 PM
Bret Marcus, displaced by the cancellation of "California Connected," becomes Vice President of Programming, Publicity and Promotion at the local PBS station. Release after the jump....
Posted May 15, 2007 11:16 AM
Today is election day in Los Angeles, though you wouldn't know it. Besides the big expensive school board runoff in the Valley that could give Mayor Villaraigosa the bloc of...
Posted May 15, 2007 08:56 AM
Video of the columnist addressing journalism graduates at today's USC Annenberg commencement, at LAist....
Posted May 14, 2007 02:28 PM
L.A. bloggers Mark Sarvas (The Elegant Variation) and Callie Miller (Counterbalance) were quoted in a weekend LAT story on the rise — to a point — of books blogs as...
Posted May 14, 2007 02:19 PM
Ace Smith, the strategist behind Antonio Villaraigosa's win in 2005, is now working on the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The weekend San Francisco Chronicle called him a...
Posted May 14, 2007 08:24 AM
County Supervisor Don Knabe blew out his usual politician's website and turned it into a running news blog on the Catalina fire after finding that no government agency was gathering...
Posted May 14, 2007 08:21 AM
The L.A. Times education blog pioneered by former Current editor Bob Sipchen is going away, but not necessarily permanently. "School Me is going into hibernation for a while...while the folks...
Posted May 14, 2007 08:07 AM
Today's first draft on the news is below the jump. For the review-minded, here are links to last week's entire run of News & Chatter posts and LA Biz Observed...
Posted May 14, 2007 07:55 AM
After the sad, infuriating video footage from May 1, Connie Bruck topped her in-the-works profile of Antonio Villaraigosa for this week's New Yorker with a scene of the mayor walking...
Posted May 14, 2007 12:41 AM
Some stuff that caught my eye over the weekend... Chief Bratton is in treacherous waters trying to satisfy both the police union and the people of the city in the...
Posted May 13, 2007 11:45 PM
Kevin Sack was one of the New York Times veterans who came west to LAT territory in the Dean Baquet wagon train, and it was a no-brainer that he would...
Posted May 13, 2007 10:39 PM
Inside the Pan-Pacific Auditorium in October 1939, from the Changing Times: Los Angeles in Photographs, 1920-1990 online exhibit at the Department of Special Collections at UCLA. Full size. Also:...
Posted May 11, 2007 02:10 PM
The anonymous Foothill Cities news and gossip blog pulled its recent posts on goings-on at Pomona city hall after receiving a cease-and-desist threat from the Pomona city attorney. The city...
Posted May 11, 2007 11:27 AM
Daniel Weintraub reports on the Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert website that Robert Salladay, who writes the LAT's Political Muscle blog from Sacramento, plans to take the buyout. Here's the item,...
Posted May 11, 2007 09:05 AM
About 3,000 visitors to Catalina were moved off the island last night as the wildfire approached Avalon. More than 4,000 acres have been burned, but conditions are looking better this...
Posted May 11, 2007 08:58 AM
Pasadena Now publisher and editor James Macpherson justifies the move as a cost-saver that could significantly improve local reporting. "Whether you’re at a desk in Pasadena or a desk in...
Posted May 10, 2007 02:24 PM
UCLA's Department of Special Collections owns about three million news photos from the original Los Angeles Daily News and the L.A. Times, covering more than seventy years. Now some 5,700...
Posted May 10, 2007 01:40 PM
Since January, KMEX here has been blanketing its Spanish-language audience with encouragement for green card holders who are eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship. Now the project is going nationwide...
Posted May 10, 2007 11:21 AM
Valerie McDonald, daughter of the late Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, added her name to the list of candidates in the 37th district special election and picked up the endorsement of Rep....
Posted May 10, 2007 08:54 AM
Today's issue of the LA Weekly is the annual People number, featuring an eclectix mix of a hundred Angelenos that includes LAPD renaissance cop Sunil Dutta, media gathering maven Scott...
Posted May 10, 2007 08:50 AM
Machado Lake's alligator in residence could be seen a lot yesterday, drifting along the surface, sunning and ignoring the audience of onlookers and photographers. "Reggie was doing everything but the...
Posted May 10, 2007 08:30 AM
Light day this morning after the jump....
Posted May 10, 2007 08:21 AM
The LAFD is calling the Griffith Park fire 50% encircled and some firefighters are being taken off the line. A little more than 800 acres have been blackened. Councilman Tom...
Posted May 9, 2007 05:48 PM
Turns out that the Saturday night movie showcase that KCET launched recently — and that has been advertised over there on the right side of this page — was just...
Posted May 9, 2007 05:25 PM
Night-time helicopter drops are a new advance in the fight against fires here — and we like it. Pilots and ground crews saved many homes and a lot of terrain...
Posted May 9, 2007 08:40 AM
Flames jumped the ridge onto the city side of Griffith Park just before sunset and are threatening homes in the neighborhood north of Los Feliz Boulevard. Power is out and...
Posted May 8, 2007 09:53 PM
Times reporter Mark Arax lives with his family in Fresno and has deep roots there — his 1996 book In My Father's Name investigated the failure of the Fresno police...
Posted May 8, 2007 05:22 PM
It's Sergio Diaz, Assistant Commanding Officer of the Special Operations Bureau, says LA Weekly contributor Celeste Fremon at WitnessLA. She gives Diaz a strong personal endorsement: "One of the smartest,...
Posted May 8, 2007 04:33 PM
It's on the Valley side and began burning north and east of the Hollywood sign about 1:30 pm. The park, zoo and Autry Museum are under evacuation, but the smoke...
Posted May 8, 2007 04:20 PM
Deborah Day leaves Tribune's Metromix to become executive editor of Premiere.com, reporting to editorial director of digital media Matthew Rothenberg. At Metromix, the release says, "she oversaw West Coast operations...
Posted May 8, 2007 04:12 PM
Today's Daily Journal has a front page story by Sandra Hernandez reporting on the forcible drugging and botched deportation of two men by agents for the Department of Homeland Security....
Posted May 8, 2007 08:56 AM
Jesse Katz of Los Angeles magazine won the M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award at yesterday's James Beard Foundation soiree. Katz won for "Wheels of Fortune," his piece last October on...
Posted May 8, 2007 08:50 AM
This year's USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellows are Kurt Andersen, novelist, editor, columnist and co-creator of Studio 360; Brett Campbell, the Wall Street Journal's West Coast performing arts correspondent; Celeste...
Posted May 8, 2007 08:42 AM
Come on in, the Buzz is tucked away after the jump....
Posted May 8, 2007 08:37 AM
OK, the Times claims to be getting religion about local coverage, but this isn't what the focus groups had in mind. Sunday's fashion story in the Image section on downtown's...
Posted May 7, 2007 11:56 PM
Scaffolding has been spotted around the vacant stores at the northeast corner of Wilshire and Barrington, alerting tipster Doug that his commute through the habitually jammed Brentwood-adjacent intersection is about...
Posted May 7, 2007 11:42 PM
For an anonymous dog blog, Skip 365 is pretty witty. Every daily post is a scene from the life of Skip, who my tipster calls a pound puppy in...
Posted May 7, 2007 05:37 PM
Although Paris Hilton might be going to jail, Elliot Mintz is now a free man. He announced last night that he has resigned as the tabloid fodder's harried mouthpiece. He...
Posted May 7, 2007 02:32 PM
Mayor Villaraigosa, Chief William Bratton and police commission president John Mack have called a 3:30 news conference that the mayor's office bills as "to discuss changes in LAPD command staff"...
Posted May 7, 2007 01:11 PM
Now that 1947 has morphed through 1907 into 1927 (and spawned an L.A. Times imitator blog revisiting 1957), Kim Cooper and Nathan Marsak's original website is adding a couple of...
Posted May 7, 2007 09:01 AM
Today's New York Post praises our friends at Los Angeles magazine in a piece reviewing the best of city magazines around the country: Like the city it covers, Los Angeles...
Posted May 7, 2007 08:12 AM
Took the weekend off, but there's a full steaming mug of Buzz just below the fold......
Posted May 7, 2007 07:57 AM
The new website from L.A. online entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart launched Friday night with an exclusive interview with former Senator Fred Thompson, his first on video since the Republican debate at...
Posted May 6, 2007 11:32 PM
Paris Hilton will get no work release, furloughs, cushy suburban jail or electronic monitoring and instead must spend a month and a half locked up at the Century Regional Detention...
Posted May 4, 2007 05:23 PM
"I am not in prison! At least not yet, not for a few more weeks and hopefully never," John Stodder says in a Dear Friends email to city staffers, friends...
Posted May 4, 2007 08:57 AM
A Jon Weisman post at Dodger Thoughts that is not about baseball inspired a long run of comments on being a pedestrian, here and elsewhere. Jon began by addressing an...
Posted May 4, 2007 08:49 AM
The Times sports writer formerly known as Mike Penner is scheduled to be interviewed live tonight at 11:30 on Sports Byline USA. She will chat with local journos John Woolard...
Posted May 4, 2007 08:44 AM
With the LAPD yet again giving the city a black eye, Mayor Villaraigosa cut short his trip to Latin America and will return to Los Angeles Friday morning. He broke...
Posted May 3, 2007 10:42 PM
Meredith Artley, the new top editor at LATimes.com, sent a missive to the staff talking up new features on the website and ranking the most viewed stories of the past...
Posted May 3, 2007 01:19 PM
Retired L.A. Times Metropolitan Editor Dave Rosenzweig died last night after battling cancer. A longtime investigative reporter and editor, Rosenzweig most recently had covered the federal courts downtown. I believe...
Posted May 3, 2007 12:28 PM
Three swastikas and an anti-Semitic message were found this morning on the front door of Councilman Jack Weiss' Sherman Oaks field office. The red-and-black Nazi symbols were printed on sheets...
Posted May 3, 2007 12:13 PM
Billionaire Angeleno Ron Burkle didn't get to buy the L.A. Times, but he supposedly now is looking at tabloid publisher American Media. This according to the New York Post, via...
Posted May 3, 2007 08:33 AM
It was just a few months ago that LAPD chief William Bratton argued that the department had learned its lesson and no longer should operate under a consent decree or...
Posted May 3, 2007 01:03 AM
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's statement on the violence against the police, and by the police, during the May 1 rally in the park. Yesterday, across the country, we witnessed a day...
Posted May 3, 2007 12:19 AM
From the Los Angeles Press Club and SPJ after the jump, and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists at the link, in response to yesterdays injuries by journalists at the...
Posted May 2, 2007 11:50 PM
Paul Karl Lukacs, the entertainment lawyer who chucked it all last June to travel in Asia and blog about it, has a new itinerary. He's now in Beijing but leaves...
Posted May 2, 2007 11:37 PM
The L.A. Public Library just put out a release saying that free wireless is now available to laptop users in all 71 branches as well as the Central Library downtown....
Posted May 2, 2007 02:47 PM
Adam Moss' New York Magazine won for general excellence and in four other categories at the National Magazine Awards last night, setting off a lot of talk about the place...
Posted May 2, 2007 08:53 AM
The Armenian National Committee of America in Glendale is orchestrating a campaign to besiege the L.A. Times with emails demanding that Managing Editor Doug Frantz resign over his handling of...
Posted May 2, 2007 08:44 AM
A little news, a little noting. After the jump....
Posted May 2, 2007 08:38 AM
Yesterday's number of marchers was small compared to last year, perhaps 25,000 strong, and peaceful. But the day ended with police moving in to MacArthur Park after reporting that bottles...
Posted May 2, 2007 07:41 AM
Natalie Nichols passes the editor's keyboard to Rebecca Epstein, announcing on her hipspinster blog that it's time to devote more time to her own writing. it is somewhat insane, perhaps,...
Posted May 1, 2007 05:58 PM
PBS has picked up the first season of the series to be produced by KCET in association with Wired magazine. It premieres nationwide on October 3. From the flackage: "The...
Posted May 1, 2007 02:58 PM
It's Thomas Edsall, a professor at Columbia who covered national politics at The Washington Post for 25 years. He will write for the Huffington Post and oversee the site's 2008...
Posted May 1, 2007 02:30 PM
I just noticed that the RealTalk LA website has gone up with a mix of stories, brief items, holders and dead links. The blogs I can see are called...
Posted May 1, 2007 02:25 PM
Just to finish the thought from yesterday, Daily News circulation dropped 7.3% from a year ago to 146,000. That's not good news in the already threadbare L.A. Newspaper Group empire....
Posted May 1, 2007 08:51 AM
Click below for a little news to start your day....
Posted May 1, 2007 08:45 AM
It's retro month at LA Observed. First Sharon Tay returns, now Reggie the wayward alligator has apparently been spotted at Lake Machado in Harbor City for the first time since...
Posted April 30, 2007 04:09 PM
Not only did L.A. Times circulation take another hit today — down more than four percent — but Editor & Publisher named N. Christian Anderson III of the Orange County...
Posted April 30, 2007 12:48 PM
LA Observed reader Cecilia was at the Beverly Hilton last night and heard that Trader Vic's next door would serve its final mai-tai's today. "So we went over and...
Posted April 30, 2007 12:33 PM
Times staff writer Mark Arax just escalated — in a big way — his dispute with the paper's managing editor over a recent story about the Armenian genocide. He emailed...
Posted April 30, 2007 11:47 AM
The father with two kids who tried to stiff the Northridge Claim Jumper last Thursday night sure picked the wrong night at the wrong place to walk out on his...
Posted April 30, 2007 08:25 AM
Another Gran Marcha to support immigrants begins Tuesday morning at Broadway and Olympic, moves north on Broadway starting at 10 am, and heads to City Hall via 1st Street. Fewer...
Posted April 30, 2007 08:13 AM
The Times has shown laudable sensitivity to the story of transsexual sports writer Mike Penner making the transformation to Christine Daniels, but not so much the publisher of the Times-owned...
Posted April 27, 2007 03:32 PM
The 12-screen Landmark opens in five weeks at Pico and Westwood, in the annex to Westside Pavilion. It will be the flagship of the Landmark theater chain, featuring indie fare,...
Posted April 27, 2007 03:19 PM
Tonight's show is the last, at least for now. "After five seasons and 154 shows from Yreka in the north to Baja in the south to the Eastern Sierras of...
Posted April 27, 2007 03:12 PM
Just before jurors returned a verdict yesterday in a breach-of-contract case involving the creators of the NBC sitcom "Will & Grace," lawyers for the network revealed that the jury foreman...
Posted April 27, 2007 09:11 AM
Sen. Dianne Feinstein's opposition on behalf of neighbors posed too great an obstacle and the FBI will look for another location to build its new L.A.-area headquarters. The feds had...
Posted April 27, 2007 08:55 AM
Mike Penner's column announcing his transition to Christine Daniels is already one of the most viewed LATimes.com stories of the past year, the paper says today in an interview with...
Posted April 27, 2007 08:51 AM
Not to say there's no news, it just won't be here. Morning Buzz returns Monday....
Posted April 27, 2007 08:48 AM
Once around the LA Observed blogs: Jenny Price writes at Native Intelligence that since the Virginia Tech tragedy, friends have been checking in with her a lot and asking if...
Posted April 26, 2007 10:26 PM
Snakeskin Shamesin, third in the series of Naomi Hirahara's novels set in Southern California that feature Japanese-American gardener Mas Arai, won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America...
Posted April 26, 2007 09:52 PM
Well, just in the monologue "The Tonight Show" emails out: Here's an interesting local story, a L.A. Times sportswriter, Mike Penner...a very good sports writer, has announced he's undergoing a...
Posted April 26, 2007 08:09 PM
Editor Jim O'Shea has emailed the L.A. Times staff a response to all the hubbub about Mark Arax and whether or not a story was killed because of concerns that...
Posted April 26, 2007 05:35 PM
Nah, but the LA Weekly's Daniel Hernandez adds good new details in the dispute we reported Tuesday between Times managing editor Doug Frantz and West magazine staff writer Mark Arax....
Posted April 26, 2007 09:10 AM
Plenty of news and notes today, just lurking beyond the jump....
Posted April 26, 2007 08:53 AM
Veteran L.A. Times sports writer Mike Penner writes in today's paper that he will return from vacation in a few weeks as Christine Daniels. He lays out his personal journey...
Posted April 26, 2007 07:39 AM
A local television legend of sorts, and LA Observed oldie but goodie, returned tonight to the Los Angeles airwaves — and now to the blogosphere. Sharon Tay co-anchored the "KTLA...
Posted April 25, 2007 11:52 PM
It's rare for Esa-Pekka Salonen to be mentioned and pictured here twice in a year, let alone twice in the span of a few days. Or to have two mentions...
Posted April 25, 2007 05:12 PM
David Halberstam was to be in Los Angeles tomorrow night for a featured conversation with Times columnist Tim Rutten at the Jewish Federation's annual legal dinner. In his place, federation...
Posted April 25, 2007 04:28 PM
There's no point in asking Times newsroom staffers people to clean up their desks, Channel 2 style — clutter there is so far gone that fire inspectors have come through...
Posted April 25, 2007 09:05 AM
Hoping to lure in some new fans, the LA Opera will sell every seat in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for $20 at two performances next month. Tickets go on sale...
Posted April 25, 2007 08:55 AM
A dispute that has been quietly bubbling in the Times newsroom went public today when the publisher of the California Courier demanded that LAT managing editor Doug Frantz be fired...
Posted April 24, 2007 11:44 AM
It's Adam Gorfain, a 41 year old senior producer for "Dateline NBC" at the NBC News studios in Burbank, according to sometime NBC ABC independent investigative producer Eric Longabardi on...
Posted April 24, 2007 08:59 AM
Kevin Modesti, a columnist at the Daily News, becomes the first sports editor of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group chain. This means he oversees the increasingly shared sports coverage of...
Posted April 24, 2007 08:45 AM
A spot of news to start the day, tucked away after the jump....
Posted April 24, 2007 08:42 AM
Now that channels 2 and 9 reside in their new shared newsroom in Studio City, news director Nancy Bauer-Gonzales has removed the ban on eating and drinking at desks. But—staffers...
Posted April 23, 2007 03:22 PM
I'm talking about today's Times news with guest host Jon Beaupre on KPCC's "Patt Morrison," after the NPR news at 2 pm. Update: Times Publisher David Hiller and USC Annenberg...
Posted April 23, 2007 02:00 PM
That was a little 3.1 earthquake at 12:30, centered just northwest of San Fernando. Here in Westwood, some in the same office did feel it and some (me included) didn't....
Posted April 23, 2007 12:39 PM
Times editor Jim O'Shea follows up the publisher's memo with a missive of his own, asking the newsroom to have faith and saying he understands anger over Tribune execs receiving...
Posted April 23, 2007 11:41 AM
William Booth of the Washington Post phoned up the new Pulitzer Prize winner and offered to buy him a meal at the spot of his choosing. It's the fun read...
Posted April 23, 2007 08:35 AM
The race-track fixture handicapped most recently for the Long Beach Press-Telegram and other LA News Group papers. He had planned to retire yesterday, at the end of Santa Anita's season,...
Posted April 23, 2007 08:30 AM
First glance at the news is down below the fold, along with a look back at the weekend....
Posted April 23, 2007 08:20 AM
Erika Schickel and myself (along with Times columnist Al Martinez) were the guests on KABC 790 AM's show "Spotlight on the Community" this morning talking with hosts Nelkane Benton and...
Posted April 22, 2007 09:56 PM
Some review-worthy posts from the past week at LA Observed... Villaraigosa's school bill was dealt a near-fatal blow at the appeals court, leading to some cooler press handling for the...
Posted April 22, 2007 08:50 PM
Wendy McCaw's News-Press ran a front page story today alleging that 15,000 pornographic images, including child porn, were found last summer on the computer hard drive of the former editor...
Posted April 22, 2007 04:12 PM
Ernest James Wilson III will take over July 1 for Geoffrey Cowan as dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at USC. He is the senior member of Corporation for...
Posted April 20, 2007 06:28 PM
New LAUSD Supt. Supt. David L. Brewer has discovered what most of us knew — that things in his district are seriously awry. He releases a scathing 115-page report...
Posted April 20, 2007 04:37 PM
Esa-Pekka Salonen and the L.A. Philharmonic were nearing the end of the third movement of the Lemminkäinen Suite by Sibelius this afternoon when Disney Hall erupted in wailing sirens and...
Posted April 20, 2007 03:42 PM
We'll see if this flies. Blogger and Podcaster, published in Maryland, aims to "reduce the learning curve" for new practitioners, writes founder and publisher Larry Genkin. The skew is toward...
Posted April 20, 2007 01:14 PM
KPCC's Adolfo Guzman Lopez airs one of the fire and bomb threats called in to Academia Semillas del Pueblo, promising the Spanish-language charter school that its "beaners" would be...
Posted April 19, 2007 04:43 PM
Inside the annual weekend getaway issue is a piece from low-achieving Jordan High School in Watts, where Jesse Katz spent five months with the academic decathlon team. Editor Kit Rachlis'...
Posted April 19, 2007 09:22 AM
Full professors at Harvard average $177,400 a year, those at Yale $157,600. Which full professors in California do you think make the most? Here's the top 10 from the newest...
Posted April 19, 2007 09:12 AM
As Daniel Hernandez puts it in today's LA Weekly, KPFK general manager Eva Georgia — gay, black, African immigrant, disliked by many at the station — has been accused of...
Posted April 19, 2007 09:07 AM
Click below for the whole roundup of news, neatly tucked away behind the fold....
Posted April 19, 2007 08:57 AM
Tony Tranfa, web editor and jazz critic of the Daily Breeze, died today after collapsing in a hallway at Torrance Memorial, where he was admitted last week. “Tony’s death is...
Posted April 18, 2007 05:45 PM
Author Neal Pollack, a confirmed Dodgers junkie, ventured out to the stadium's new family-friendly right field pavilion and endured nine innings of all-you-can-eat madness. His guide in today's Slate explains...
Posted April 18, 2007 04:03 PM
The Center for Responsive Politics broke out the by-state contributions to the '08 presidential candidates: Sen. Hillary Clinton leads the way in mining California for bucks so far. Here are...
Posted April 18, 2007 03:05 PM
Don LaFontaine, whose voice has been heard on movie trailers for decades, has gone public on a Geico commercial. That was reason enough for Radar Online to chat up the...
Posted April 18, 2007 11:27 AM
The Los Angeles Korean community has been closely following the news out of Virginia Tech, and Radio Korea here is reporting rumors that the father and mother of Cho Seung...
Posted April 18, 2007 10:38 AM
In the new W, former Variety scribe Gabriel Snyder explains the role of Hollywood political consultants and updates the roster of who works with whom. Noah Mamet, for instance, wrangled...
Posted April 18, 2007 09:11 AM
T. Jefferson Parker's L.A. Outlaws is moving to Dutton as part of a two-book deal, with publication next February. But here's my favorite L.A. angle from Publishers Lunch: Adena Halpern's...
Posted April 18, 2007 08:58 AM
Tom Mott is the LA Observed Insider who was first to speak up and claim two tickets to Wednesday evening's Complete Tristan and Isolde at Disney Hall. When these perks...
Posted April 17, 2007 11:41 PM
Curbed LA designates the off-putting, easily ignored mall known as Hollywood & Highland: It's not based purely on aesthetics, that we can all agree. There are other factors - the...
Posted April 17, 2007 11:28 PM
Following today's setback for the mayor at the appeals court, Michael Blood of the AP bureau here filed a piece pronouncing a new phase in the Antonio Villaraigosa media story....
Posted April 17, 2007 10:51 PM
Bunch of new talent is being unveiled at KCRW 89.9 FM and KCRW.com, some of them with station connections. Leaving are longtime KCRW figure Tricia Halloran, whose "Brave New World"...
Posted April 17, 2007 03:56 PM
A three-judge panel of the state's 2nd District Court of Appeal unanimously kicked aside Mayor Villaraigosa's quest to rewrite democracy in Los Angeles and take power over the schools. They...
Posted April 17, 2007 12:15 PM
What I think was the last single-screen movie house to open in Westwood Village, the Mann National, will close at the end of this week. It's where The Exorcist opened...
Posted April 17, 2007 08:39 AM
David Kravets, the AP reporter in San Francisco covering the state high court and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, becomes director of communications for the California Department of...
Posted April 16, 2007 02:13 PM
Degen Pener becomes editor-in-chief of Angeleno, while incumbent Alexandria Abramian-Mott remains with Modern Luxury Magazines as national home design editor. Pener has been features director of Santa Barbara Magazine and...
Posted April 16, 2007 02:04 PM
LA Weekly food writer Jonathan Gold won a Pulitzer Prize today in Criticism. It's the first Pulitzer ever for a food critic, according to the Weekly, and the paper's first....
Posted April 16, 2007 12:16 PM
Jim Newton, newly named the LAT's editor of the editorial pages, received a boost over the weekend from former Times publisher Tom Johnson. He sent Newton a note that made...
Posted April 16, 2007 08:09 AM
Noon our time is Pulitzer hour in newsrooms around the country. Here, the Times unofficially expects a prize for last year's Altered Oceans series, but if the rumors are accurate...
Posted April 16, 2007 07:54 AM
The Tristan Project has returned to the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The L.A. Philharmonic's Esa-Pekka Salonen, director Peter Sellars and video artist Bill Viola are again creating "a multi-discipline arts...
Posted April 15, 2007 11:28 PM
Twelve or so things to like about LA Observed from the past week: Times stays inside for the new opinion editor. Those McCourts sure know how to mess up Opening...
Posted April 15, 2007 10:30 PM
But Los Angeles loses. Chicago will be the U.S. bid city for the 2016 Olympic Games, the USOC announced in Washington. LAT, ChiTrib * David Davis: Where L.A.'s bid went...
Posted April 14, 2007 01:26 PM
Maria Bartiromo gets face time with Sam Zell in the new Business Week, but the interview was last Friday in advance of Zell's dinner that evening with David Geffen:...
Posted April 13, 2007 04:08 PM
Jim Newton, chief of the Times' City-County bureau, gets the post of editor of the editorial pages, reporting to Publisher David Hiller. He replaces the prematurely departed Andrés Martinez. Newton...
Posted April 13, 2007 03:16 PM
To juice up interest in Ray Bradbury's appearance this Sunday in Santa Clarita, this ad ran in The Signal. Dozens of mystified, angry calls flooded into the paper, the fire...
Posted April 13, 2007 02:26 PM
The LAT's Image section returns this weekend for its second stroll down the runway of public opinion. I'm told that Sunday's edition has a piece setting up the rivalry...
Posted April 13, 2007 09:58 AM
FineArtsLA.com is from freelance writer and self-described "arch-dilettante" Christian M. Chensvold and sets as its mission postings on "music, opera, ballet and museums in Greater Los Angeles." Items currently up...
Posted April 13, 2007 08:31 AM
Times reporter Anna Gorman goes first-person in today's Column One to detail her family's fight with cancer and her own surgery to remove her ovaries, uterus and fallopian tubes. Gorman...
Posted April 13, 2007 08:21 AM
Full plate of Friday news. After the jump....
Posted April 13, 2007 08:05 AM
This tree went down yesterday in Leimert Park. Photo is from a new Leimert Park community website by former Daily Breeze reporter Eddie North-Hager, who started the site after taking...
Posted April 13, 2007 07:29 AM
Channel 2 staffers are buzzing about their new entertainment reporter, Christina McLarty, being the girlfriend of Girls Gone Wild bad-boy Joe Francis. He's been in the news lately for his...
Posted April 13, 2007 07:12 AM
There has been at least one home heavily damaged and roof fires are reported on others along North Beverly Drive in the Franklin Canyon area above Beverly Hills, where a...
Posted April 12, 2007 02:29 PM
Remember last year when the plastic devices placed in Times newsboxes to promote Mission: Impossible III kept prompting frightened calls to bomb squads? Well, the U.S. Attorney's office here has...
Posted April 12, 2007 02:19 PM
Metromix, the younger and, ahem, edgier sibling re-make of Calendar Live coming in June from the Times and Tribune, has staffed up. Deborah Vankin, formerly of Variety and LA Weekly,...
Posted April 12, 2007 02:10 PM
CBS drops him effective immediately. “There has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their...
Posted April 12, 2007 01:57 PM
Back in 2003, the Daily Mail paid a financial settlement and retracted its report that producer Steve Bing had hired PI to the stars Anthony Pellicano to spy on and...
Posted April 12, 2007 09:05 AM
Lots and lots of news to start the day, after the jump....
Posted April 12, 2007 08:45 AM
A couple of LAO readers emailed to say they couldn't find today's premiere issue of The District Weekly anywhere around Long Beach. But apparently it came out, with strip club...
Posted April 11, 2007 11:02 PM
Kurt Vonnegut died tonight in Manhattan, several weeks after suffering brain injuries in a fall. His wife, photographer Jill Krementz, confirmed the news for the Times. Elaine Woo's obituary calls...
Posted April 11, 2007 10:14 PM
Taking a look around the site this afternoon... Phil Hersh of the Chicago Tribune emerges as the top reporter on the Olympics beat and is all over this weekend's media-free...
Posted April 11, 2007 07:56 PM
Live Nation is taking over the venerable Hollywood Palladium on Sunset Boulevard and plans to renovate the place for a 2008 reopening. Council President Eric Garcetti announced the deal this...
Posted April 11, 2007 02:55 PM
The latest innovations from LAT Innovation Editor Russ Stanton are out -- a bunch of job openings following on his memo of earlier this week. Here's our favorite new reporter...
Posted April 11, 2007 10:37 AM
Click to come on in for today's opening news....
Posted April 11, 2007 08:57 AM
Allied Model Trains, which opened in 1946 and calls itself "the largest train store ever built," has been sold by longtime owner Allen Drucker. A version of the store will...
Posted April 10, 2007 11:44 PM
John Stodder was one of the smart ones who got to Dodger Stadium early yesterday and was able to observe the mess with somewhat detached eye. He pulls from his...
Posted April 10, 2007 09:50 AM
Borzou Daragahi, the Times' former bureau chief in Baghdad, has left the war zone for a new posting in Beirut. He writes in his farewell piece about some of the...
Posted April 10, 2007 08:55 AM
A blogger at Daily Kos who goes by the pseud of blklikeme has attracted 559 comments with a disturbing post about being shunned and feared as he took a Good...
Posted April 9, 2007 11:20 PM
The Dodgers lost to a suddenly good Rockies team, Jason Schmidt and Matt Kemp (prone after hitting the wall) both left hurt, and a limp throw home from shallow center...
Posted April 9, 2007 10:53 PM
Couple of minor organizational twists were introduced today at LATimes.com. On the foreign page, a gathering of notes and observations from correspondents mostly in Latin America is being called La...
Posted April 9, 2007 07:37 PM
The Daily News politics blog, mostly silent since March, has come back to life. Rick Orlov introduces himself from City Hall in today's Sausage Factory post. Excerpt: In my real...
Posted April 9, 2007 06:12 PM
"Original blogger" Army Archerd compares the recent "Entourage" premiere party in the dome at the Arclight to the theater's 1963 unveiling as the Cinerama Dome. The Cinerama's super-wide curved screen...
Posted April 9, 2007 08:45 AM
Ariel Hanrath-Clark died with his father, producer Bob Clark, in last week's head-on crash with an unlicensed, undocumented suspected drunk driver on Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades. The father...
Posted April 9, 2007 08:25 AM
It's Opening Day at Dodger Stadium, and instead of a stealth aircraft flyover a pair of F-16s and parachuting Navy SEALs will provide the obligatory military display. Jenny at Chicken...
Posted April 9, 2007 08:20 AM
Here are the top posts from the last week. If you want to scan the whole past week of News & Chatter, click here — or here for the entire...
Posted April 8, 2007 11:07 PM
Times columnist Steve Lopez, looking for an angle, went out to Malibu to check out the hard-to-reach public beach near Tribune buyer Sam Zell's estate. After Lopez knocked on the...
Posted April 6, 2007 09:26 AM
David Geffen told the Washington Post yesterday that "I continue to want to buy the Los Angeles Times," and a source close to the mogul says that "Geffen has spoken...
Posted April 5, 2007 12:18 PM
Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes had a lengthy conversation yesterday with KCRW general manager Ruth Seymour about his coverage of critic Edward Goldman's potential conflicts. In his latest post,...
Posted April 5, 2007 08:55 AM
First slice at the news after the jump....
Posted April 5, 2007 08:41 AM
Aside from what the Sam Zell deal does for the value of his Tribune stock, and his general Chicago loyalties, Times Publisher David Hiller talks up Zell as an owner....
Posted April 4, 2007 11:44 PM
Last month we posted on Southland Publishing's forthcoming debut of Los Angeles New City Monthly — you remember, the magazine that would "celebrate the intellectual and cultural 'renaissance' of L.A.'s...
Posted April 4, 2007 09:31 PM
President Bush has an evening fundraiser in Brentwood, there are accidents on both sides of the 405 near Wilshire, and the northbound Pasadena is backed up near I-5. Luckily, Bush...
Posted April 4, 2007 05:05 PM
Film director Bob Clark and his son Ariel were killed in the crash that kept Pacific Coast Highway closed through the Palisades during today's morning rush hours. Clark directed A...
Posted April 4, 2007 12:56 PM
LA Voice.org discovered that the abandoned pressroom at the Daily Breeze building in Torrance is full of marijuana plants. Relax — they're the fake variety brought in for the filming...
Posted April 4, 2007 12:34 PM
Waiting to hear just when (or if, considering appeals) he goes to federal prison in the Fleishman-Hillard case, Doug Dowie is writing up a storm. In addition to the screenplays...
Posted April 4, 2007 11:46 AM
Last week the New York Times ran a piece calling KCRW's Russian-accented art critic Edward Goldman highly influential and barely mentioned that in addition to teaching beginners how to collect...
Posted April 4, 2007 08:37 AM
The hometown Chicago Tribune got a long interview with the buyer of the L.A. Times, KTLA and everything else in the Tribune Company's portfolio (except the Cubs.) Mark Lacter gives...
Posted April 4, 2007 08:22 AM
A quick breeze through the local news, after the jump....
Posted April 4, 2007 07:56 AM
In this month's Tu Ciudad, Rep. Loretta Sanchez and Mrs. Kobe Bryant contribute their favorite spots in Orange County and, to stay in the theme, OC Weekly writer Gustavo Arellano...
Posted April 3, 2007 10:12 PM
Halle Berry seems pretty pleased that the studio paid up for her to receive a star this morning outside the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood and Highland. Via Defamer. Photo: AP...
Posted April 3, 2007 05:22 PM
It's not what you're thinking. Out in the Santa Clarita Valley, an online newspaper for the Stevenson Ranch end of things — newer, upscale, further west — ran a comment...
Posted April 3, 2007 08:38 AM
Tribune buyer Sam Zell is known as "the grave dancer," so OC Register travel editor-blogger Gary Warner thought he would mark yesterday's news by stopping in at the graves of...
Posted April 3, 2007 08:26 AM
LAPD chief William Bratton did the deed today and requested a second term. "It's been an honor and a privilege to serve as Los Angeles' chief of police," he said...
Posted April 2, 2007 06:17 PM
The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights in New York is upset with the L.A. Times for coverage of the priest abuse cases here. At issue is a story...
Posted April 2, 2007 05:12 PM
I'm not sure how persuasive this will be in the skittish Times newsroom, but Editor Jim O'Shea just emailed the staff his take on the transfer of Tribune to investor...
Posted April 2, 2007 03:47 PM
The New York Times has posted the first of a four-part video conversation between Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the paper's Calvin Sims, a former foreign correspondent now hosting online...
Posted April 2, 2007 11:21 AM
The author and professor of creative writing at Cornell was born in East Los Angeles, graduated from Garfield High and Immaculate Heart College, and worked as a bottler at...
Posted April 2, 2007 08:15 AM
Jay Levin's forthcoming RealTalk LA (and RealTalkLA.com) will try to "reinvent the concept of a city magazine and create the next evolution of the local online community," the founder of...
Posted April 2, 2007 08:08 AM
Bit of new formatting in today's Buzz. Check it out after the jump......
Posted April 2, 2007 07:55 AM
The Chicago Tribune calls it an "epic corporate drama" that ends with the paper's parent company — owner of the Los Angeles Times and KTLA — being taken private by...
Posted April 2, 2007 07:09 AM
In a live story posted at 12:29 1:26 am Midwest time, the Chicago Tribune's website says the board of the parent Tribune company was busily negotiating a $13 billion deal...
Posted April 1, 2007 11:21 PM
Needing to escape Los Angeles for a few hours, Judy and I took the Amtrak Surfliner to San Diego and back on Saturday. During a break from walking the Gaslamp...
Posted April 1, 2007 11:03 PM
Good piece in the Sunday LAT that began as a post on Jill Leovy's Homicide Report blog: LAPD officers frequently assign the wrong name to Latino crime victims and arrestees....
Posted April 1, 2007 03:09 PM
Two teens who set Friday's Hollywood Hills fire were released to their parents and flown home to Illinois, but could be required to appear here in court later. LAT...
Posted April 1, 2007 02:15 PM
Hoping to reach out to affluent, influential and culturally with it Angelenos, the L.A. Philharmonic today flooded my Westside neighborhood with Hollywood Bowl promotional calendars wrapped around a complimentary Sunday...
Posted April 1, 2007 01:52 PM
Washington Post columnist and Slate contributor Richard Cohen makes a stab at some Grazergate humor. Didn't work for me, but your mileage might vary. Excerpt of "One Man's Desperate Attempt...
Posted March 30, 2007 09:55 AM
The News & Chatter side of LA Observed plans to stand down for a day or so to mark the passing of my father. Robert Roderick lived to 89 and...
Posted March 27, 2007 04:45 PM
Come on inside for a first look at the day......
Posted March 27, 2007 08:22 AM
Yeah, the Times really got its money's worth out of that innovation. "We have concluded we will not be moving forward with the program," the paper's official statement says. Gee,...
Posted March 26, 2007 11:50 PM
An L.A. Times press release announces several reductions in the value of what the paper give its dwindling readership — oops, I mean "editorial changes designed to meet the evolving...
Posted March 26, 2007 09:20 AM
This afternoon at 2 pm Patt Morrison will have on the German photographer behind You-Are-Here.com, the best website of Los Angeles architectural photos. He blogs about his recent trip to...
Posted March 26, 2007 08:28 AM
The Times has quietly eliminated some of the typographic cacophony that erupted on the front page in October. Gone are the skinny, sans-serif headlines, the stacked decks of secondary headlines...
Posted March 26, 2007 08:16 AM
Lots of news to begin the week, sliced and diced after the jump....
Posted March 26, 2007 08:09 AM
In the new issue out now, Joe Domanick examines the case against Phil Spector while Strawberry Saroyan sizes up the career of fired book publisher Judith Regan. There are also...
Posted March 26, 2007 01:26 AM
I received a whole bunch of thoughtful email last week on the Grazergate episode. Submissions are over at We Get Email from, among others, a former editorial writer at the...
Posted March 26, 2007 12:27 AM
Last week's most noteworthy posts, subjectively speaking. Well, there was that business with the Times and the editor who gave a page to the movie producer whose publicist he dated...
Posted March 25, 2007 11:28 PM
In Andrés Martinez's email to LA Observed after he quit Thursday as Times editorial page honcho, he implied that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was on the list of...
Posted March 25, 2007 02:57 PM
Allison Silver, now a producer on "The Charlie Rose Show," edited the Sunday Opinion section in the L.A. Times for ten years before moving over in 2000 to be an...
Posted March 25, 2007 09:27 AM