Stodder, you may recall, reported to federal prison authorities last February to serve a term for his part in the Fleishman-Hillard episode that roiled City Hall a few years ago.
Rourke, familiar to many journalists as the head of Caltech's communications office from 1986 to 2009, died at home in Pasadena after battling pulmonary fibrosis.
Bids are due on Friday to work four months for the City Council's redistricting commission, for as much as $100,000.
Mary Grady, the LAPD spokesperson for ten years until this past June, has been named Director of Public and Media Relations at Los Angeles World Airports.
Plunging earnings and a stream of executive defections "have set tongues wagging."
At 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Starbucks and the Los Angeles Urban League are announcing a new partnership. Guess where.
The obscurely powerful Central Basin Municipal Water District is in the news again — in more ways than one.
Josh Rawitch, the Dodgers' vice president of communications, is moving up in the standings by taking the position of senior vice president for communications with the first-place Arizona Diamondbacks.
Eve Diamond, reporter, gives way to Maggie Weinstock Silver, an Adderall-addicted crisis PR consultant who formerly worked at Sitrick and lives in Cypress Park.
Joan Luther, called by some the first lady of restaurant PR in Los Angeles, died yesterday.
Capt. Mike Parker, the public information officer for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, boils down what reporters want to eleven elements.
Today at Dodger Stadium, all was sunshine and warm breezes. Plus a media note.
The imprisoned former Fleishman-Hillard executive and Daily News editor lost an appeal that sought to require his former employer to pick up some legal bills.
Doug Dowie, the former power broker as head of the Fleishman-Hillard PR office in Los Angeles during the mayoral administration of Jim Hahn, has been ordered to report to federal prison on Feb. 4. Same for John Stodder, his underling at Fleishman, the LAT says.
Joe Cerrell, a prominent player in Los Angeles and Democratic politics since the 1950s, died today at age 75.
Nobody has been able to advance the story much on this morning's killing of publicist Ronni Chasen, while Hollywood reacts. Services are Sunday.
Longtime Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen, 64, was found dead of five gunshot wounds about 12:30 a.m. today in her Mercedes-Benz E-350, which had crashed into a light pole on Whittier Drive just south of Sunset Boulevard.
Steve Soboroff and Frank McCourt share a PR rep and a mutual admiration, apparently.
Best take I've seen on the whole flight-attendant-quits story is this tweet from @funnyordie.
The president and partner of The Rogers Group died last night. Eric Moses, president of the Public Relations of Society L.A. chapter, has put out a nice statement to his board.
I caught In the Heights last night at the Pantages and saw what all the fuss is about, both for the 2008 Tony winner for best musical and the fans'...
Longtime political activist and Hollywood public relations strategist Stephen Rivers died Monday after a long battle with cancer.
In his column in tomorrow's L.A. Times, Michael Hiltzik examines what's really at issue in the lawsuit against crisis PR executive Mike Sitrick by two former colleagues.
Allan Mayer was a key player in the rise of Sitrick & Company into a major crisis PR firm, and also was the co-author of Michael Sitrick's "Spin: How to Turn the Power of the Press to Your Advantage.”
Crisis PR meister Mike Sitrick has been sued in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by a former employee (on behalf of them all) who says the boss at Sitrick and Company manipulated the ESOP to deprive current and former employees of millions of dollars
The Financial Times' Matthew Garrahan writes in tomorrow's paper that Michael Sitrick "has carved out a lucrative niche offering crisis advice for embattled companies and celebrities who have found themselves in the media’s cross-hairs."
Actually, Labov was co-president of the Hollywood PR firm with Leslie Sloane Zelnik. Therein may lie a clue into his departure.
Sitrick and Co. has been hired to give media training to Southern California Toyota dealers, set up meetings between dealers and the media, and serve as an on-air spokesman, according...
Leading with Rep. Jackie Speier saying she's out of the Democratic race for attorney general.
Co-founder Joe Cerrell remains as chairman emeritus of Cerrell Associates, the Larchmont public affairs firm. Hal Dash, the company's president for 21 years, becomes chairman and CEO. Current executive VPs...
There could be a rush of these leaving the business items in the next couple of weeks when the L.A. Times drops its next, much-rumored layoff bomb. This one, though,...
Readers of LA Observed have seen Kevin McCollister's photographs of Los Angeles, first on his blog Jimson Weed Gazette, and more recently on its successor, East of West LA. His...
Hollywood marketing has changed now that so many people willingly devour flakkery on Facebook, Twitter and blogs, a New York Times story says today: Social networks like Facebook and Twitter...
I've nothing to add to Mark's post at LA Biz Observed on the sale of crisis PR shop Sitrick & Associates, announced today. * Well, there is this: The L.A....
Mark Saylor, the former L.A. Times editor who got his start in crisis PR at Sitrick and Co., has been hired to represent the Georgian breakaway republics of South Ossetia...
Today's front page of the Wall Street Journal talks about Hamilton High senior Kenya Mejia receiving $1,800 to plug the movie "I Love You, Beth Cooper" in her valedictorian address...
Phillip Sanfield announced in the newsroom (well, technically in the publisher's conference room) this afternoon that he's leaving as executive editor and interim publisher of the Breeze to become director...
Los Angeles Times columnist Patrick Goldstein says he'll miss the occasional calls from the longtime publicist, "one of the last remaining links to the Damon Runyon-esque era where you could...
Solters at various times represented Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson and other celebrity clients, says Nikki Finke. She reports that Solters died in his sleep at home, and gets...
Associate editor Daniel Yi has quit the L.A. Daily Journal to flack for the Port of Long Beach, and he left with an appreciative note to his colleagues about the...
There's a local PR angle to the legal squabble between Woody Allen and Dov Charney's American Apparel. Michael Cieply captures it at The Carpetbagger, the NYT's Hollywood blog. Mr. Allen...
This time it's Aaron Curtiss, the former innovation editor at the Los Angeles Times, moving over to the crisis PR shop run by Michael Sitrick. I had an item last...
Since I mentioned her last week on the blog, and on Friday in my KCRW commentary, let's note for the record that Joann Killeen and her partner have stepped aside...
Steve Mikulan gets off a couple of good lines in his L.A. Daily post that "as a press representative for Union Pacific Railroad, Joann Killeen has plenty of experience with...
Remember Robert G. Bernhoft and Robert E. Barnes, those lawyers known as "the Bobs" who came out from Milwaukee last year determined to make it big in Hollywood? The L.A....
Gawker has posted a whole bunch of excerpts from the Washington, D.C. case that led to a restraining order against former L.A. Times rising star Andr�s Martinez. OK, he's a...
Kelly Mullens' attorney Blair Burk says in a statement that the lawsuit filed today by ex-L.A. Times editor Andres Martinez is without merit — and grows out of a restraining...
On one side, the Screen Actors Guild has just hired Sitrick and Company, Nikki Finke reports. AFTRA, on the other hand, uses 42West, the firm whose Hollywood practice is headed...
Patricia Tobin, co-founder of the National Black Public Relations Society, died today at Cedars-Sinai. She had been treated for colon cancer. The Black Journalists Association of Southern California reported on...
Variety calls Cowan the "father of Hollywood press agents" and his firm, Rogers and Cowan, at one time "the biggest entertainment PR firm in the world, with a list of...
As an amateur admirer of mariachi, I enjoyed CityBeat's feature on the female ensemble Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles. But I was stopped by the byline: Kamren Curiel, who I...
Ryan Oliver is leaving the Los Angeles Daily Journal for public relations. He'll work on the Police Protective League and U.S. Army accounts for Weber Shandwick Worldwide's Los Angeles office....
KNBC anchor Ana Garcia, producer Rebecca Nieto, VP/News Director Robert Long and (not shown) web managing Bonnie Buck talk about how the station covers news and their relationship with PR...
PolitickerCA has a blind item saying that Doug Dowie, the former president of Fleishman-Hillard in L.A. whose conviction on wire fraud is on appeal, is doing some work for political...
I'm told that Times publisher David Hiller did make some news-driven exceptions to last Friday's buyout departure date. L.A. Times Poll director Susan Pinkus and deputy Jill Darling will be...
Crisis PR executive Michael Sitrick tried to collect a $7.7 million judgment from Ryan Kavanuagh, but a judge Friday said no. The reason is that Sitrick apparently agreed previously not...
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,...
Sure, Allan Mayer is a veteran Hollywood crisis flack with many successes on his resume — but he's not the only one. So what explains this slobbery treatment in Elizabeth...
Remember that episode back in March when Andr�s Martinez resigned as editor of the Times editorial pages after the publisher, David Hiller, didn't back him in the Brian Grazer...
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...
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...
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...
Ross Johnson of Sitrick and Company did such a good job promoting Tuesday night's premiere party for Captivity that he had bloggers falling over themselves to pre-hype the event, got...
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...
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...
"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...
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...
Richard Kline, head of the Los Angeles Fleishman-Hillard PR office who had to clean up the mess from the City Hall billing scandals, is leaving himself. The Holmes Report says...
Mark Saylor is leaving the entertainment practice at Sitrick & Company to launch his own crisis PR firm, Saylor Company. Saylor, the former entertainment desk editor in the L.A. Times...
Former Fleishman-Hillard executives Doug Dowie and John Stodder received a sentencing reprieve until January 30. They were convicted last May of federal charges in the overbilling of the city Department...
The webmaster at PR industry blog Strumpette has posted a fake AP dispatch announcing that the blog's creator, the pseudonymous Amanda Chapel, suffered broken bones and a concussion in a...
Lippin had co-managed Brian Wilson and had been a PR rep for, among others, Prince, Eric Clapton and Stephen Stills. The Lippin Group, where she was president, said that she...
Nikki Finke adds some meat to Monday's Allan Mayer-exits-Sitrick stories, saying that Mayer wanted to move from crisis PR into "a more strategic kind of communications." She reports the split...
Allan Mayer, who developed the entertainment practice for Sitrick and Company after writing a book with the boss, is leaving to start his own firm, Anne Thompson reports at her...
Back in April 2004, when he was under full attack for the Fleishman-Hillard deal with DWP that began under Dick Riordan, then-Mayor Jim Hahn banned PR contracts with city agencies....
Sam Singer, the San Francisco PR attache for Wendy McCaw and the Santa Barbara News-Press, is described as "resigning" — and won't say why — in today's Leah Garchik column...
The July issue of Los Angeles magazine (not online) has a piece by Kim Masters on Paramount's Brad Grey and by David Ferrell on the giant Rose Hills cemetery. Steve...
Convicted editor-turned-Fleishman-Hillard executive Doug Dowie called no defense witnesses in his trial, but he sat down at the Pacific Dining Car for an exclusive interview with two of his former...
An op-ed piece in Sunday's Daily Breeze chided the city of Hermosa Beach for fighting a drilling project by McPherson Oil Co. The Aesthetic thinks that the Breeze omitted a...
♦ Authorities released surveillance tape of suspects in the killing of Deputy Maria Rosa. ♦ Opening statements in Dowie-Stodder trial. ♦ Three ski patrol members at Mammoth Mountain died when...
Three Los Angeles TV stations are fingered in a Center for Media and Democracy report out today critical of news operations that package video releases from sources and PR agencies...
News that Sharon Stone will guest star on the new Showtime series "Huff" as a larcenous "high-powered Los Angeles public relations executive" caused the PR industry blog Media Orchard to...
Andy Spahn, the head of corporate affairs at DreamWorks and political consigliere to Messrs. Geffen, Spielberg and Katzenberg, is heading out on his own. Well, he won't exactly be alone....
Ray Richmond quit his Hollywood Reporter column in December to jump to E! Entertainment Television as director of corporate and trade publicity. Tomorrow he jumps back to THR. He 'splains...
If they are not there already, later today I'll be adding these noteworthy new participants in the L.A. blogosphere. Bill Bradley is the California political analyst with the mostest Schwarzenegger...
Myron A. "Ron'' Hartwig, the senior executive in California for Hill & Knowlton, is the new vice president of communications for The J. Paul Getty Trust. His responsibilities will include...
Big development in the high-stakes legal and public-image chess match over allegations of clergy sexual abuse and coverups by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. On Tuesday, the archdiocese...
Eric Rose, Senior VP at Weber Shandwick PR, is leaving at the end of the week for a newly created position as Director of Communications for the Western Group for...
Burson-Marsteller just announced that Fred Muir, formerly a reporter and editor at the Times, is taking over the Southern California office as "market leader" and managing director in the media...
Former Fleishman-Hillard executives Doug Dowie and John Stodder were in federal court Monday and got an extension on their conspiracy and wire fraud trial. Their attorneys said that more than...
Today's Daily Journal report on Steve Sugerman, the latest ex-Fleishman-Hillard exec to face charges, says that prosecutors expect Doug Dowie to plead guilty when he appears in federal court Monday...
Now we know who one of the key government witnesses will be against Dowie Dowie and John Stodder, the former Fleishman-Hillard executives charged with fraudulent billngs and conspiracy. Steve Sugerman,...
Union leaders have called a noon news conference, presumably to announce that Councilman Martin Ludlow has been named executive secretary of the County Federation of Labor. The Times story quotes...
The Times identifies Steve Sugerman, a former Fleishman executive and ex-Riordan deputy, as one of the unnamed (and uncharged) co-conspirators. The LAT also says that Dowie is likely to be...
The mayor hopeful has raised almost $1.2 million in two weeks and reports reaching the $1.8 million official fundraising cap for the runoff. The cap will be lifted, however, because...
Remember Fleishman-Hillard? The PR agency's former boss in Los Angeles, Doug Dowie, has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit over losing his $370,000-a-year job in January, the L.A. Business Journal reports....
Daily News City Hall reporter James Nash is jumping to the L.A. Business Journal, where I'm told he will cover the local media. Matt Myerhoff is moving off the media...
In November we told you about Carol Stogsdill, the former Senior Editor and Vice President/News at the Times and later VP at Fleishman-Hillard, taking a senior job at crisis PR...
Robert Parry posted frequent comments at L.A. Observed back when those were part of the mix here. A former reporter and editor, he was an account manager for The Pollack...
Updated through the weekend Lesbian chic: Screenwriter and "L Word" creator Ilene Chaiken is profiled in Sunday's NYT Arts section. "In 1999, after writing a magazine article about same-sex couples...
Bumble Ward is getting out of the Hollywood publicity wars to write novels because, basically, life is too short to hold the hands of celebrity clients. Kim Masters writes in...
Back in Septemer 2003, Alan Arkatov walked down the hall from the downtown office he rented at Fleishman-Hillard and told his pal and F-H boss Doug Dowie that they were...
O'Dwyer's Report, a monthly pub for the PR trade, doesn't think much of all the scrutiny directed at Fleishman-Hillard's controversial activities in Los Angeles. The cartoon showing the agency being...
Bumble Ward, who represents Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola, Tim Burton and others, is quitting the business to write novels. Michael Fleming writes in Variety that "Ward's decision is a stunner:...
A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted former Fleishman-Hillard senior VP John Stodder on 11 counts of wire fraud. These are felony counts and allege that he "participated in a...
Staffers at Fleishman-Hillard offices around California were told this afternoon that Doug Dowie, who had been on paid leave, is "no longer with the firm." If you've been paying attention...
Posting will be light through New Year's Day. But I will probably add a few notes here during the coming week, with the freshest at the bottom. See you all...
Mediabistro.com is trying out a new column on how PR people should pitch various media. It's done Q-and-A style, with the questions posed by Laura Galloway of Galloway Media Group...
Edited since first posted LAist has found a sure-fire way to get more City Hall readership, at least for the day. The blog has posted a Q-and-A with Rick Orlov,...
The Times business section has a new editor on the tech pod. To: The Staff From: Rick Wartzman, Business Editor Aaron Curtiss, Senior Technology Editor Ashley Dunn, Science Editor We...
Forbes calls this story "Flack Attack." The piece by Los Angeles bureau chief Seth Lubove details a legal dispute over $6 million in investments that Michael Sitrick of crisis PR...
For the second day in a row, the papers run stories about bad reaction to Mayor Hahn's political plays with city commissions. This time it's about his appointment last month...
Variety editor Peter Bart turned this month's issue of Vlife (not online) over to guest editor Brett Ratner, director of After the Sunset. Ratner took full advantage, getting stories on...
It's been more than 24 hours since the last post involving Fleishman-Hillard—so here goes. Actually, this news comes from the shop of crisis PR hotshot Michael Sitrick. Today he promoted...
These details are from Copley L.A. bureau reporter David Zahniser, whose story in the Daily Breeze looks at Fleishman-Hillard's other contract, not with the DWP but with the Port of...
In Saturday's Times and Daily News, Controller Laura Chick keeps up the heat on Fleishman-Hillard and Mayor Jim Hahn over their mutually beneficial relationship. Chick posted online at her official...
A week after saying he couldn't make it, Mayor Jim Hahn has decided to attend the Dec. 2 League of Women Voters campaign debate after all. Spokeswoman Julie Wong says...
Hollywood PR power Pat Kingsley of PMK/HBH fired the president of the New York office, Leslee Dart, in a power struggle over control of the firm. Dart's clients include Martin...
Monica Bouldin, who has worked at Warner Bros. and Ruder Finn, takes over day-to-day management of the Los Angeles office of Ogilvy PR. She also leads the office's consumer marketing...
City Controller Laura Chick said today that her audit found $4.2 million in "unsubstantiated, unsupported, and questionable charges" billed to the city by Fleishman-Hillard for public relations services. PRWeek reports...
Doug Dowie, still on administrative leave from Fleishman-Hillard, filed a legal response Friday that denies the City Attorney's lawsuit allegations that, under Dowie, the PR firm padded its billings to...
PR Week's Anita Chabria reports today that an audit confirming that Fleishman-Hillard overbilled the city for public relations services will be released this week next week, according to unnamed sources...
It was news last year when Mayor Hahn's top communications adviser and campaign manager Matt Middlebrook left the City Hall staff for a VP position at Fleishman-Hillard in San Francisco....
The Los Angeles Business Journal continues to give bigger play than other media to the various official investigations keeping the denizens of L.A. City Hall gossiping these days. In this...
Hayley Sumner, who has represented the William Morris Agency, screenwriters and actors (among others), has joined the Los Angeles office of Fleishman-Hillard as a senior vice president. After jettisoning much...
In a story today on the Los Angeles Community Colleges, the Daily News quotes elected trustee Michael Waxman praising the job done for the colleges by PR firm Fleishman-Hillard. They...
PR Week runs a q-and-a today with Richard Kline, the California president of Fleishman-Hillard. They are a mite touchy these days at F-H, so the questions had to be submitted...
The Times is out with a 2,800-word Style profile of Doug Dowie, the newsman-turned-PR exec who is the central figure in the ethics questions about Fleishman-Hillard and its deals with...
Remember Steve Webster, the TV publicity exec who imploded his career by eavesdropping on high-level conference calls at FX long after he was fired? He pleaded no contest yesterday to...
City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's staff has not been a model of stability. In August, his office confirmed that Delgadillo's communications director, Eric Moses, was moving into a new role. The...
I'm about halfway through reading Slick, the funny debut novel by Daniel Price about a deviously creative Los Angeles crisis PR guy — "a shameless man living in shameless times"...
Jonathan Taylor, recently the L.A. Times' TV and radio editor, is leaving daily journalism to become senior vice president of The Lippin Group. Before joining the Times, Taylor was a...
Sunday's Fall Fashion issue of the Times magazine asked stylist Eddie Schachnow to rate the candidates for mayor on their fashion sense. Some excerpts: James Hahn: He could really loosen...
Dominick Rubalcava is president of the commission that oversees the city Department of Water and Power. In an interview with the L.A. Business Journal's Howard Fine, he defends the department's...
Another batch of questionable public relations contracts with a political twist has caught the media's eyes. The Times' Jason Felch reports today that the giant Metropolitan Water District has paid...
New entries added at end    • Former LAT publisher David Laventhol is writing the history of Times Mirror for Public Affairs. The company's former chief exec, his working title is A...
In an email sent to the staff today, embattled PR giant Fleishman-Hillard announced a ban on corprate campaign contributions, set up a hotline for employes to report questionable practices directly...
With no suspense to be had in the big hall, the L.A. mayor's race was the talk of the California delegation at breakfast yesterday morning. The Weekly's Harold Meyerson blogs...
Marc Cooper blogs at the LA Weekly on the most lavish and well-attended party that he (and many in the California delegation) have enjoyed so far in Boston. It was...
An L.A. Times front pager today on Fleishman-Hillard says the agency prides itself on its skills at crisis management, but was slow to recognize that it violated the guiding rule...
Steve Lopez asks in the Times today what DWP customers got for the $20 million paid to Fleishman-Hillard for PR services (his answer: an 11% rate increase). He also plucks...
Last week, a Times editorial called for the head of Frank Salas, the acting general manager of the city Department of Water and Power who approved questionable billings by the...
Fleishman-Hillard has suspended Doug Dowie, the former head of its Los Angeles office and architect of the agency's political practice, while investigating charges from ex-employees that bills to the city...
It's been a while since Fleishman-Hillard has made the news, but above the fold on today's front page, the Times says that the politically connected PR giant routinely inflated its...
Every so often, the mail brings something that lets L.A. Observed give a glimpse behind the scenes of how things really get done. This installment is an email from Joe...
Back in April, Mayor Jim Hahn responded to controversy over city spending on expensive but politically sensitive public relations contracts by promising to get rid of them. It was a...
L.A. Observed has learned that former staffers in the Los Angeles office of Fleishman-Hillard have been getting friendly calls from the St. Louis home office, requesting their cooperation in an...
Mayor Jim Hahn's directive to city officials last week to end expensive outside public relations contracts appears to exempt many services, the L.A. Business Journal reports (free) on the front...
All those competitors who have been taking potshots at Fleishman-Hillard for its city contracts may rue the day. Mayor Hahn today called for all outside public relations deals with the...
How seriously do the bosses back at Fleishman-Hillard headquarters take the public relations agency's media hits here in Los Angeles? Pretty seriously, according to a story in today's St. Louis...
Fleishman-Hillard's St. Louis headquarters announced today that the PR giant will withdraw from its three controversial Los Angeles city contracts. The agency has gotten a ton of bad publicity lately...
Talk is around City Hall and other PR shops in town that the FBI served subpoenas yesterday on Fleishman-Hillard in connection with the federal grand jury looking into possible corruption...
City Controller Laura Chick announced yesterday that she plans to use her audit powers to dig into the $9 million public relations contract between the Department of Water and Power...
Last month, you might remember, Daily News op-ed columnist Mariel Garza vowed to no longer call Fleishman-Hillard because of the cost to taxpayers when the PR giant bills official clients...
Doug Dowie is out as general manager of the Los Angeles office of public relations giant Fleishman-Hillard. But there are two spins swirling around the move announced today in the...
The headline is from a keeper quote in today's L.A. Daily News destined for a long life in local newsrooms and political circles. The story by Rick Orlov and Beth...