Archive: Websites

Entries in this category going back awhile
 

LAist goes dark

laist-logo.jpg Owner kills all the Gothamist and DNAInfo sites after union vote.

Arianna Huffington is done with HuffPo

arianna-huffington-huffpost.jpg Huffington plans to leave the Huffington Post, the site she started 11 years ago, in the coming weeks.

NYT's Michael Cieply named editor of Deadline

Michael-Cieply-zocalo.jpg Michael Cieply, the longtime anchor of New York Times Hollywood coverage in the Los Angeles bureau, is joining Deadline as the executive editor.

Mitra Kalita leaving LA Times for CNN

mitrakalita-cnn.jpg The managing editor for digital strategy lasted just over a year.

Memorial Day media notes: Moves, paywalls, Trump and more

boom-cover-spring2016.jpg Plus a media wedding, the memorial service for Steve Julian and "survivor's mentality" at the LA Times.

LA School Report merges with Campbell Brown group, gets new editor

CampbellBrown-the74.jpg Laura Greanias, former city editor of the LA Daily News, will now run the site for NYC nonprofit The Seventy Four.

Serious kudos for the LA Review of Books

tom-lutz-book-club.jpg The Chronicle of Higher Education piles on the praise, saying there's now "an LARB style" of reviewing.

Grantland site killed by ESPN

grantland-grab.jpg It's effective immediately. Bill Simmons calls callous treatment of staffers "simply appalling."

BuzzFeed newsroom: 58% women and 68% white

buzzfeed-editorial-pie.jpg "We now have more women than men working at BuzzFeed," Jonah Peretti says on his blog. They also are less white than last year.

BuzzFeed walks away from Arts District move

ford-factory-shorenstein.jpg The web operation is still looking for the right LA headquarters, but for now BuzzFeed Motion Pictures is moving to Siren Studios.
ashley-madison-lips.jpg Roughly zero percent of female accounts "had ever shown any kind of activity at all, after the day they were created," analysis of the hacked database finds. Then they realized it was wrong.

Sam Lubell on the Los Angeles he found and leaves

blackbirds-TAN-bullard.jpg At first he mostly saw that it wasn't New York, but the departing West Coast editor of The Architect's Newspaper came to love and respect the LA thing.

American Journalism Review to cease publication

ajr-screen-grab.jpg AJR has been published for 38 years. The print magazine shut down two years ago.

Nikki Finke returns with Hollywood fiction site -- and photo

nikki-finke-2015.jpg Her HollywoodDementia.com will feature short stories, novellas and novel excerpts written by Hollywood insiders "like myself."
fiorina-didnt-register.jpg So somebody else did. Screen grab from CarlyFiorina.org.

BuzzFeed to interview President Obama on Tuesday

ben-smith-fb.jpg If you need another clear marker that BuzzFeed is a news operation with reach and not just a website with lists, this is a pretty good one.

New California website: the Grizzly Bear Project

grizzly-bear-project-grab.jpg Sacramento journalist Anthony York calls the site a passion project to chronicle the changing state.

An always entrancing interactive weather map

wx-map-windyty.jpg Windyty is one of those websites where you can lose a lot of time just staring and trying new views.

The Atlantic will re-absorb The Wire

the-wire-grab.jpg After five years as a semi-independent website and a year under the name The Wire, the site is going back under the banner of The Atlantic.

Los Angeles Review of Books marks three years

larb-blog-logo.jpg Editor Tom Lutz notes the milestones after three years since the first review was published on a temporary Tumblr site, and points out the review is now entirely on its...

New sports biz website in town

field-of-green-grab.jpg The Fields of Green is covering the money side of sports, with David Carter of the USC Sports Business Institute as the featured columnist and key player.

Breitbart News launches a California push

breitbart-california-logo.jpg Breitbart CA will be about "stories worth telling about the successes of the conservative movement in California and the failures of the left-wing establishment." Plus more.

Update to 'Newman dead' hoax story*

newman-dead-tmz.jpg Actor Wayne Knight did not die Sunday in upstate New York or anywhere else.

Zocalo Public Square adds a national and science editor

Jia-Rui-Chong-Cook-zocalo.jpg It's Jia-Rui Cook, the former LA Times reporter and JPL media relations rep.

Deadline staff starts to turn on Finke, it seems

Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for hollywood-sign-oh-vdt.jpg Nikki Finke is "miscast as the victim in this drama," Deadline's senior actual adult, Hollywood trades veteran Michael Fleming, writes in a post on what used to be her site. He refutes several of her core claims and says "Nikki" has turned a personal feud with buyer Jay Penske into "a public spectacle."

Finke says she's locked out of Deadline.com

I guess this is what happens when you sell your website to a guy with money, then challenge him openly.

Nikki Finke signals a new future free of Penske

deadline-hwd-logo.jpg On her Twitter feed, Nikki Finke has been posting in the past hour on what sounds like the beginning of a final break from Jay Penske, the investor who bought her Deadline.com some years back.

Enjoy Condor Cam if you don't mind that they are vultures

condor-cam-grab-102213.jpg The first webcam to stream live video of wild California condors — the largest land birds in North America — warns that the feeding scenes from the Big Sur wilderness can be graphic.

Former LAT national editor joins health news website

Roger Smith will be the managing editor of the California HealthCare Foundation’s Center for Health Reporting at USC Annenberg.

Eric Garcetti rated one of America's most dateable mayors

Thumbnail image for garcetti-wakeland-doting-gary.jpg Insipid web listicle omits the inconvenient truths that Garcetti is married and a father.

BuzzFeed puts neon on storefront office in LA

buzzfeed-la-neon.jpg The new BuzzFeed office is on Beverly Boulevard at Fuller Avenue. That's in the El Coyote neighborhood.

Patch closures and layoffs to roll out over week

But oddly, during a 100-minute conference call in which AOL chief Tim Armstrong said he's now in charge, he fired someone for taking out a camera.

Literary LA documentary falls short of Kickstarter goal

larb-logo-red.jpg The campaign expired yesterday with just $1,268 pledged, far short of the $23,000 sought.

Jacob Soboroff leaves HuffPost Live

jacob-soboroff-huffpost.jpg Soboroff was one of the original hosts for HuffPost Live at the studios in Beverly Hills, and he now becomes the network's third host to leave in two months. He announced yesterday that he will be starting a new gig "in TV land" on Friday, with details to come.
Pandora_Opens_The_Box.jpg Big story for Celeste Fremon's small volunteer, but respected and aggressive, LA investigative news site.

Guardian website has an off button for royal baby coverage

guardian-screen-shot-royal-baby.jpg The Guardian in the U.K. realizes that a lot of its readers are hanging on every tidbit of news about the forthcoming child that would become third in line to the British throne— and that a lot of its readers also think it's all crap.

Boom profiles Hidden LA's Lynn Garrett

lynn-garrett-boom.jpg In the current issue of Boom, Lynell George explores the civic and online phenomenon that is Hidden LA. Plus some observations about Boom, the journal from UC Press that wants to be the California magazine we never had.

LA Times changes up the home page

lat-new-look-grab-62713.jpg With any redesign, like with a revamped restaurant kitchen, it's wise to withhold judgment while we get used to the changes and they figure out how to cook the new menu. Times staffers, meanwhile, are hearing new grim talk of layoffs.

Lee Melville, founding editor of LA Stage Times, dies at 74

Lee-Melville-lastagetimes.jpg "Melville was the most extraordinary advocate Los Angeles theater has known," says the CEO of LA Stage Alliance.

California Watch drops catchy name, goes geo-ambiguous

welcome-to-calif.jpg As the Center for Investigative Reporting, the newsroom in Berkeley will take a more national focus and cut back on the number of stories it undertakes. California Watch has been one of the most successful nonprofit journalism startups in the country.

Ink for Internet talk station Radio Titans

radio-titans-star-news.jpg Radio Titans is an Internet outlet for podcasts that was started by Carl Kozlowski (arts writer for the Pasadena Weekly), Jake Belcher and Brant Thoman. They do Grand Theft Audio ten hours a week and other shows that have guests including Richard Linklater and Burt Bacharach.

Revenge editing is a big blemish on Wikipedia

amanda-filipacchi-fb.jpg If you have been following the ruckus over Wikipedia editors deleting women from the list of American novelists, and moving them to a separate list of female novelists, it keeps getting worse. Note also just how retrograde the trolls are who seek revenge via "edits" on Wikipedia.

Chief Beck, more officials and celebs breached by Russian site

beck-supercross-grab.jpg LAPD Chief Charlie Beck was among the top law enforcement and government officials whose address, social security number and credit reports were posted online. The head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, also had some personal information posted, as did vice president Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Beyonce, Ashton Kutcher and Mel Gibson, among others.

Hidden LA sues Los Angeles Magazine over name *

hidden-la-page-grab.jpg Two years ago, when Los Angeles magazine themed its February special issue the "Hidden LA" issue without credit, W. Lynn Garrett wasn't amused. When it happened again this year, the founder of the wildly popular Hidden Los Angeles Facebook community and website sued in federal court.

Why you saw malware warnings around the web today

chrome-malware.jpg Users of the Chrome web browser, and that's more of the web all the time, were met by a big scary malware warning today at popular news sites. There's no real threat.

BuzzFeed bureau adds Adam Vary to cover film

hollywood-sign-oh-vdt.jpg The Los Angeles bureau of BuzzFeed continues to ramp up. Today Richard Rushfield et al are announcing the hire of Adam Vary as senior film reporter. He comes from the...

Garcetti taking questions today on Reddit's LA page

garcetti-reddit.jpg Mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti is sitting today for what the Reddit online community calls an AMA. He posted about two hours ago: "Hi I'm Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles City Councilmember and candidate for Mayor. Ask me anything. I will be back around 4:00 PT to answer your questions."

Huffington Post names a CEO

Arianna Huffington moves to president and editor in chief of the media group. Jimmy Maymann, previously AOL senior vice president of international, becomes CEO.

TMZ denies that it wants permit for a drone

tmz-faa-drone-article-hollywood-sign-3.jpg In a post rife with punnery, celebrity gossip site TMZ says that contrary to a report that originated in the San Francisco Chronicle, it has no interest in using airborne, unmanned drones to gather news.

On David Foster Wallace and 'The Bad Thing'

larb-page-grab.jpg In a piece at the Los Angeles Review of Books getting some nice social media buzz, Laurie Winer considers Wallace and the reality, and literature, of depression and suicide. Plus: a pitch to donate.

Councilman Krekorian caught faking his Patch columns

paul-krekorian-rect.jpg Self-serving questions from constituents for the 'Ask Paul" column on AOL Patch are actually written by the councilman's press deputy. But let's hope you knew that.

Penske warns The Wrap not to poach from Deadline

the-warp-sign.jpg "Please be advised that PMC employees, including but not limited to Nikki Finke, Mike Fleming, Pete Hammond and Nellie Andreeva, are under long term employment contracts," says the lawyer letter.

Nikki Finke's Deadline calls a time out

variety-sign-300.jpg Amid talk that the owner of Deadline.com is on the verge of buying Variety, Nikki Finke announced on Deadline.com that her staff will be too busy next week on some unstated business to post breaking news nuggets.

Hometown-Pasadena sold by Prospect Park Books

Prospect Park publisher Colleen Dunn Bates created the site in 2006 as a companion to the book "Hometown Pasadena."

Do you have the stuff to blog for Atlantic Cities?

For them it's about the quality of the content, the most precious commodity in the competition for readers' brains.

Lindsay Lohan's Doppelgänger mugshot

lohan-doppelganger.jpg "Vintage mugshots have an eerie beauty to them that’s lost in current mugshot photography," says the website Mugshot Doppelganger. "What would celebrity mugshots, the ones we’ve become accustomed to seeing on TMZ, look like if instead they were taken in the 1920’s?" Asked and answered.

Twitter suspends Nikki Finke accounts — both of them

The anonymous Twitter spoof account that poses as Deadline.com's Nikki Finke currently rings up suspended if you try to visit. And for whatever reason, the real Finke account is also suspended as of now.

Huffington Post launches live streaming channel Monday morning

jacob-soboroff-huffpost.jpg HuffPost Live will begin with eight hours of live web programming out of New York and four hours out of Los Angeles each weekday. It's starting with ten hosts, including the former LA Observed video contributor Jacob Soboroff in the Beverly Hills studio, plus contributions from Huffington Post editors, bloggers and readers.

Gawker's new West Coast editor announces he's black

cord-gawker.jpg Cord Jefferson, who started Monday as the West Coast editor for the Gawker gossip and blog empire, penned an opening greeting post that says he's "the first California staffer since Seth Abramovitch left in January. I'm also the first staffer (on record) to watch hardcore pornography in Fred Willard's favorite Hollywood peep show." Oh, and he's black.

Central Coast politician tries to bully news site

george-ramos-calcoast.jpg Cal Coast News.com, the website that the late journalist and professor George Ramos was leading when he died last year, says that a San Luis Obispo County supervisor is pressuring advertisers and sources to shun the site.

Kirk Honeycutt launches film review site

honeycutt-hollywood-grab.jpg Kirk Honeycutt won't stop reviewing films just because he was laid off in November as chief film critic at the Hollywood Reporter. In addition to teaching a graduate course at Chapman University, he also is posting reviews at Honeycutt's Hollywood.

The successful life pursuits of ex-newspaper people

A laid-off newsman starts Newspaper Alum to tell the stories of those who have blazed a new path. Plus: Relaunch for the food site Zester Daily.

How to change your default Facebook email back to your own

In the last 24 hours or so, Facebook changed the default email address that displays in the profiles of users. It's easy enough to change back, if you care to. Plus; NBC 4 on the worm infecting Facebook accounts.

'On Shaky Ground' wins another honor for California Watch

calif-watch-icon.jpg Last year's California Watch series detailing failures in the way that the state ensures the seismic safety of public schools was singled out for a special prize at this weekend's national convention in Boston of the journalism group Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Jim Paratore, TMZ co-founder was 58

Paratore was a television producer and president of Telepictures, a production division of Warner Bros. Television. He helped to create "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and "The Rosie O'Donnell Show," and in 2006 he teamed up with Harvey Levin to create TMZ.com.

Up close with the collector behind Valley Relics

tommy-gelinas-dn.jpg Burbank native Tommy Gelinas reckons he's spent $300,000 acquiring his personal collection of San Fernando Valley memorabilia and ephemera. He's got a website, blog and busy Facebook page devoted to Valley stuff. Plus: TV writer and ex-Dodgers broadcaster Ken Levine has a Kindle book on growing up in the '60s Valley.

What Tom Lutz of LA Review of Books reads every day

tom-lutz-che.jpg The Chronicle of Higher Education's Pageview blog asked Tom Lutz how his daily reading has changed since he began editing and publishing the Los Angeles Review of Books. There are some things he no longer has time for, his morning ritual now includes Google Analytics, and he includes LA Observed prominently in his blog reading. More

WeHo News goes away for awhile, comes back

ryan-gierach-wehonews.jpg The online newspaper WeHo News apparently shut down March 1 and now has returned. The hiatus was due to founder and editor Ryan Gierach checking himself into residential rehab to quit drinking.

Website relaunched for Los Angeles Review of Books *

larb-website-grab.jpg Nicely done. They wanted to be able to show off the mass of great content already on the site, plus new features, and that they have. The relaunch comes with a call for voluntary memberships to help pay for the online review.

Echo Park Patch invades Silver Lake, takes over

silver-lake-aerial-patch.jpg Speaking of Arianna Huffington's news empire, the AOL Patch site for Echo Park has expanded into adjacent Silver Lake as of today.

Huffington Post wins Pulitzer Prize for national reporting

Talk about a new era at the Pulitzers. The Huffington Post just won its first Pulitzer Prize, in the national reporting category for David Wood's 10-part series on the lives of severely wounded veterans and their families. "We are delighted and deeply honored by the award, which recognizes both David’s exemplary piece of purposeful journalism and HuffPost's commitment to original reporting that affects both the national conversation and the lives of real people," said Arianna Huffington. Politico's political cartoonist Matt Wuerker, who is from Los Angeles, wins too. Click for list of winners.

Ugliest people in sports? New at LA Times site

lorenzo-mata-bleacherreport.jpg Some mainstream media websites seem willing to publish just about anything to squeeze a few more clicks out of visitors.

Parents of Bay Citizen and California Watch officially merge

The boards of the Berkeley-based Center for Investigative Reporting and the Bay Area News Project voted today to merge their organizations.

The issues with IMDb go beyond age *

The Amazon-owned Internet Movie Database is secretive, annoying to the Hollywood people it tracks and the data can be wrong.

LA Review of Books gets $25,000 from Amazon

The money will be used to help launch a new website and to pay contributing editors, columnists and writers.

Ex-Brentwood Patch editor finally explains his firing

BrentwoodCincoPatch.jpg He was fired for a satirical cartoon skewering Brentwood's white residents that AOL Patch editors deemed "blatantly racist."

Breitbart was working on big new project when he died

Andrew Breitbart was deeply engaged on a mystery project that would mark "a transition into a different kind of journalism," his chief deputy tells the LA Weekly.

LA area police have private info hacked, posted

Hackers released the names, addresses and phone numbers of more than 100 law enforcement officers whose information was pilfered from the web site of the Los Angeles County Police Canine Association.

Kudos to California Watch for Polk Award

Emergency-sign-cw.jpg California Watch, the Bay Area-based non-profit, only started up in 2009, but it employs the largest investigative team of any journalism operation in the state and keeps spinning out noteworthy investigations.

A non-profit news model doesn't work out

Chicago News Cooperative, an online alternative to the Tribune and Sun-Times run by former Los Angeles Times editor Jim O'Shea, will shut down later this month.

LA Times, KTLA websites down for the moment *

Technical problems at parent Tribune Company, staffers say on Twitter. White screen at LA Times.com, nearly so at Channel 5.

The Onion ribs the Huffington Post

Nice one, via Jim Romenesko NEW YORK—Shocked and saddened witnesses at the Huffington Post’s news-aggregation facility have confirmed that employee Henry Evers, 25, died Wednesday after being sucked into the...

Awesome website, awesome letter

Read the letter from an emancipated slave to his former master in August 1865, rejecting an offer of employment.

Goodreads makes the break from Amazon

goodreads-screen-grab.jpg "Goodreads celebrates it's Independence today", founder Otis Y. Chandler tweets.

Newhall Pass closed again? There's an app for that

what+will+close+nehall+pass.jpg The narrow squeeze between the San Fernando Valley and points north shuts down so often that a blog has come up with the, um, Comprehensive Newhall Pass Disaster Planning Tool.

Huffington Post planning web TV 'network' to rival CNN

Arianna Huffington and AOL chairman Tim Armstrong have been dropping hints about the Huffington Post Streaming Network, or HPSN.

Co-sponsors moving away from SOPA and PIPA *

wired-site-protest.jpg Online protests today against the Stop On-line Piracy Act in the House and the Senate's Protect Intellectual Property Act appear to be having an effect.

Why Boing Boing will go dark on January 18

access-denied-flickr.jpg Pioneering and wildly popular Los Angeles-based blog Boing Boing will take down all content temporarily on Wednesday, Jan. 18 to protest the proposed Protect IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act pending in Congress.

Finke calls out Variety over time stamp allegation

Read Nikki Finke's note to Variety executives, including this line: "When is Variety going to stop stealing Deadline's scoops without any credit?"

Pocho.com has a new look and scope

pocho+logo.jpg Cartoonist and satirist Lalo Alcaraz has relaunched Pocho, his news y satire site, to target Latinos nationwide. Bylines include Barney Asada (get it?) and posts from Alcaraz, including his review of 2011 in cartoons.

Sex, cheerleaders and Jackie Johnson?

cbs2-jackie-johnson-refers.jpg I can't imagine that Channel 2 weathercaster Jackie Johnson could be too happy at how the station's website arranges its photo galleries.

Read the memo: L.A.'s Latino Patch sites launch

The note is from Marcia Parker, West Coast Editorial Director for AOL's Patch websites.

Metro confirms trouble with 405 retaining wall

I-405-logo-color.jpg Metro says it has no cause yet for the failure of a retaining wall section on the 405 freeway improvement project in Sepulveda Pass.

Reality hits home at Voice of San Diego

Award-winning site lays off four, cuts budget and refocuses the core mission.

Somebody's dreaming big in Long Beach

IslandofLongBeach-grab.jpg The Island of Long Beach is promoting a huge 'shopping, dining and entertainment district" around the Queen Mary and promising to create 300,000 jobs.

Deadline.com website infected (or something) *

attack-page.jpg Nikki Finke's Hollywood news site has been slapped with Google's dreaded (and often overheated) "attack site" designation.

Romenesko launches his new media (and other things) blog

Jim Romenesko's first post at the new website is titled "How I ended up leaving Poynter."

Pajamas Media changes clothes

Roger L. Simon's mostly politics and media operation is morphing from the L.A.-based Pajamas brand into PJ Media, as he explains.

Media memo: Patch hires up for new Latino sites

santee-scene.jpg Marcia Parker, Patch.com's West Coast editorial director, sent this note out to the other local Patchies about staffing for the mixed Spanish-English news sites.

LA Radio signs off for the last time

LARadiocom-final.jpg Don Barrett is hanging up his virtual microphone after 15 years chronicling the radio community in Southern California.

Hollywood Reporter deletes code grabbed from Finke's site

The Wrap saucily offers to let THR use its website code.

Finke threat actually turns into lawsuit against Hollywood Reporter

Federal suit by Penske Media Corporation alleges copyright infringement and more.

Lokomotiv Yaroslavl website fades to black

lokomotiv-website.jpg HCLokomotiv.ru...

Slate lays off media writer Jack Shafer

Shafer was part of the original team that launched Slate with Michael Kinsley in 1996.

Romenesko to semi-retire from media aggregating

He will give up his full-time employee status and post part-time for Poynter, do some tweeting and launch JimRomenesko.com in January. Poynter will rename its site Romenesko+.

Another big month for LATimes.com

The latest monthly memo from online managing editor Jimmy Orr says that the L.A. Times website is now the second most-read newspaper site in the country.

BookTour.com to shut down

The web-based tools and service for authors wishing to promote their own books will close down Sept. 1

Amid new talk of layoffs, blogs are hot at the Times

A sudden flurry of high-level meetings and grim faces this week at the Los Angeles Times has people in the newsroom on edge again. But stats are up at LATimes.com.

HuffPost apologizes for over-aggregating

What the Huffington Post does with many stories it picks up from others is have a junior writer rewrite them without adding new facts or smart observation, then not hint until the end that the story actually came from somewhere else.

NYT media on TMZ, Breitbart

andrewbreitbart.jpg New York Times media reporters have takes this weekend on two L.A.-based fixtures on the current media scene.

Continuing the conversation on L.A. theater

Here's a report by Los Angeles theater types who aren't fans of the Center Theater Group model.

Curbed, Eater sites knocked off line by the FBI *

Curbed LA, Eater LA and the sites they share ownership with are off the air because the FBI raided their server host in Virginia — looking for info on someone unrelated to Curbed — and grabbed their machines too.

The Wrap calls on THR to stop 'stealing' scoops

Sharon Waxman of The Wrap calls out The Hollywood Reporter under Janice Min for lifting scoops and calling them "exclusives."

Finke makes the day interesting (again)

lynne-segall.jpg In the small world of the Hollywood trades, Tuesday began with the former L.A. Times advertising exec Lynne Segall quitting MMC to become publisher and senior VP of The Hollywood Reporter. Then Nikki Finke posted a 1,300 word screed against Segall.

LA Weekly names its web awards

BestoftheWeb_01.jpg Hey, we're on the LA Weekly's list this year.

Huffington now employs about 1,300 journalists

The number of full-time journalists that Arianna Huffington now oversees is more than the staffs of the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post. Still, all's not well in the merger of Huffington and AOL.

Bob Dylan at Hollywood Bowl, 1965 *

dylan-hwd-bowl.jpg The Hollywood Bowl is celebrating its 90th year by posting a Twitter-sized nugget from the archives on the web each day.

A roundabout answer to Westside traffic

dupont.jpg Westwood architect Jamie B. Myer has designed an innovative solution to the bottleneck that forms along Santa Monica Boulevard where it crosses under the 405 freeway.

HuffPost to go multi-cultural, add Spanish in SoCal

New officers named plus plans for Spanish-language Patch sites in Southern California.
Entertainment blogger Nikki Finke may be on medical leave, but a post she put up — then took down — has prompted renewed talk of "Crazy Nikki" and "Hollywood’s leading internet terrorist."

Which mayor candidate doesn't control her web domain?

Check out the latest posts at wendygreuel.com.

California Watch wants your story

calif-watch-icon.jpg California Watch, the Northern California-based non-profit investigative newsroom, will have a staffer on the Eastside Monday morning to chat about potential stories.

LAFD TV is on the air

lafd-tv-brian.jpg The fire department is streaming live tonight from the desk of public information office Brian Humphrey.

Blogdowntown suspends print weekly

bdownown-print-feb32011.jpg Blogdowntown's weekly print edition hit the streets last August, and it stopped regular publication in February.

John Montorio surfaces with Huffington Post *

montorio1011a.jpg John Montorio, the former features editor at the Los Angeles Times, will be named the top features editor of the newly AOL-ized Huffington Post.

Finke story on the Today Show? *

An NBC source says that "Today" will do a pre-Oscars piece about (or with?) Deadline's Nikki Finke in the 7:30 a.m. half-hour on Friday's show.

Finke unloads on The Wrap with post, lawyer letter *

Deadline's Nikki Finke has publicly called out The Wrap for taking her content, and reports that a "cease-and-desist" letter was sent from her corporate overseer to Sharon Waxman and her board of directors

Hidden Los Angeles versus Los Angeles Magazine

HiddenLA-lamag.jpg Los Angeles magazine's Hidden LA cover package this month has some fun stuff. Not amused, though, are fans of the wildly popular Hidden LA website and Facebook page.

The lowdown on Arianna Huffington's adviser and right-hand

We mean Kenneth Lerer, the former AOL and Microsoft official — and ex-Democratic campaign strategist — who helped launch the Huffington Post and remains as chairman.

Memo: LAT promotes Orr to managing editor, online

Jimmy Orr, the deputy editor for LATimes.com, is getting the promotion to managing editor, online.

HuffPost bloggers not so widely read

silver-huffpostchart-nyt.png Posts by "free" bloggers get a very small piece of the Huffington Post's huge readership, says the NYT's Nate Silver.

Rutten pretty much nails AOL and Huffington journalism

Tim Rutten's op-ed column in the L.A. Times tomorrow gives Arianna Huffington, the Huffington Post and AOL their due for what they do right, journalistically. But he also skewers some of the less praise-worthy realities.

Will HuffPost start to pay its bloggers? Will they care?

The Huffington Post counts something more than 6,000 volunteer blog writers who contribute for various reasons: to join in the conversation, to get a clipping, to push their pet cause, maybe even to claim an affiliation they use to gain access to events or impress a date.

First look at AOL as HuffPost, via Kara Swisher

aol-huff-mockup.jpg Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal posted the page, as well as scoring a video interview with Arianna Huffington and AOL's Tim Armstrong before the announcement on Sunday...

AOL to buy Huffington Post and put Arianna in charge

Arianna Huffington will take control of all of AOL’s editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group, under the deal reached Sunday night.

KCET chairman: Back to PBS some day, maybe

KCET Chairman Gordon Bava was asked by Broadcasting & Cable if the Los Angeles station might return to the PBS fold. To much surprise, he said yeah, could be.

Open Table from the restaurant's point of view

The reservation service is a mixed bag of good and bad, says Angeli's Evan Kleiman on her KCRW blog.

Kung Pao Kitty closing

kung-pao-kitty-patch.jpg Friday is the last day for the Hollywood Boulevard restaurant and bar that the new AOL Patch Hollywood says helped clean up a blighted stretch of the street.

Denis Dutton, Arts & Letters Daily founder was 66

arts-letters-header.jpg Denis Dutton in 1998 created the well-read Arts & Letters Daily, which the New Yorker's Blake Eskin today calls "the first and foremost aggregator of well-written and well-argued book reviews, essays, and other articles in the realm of ideas. Denis was the intellectual’s Matt Drudge."

Exploring Elks Lodge #99, better known as the Park Plaza

Park-Plaza-117.jpg Journalism students at USC Annenberg have put together a website exploring the two blocks around MacArthur Park, with one focus on the Park Plaza hotel at Park View and 6th Street.

Two more Patch sites debut

Sherman Oaks and Echo Park start up this week, with familiar names involved.

Huffington Post says it will make a profit this year

Arianna tells Bloomberg News that the company will make it first annual profit this year.

Finke: Speier hasn't parted ways

Screen shot 2010-12-13 at 10.20.06 PM.jpg Michael Speier is no longer Nikki Finke's managing editor at Deadline, just three months after he hired on to much Finkeian fanfare. But he hasn't completely left either, she emails.

Dia de los election muertos

dayofdead-election.jpg One of the stranger election graphics: a day of the dead theme at L.A. Forward, where Oscar Garza and Carmen Dixon Rosenzweig live-blogged election night.

LA Stage Times debuts

lastagetimes-shirley.jpg The website formerly known as LAStageBlog — itself an outgrowth of LA Stage magazine — is now bigger, better and design-ier.

Booo on AP proofreaders

APStylebookerror.jpg A reader sent in this screen grab from the Associated Press web page. Can you spot the mistake?

Howard Kurtz leaves Post for Daily Beast

Even the Washington Post's looongtime media writer has been seduced by the siren call of online fame and riches. Kurtz will be the Washington bureau chief for the Daily Beast.

The local downside of AOL Patch

The AOL news sites are posing a threat to long-established but lesser-funded local news outlets around the L.A. area, says an LA Weekly story by Tibby Rothman.

HuffPost says Mayhill Fowler full of it

"How do you resign from a job you never had?," Huffington Post spokesman Mario Ruiz says about ex-blogger Mayhill Fowler.

Mayhill Fowler quits HuffPost, wants to be paid *

Mayhill Fowler was the Huffington Post election blogger who got a lot of attention during the 2008 campaign for recording Bill Clinton's three-minute rant about Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum and Barack Obama's critique of "bitter" small-town Americans.

Pasadena Now goes to the outsource card again

Three years after he got national attention and local criticism for outsourcing some local coverage of Pasadena to reporters working in India (and then in-sourced again), James McPherson says his new Pasadena Now web video channel will also hire in Asia.

Newsweek's Fineman jumps to Huffington Post

Howard Fineman, who the New York Times calls "one of the more recognizable pundits on cable television and a correspondent for Newsweek for 30 years," is leaving the magazine to become a senior politics editor at The Huffington Post.

Encyclopedia of Wikipedia edits on Iraq war

wikipedia-iraq.jpg James Bridle has published every edit to the Wikipedia entry for the Iraq War, from the article's creation in December of 2004 to November 2009, as a 12-volume set.

Speier, formerly of The Wrap and Variety, joins Deadline

After Michael Speier was laid off last year as executive editor of Daily Variety, he served a stint as news editor for Sharon Waxman at The Wrap. Now he's joining Waxman's arch-rival Nikki Finke in the new position of managing editor at Deadline.

California Watch declares itself a success

California Watch has been at it for a year now, and says its 11 full-time reporters are "by far the largest investigative team operating in the state."

Find out your closest gas pipeline, if you can wait

The National Pipleine Mapping System website lets you search for the natural gas main lines near you, but in the aftermath of the San Bruno tragedy it is being overloaded with requests.

New look for Channel 2 news on the web

logo-cbsla5.png It's branded now as CBS Los Angeles and includes stuff from the two TV stations, CBS 2 and KCAL 9, and radio stations KNX and KFWB. Plus a whole lot that has little to do with CBS.

Daily Beast snatches up Pelisek

Last month when the Grim Sleeper arrest broke, the LA Weekly's Christine Pelisek wrote about her background in the case for the Daily Beast. Now she'll join their LA bureau.

Waxman flacks her conference at Finke's expense

In her column at The Wrap, editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman invites arch-rival on the web Nikki Finke to come speak at the Wrap's first entertainment industry leadership conference.

Journo launches new Olympics website

Alan Abrahamson, who covered the Olympics and international sports for the Los Angeles Times and NBC, has started 3 Wire Sports in Los Angeles.

WeHo News has been sold

A controlling interest in WeHo News, the West Hollywood cyber newspaper, has been purchased by Mark Hundahl and David Stern, the partners in Frontiers Media LLC, which publishes the gay magazine Frontiers IN Los Angeles.

HuffPost's 'massive manhunt' that wasn't

Many news outlets are reporting on arrests in the Trousdale Estates murder. Only the Huffington Post headline, though, screams "massive manhunt" -- even the story doesn't back it up.

For those who like their politics verbatim

California Watch's site called Politics Verbatim compiles the actual words spoken by the candidates for governor in a searchable database.

New Hollywood and media beats editor for NYT

Mary Jo Murphy has been an editor at at the New York Times' Week in Review section and on the metro and national desks. Plus morning media notes.

LAT staffers warned about Facebook 'friends'

ashton-aracely.jpg A number of Facebook "friends" have surfaced recently claiming to be employees of the Los Angeles Times, but with little other info on their profiles — and always a young woman's photo.

New site presents news from multiple angles

Qewz is a technology-driven slice on the day's news, vowing to gather various angles on big stories and include left, right, middle, upper, lower, etc.

The Wrap relaunches its look

amanda-bynes-140.jpg The Wrap has now been around long enough to reach that point in every website's life where it had to start over with a new design and back-end infrastructure.

Huffington Post adds arts vertical

The editor of HuffPost Arts is artist Kimberly Brooks, a habitue of Arianna Huffington's Brentwood salons who is married to actor Albert Books. The bloggers-for-free will include Suzanne Muchnic, the...

The couple that blogs for HuffPost together...

mayorlakers-fox11.JPG The Huffington Post loves Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, or at least loves his press releases. And now Lu Parker promotes her stuff there too.

Hidden Los Angeles goes full-time

Lynn Garrett, who started the Hidden Los Angeles website and wildly popular Facebook pages of the same name about a year ago, has quit her job to run the sites and plans to hire an employee.

Applause: Rafat Ali leaving paidContent

rafat-ali-atd.jpg li created his media business news site eight years ago, sold parent company ContentNext to the London-based Guardian Media group two years ago, and recently moved to New York from Los Angeles.

Breitbart profiled in The New Yorker

breitbart-cartoon-tny.jpg This time it's The New Yorker and Rebecca Mead who go driving in Los Angeles with Andrew Breitbart, the rising right-wing media mogul who makes no pretense that for him it's all about defeating the left.

Witness LA and Spot.Us team up

The LA Justice Report will be a joint effort of Witness LA, journalist Celeste Fremon's blog, and the Spot.Us project that helps readers fund journalism they support. "The idea is...

HuffPost burned by its own Facebook journalism *

After the arrest of Faisal Shahzad in the Times Square firebomb attempt, the Huffington Post quickly grabbed a photo off Facebook and said it was him. It wasn't.

Todd McCarthy joins IndieWire

todd-mccarthy-mug.jpg Less than two months after losing his longtime gig as chief film critic at Variety, Todd McCarthy has signed on with IndieWire to do film commentary on a blog they are calling Todd McCarthy's Deep Focus.

The Wrap announces new funding

The venture capital firm co-founded by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has, along with other investors, put another $2 million into The Wrap, the site says in a news release.

In re Finke v The Wrap, I guess we'll know soon *

They can't both be right. I suppose we'll find out pretty soon which one is BSing.

TV MoJoe a no go

Sharon Waxman sends word that while Joe Adalian is leaving as television editor of The Wrap, the TV blog he brought with him is staying.

HuffPost coming up on five years

Media analyst Ken Doctor parses the Huffington Post numbers at Nieman Journalism Lab.

TV MoJoe leaves The Wrap for Vulture *

Joe Adalian just joined the Wrap last June, but he's taking his address book and his TV MoJoe blog (originally started at TV Week) to New York Magazine's entertainment site Vulture.

Gabe Snyder lands at Newsweek

Gabriel Snyder, let go recently as editor-in-chief at Gawker after several media stints in L.A., is joining Newsweek Digital as executive editor.

Johnston on 'Which Way, L.A.?' tonight

David Cay Johnston's visiting blogger piece for LA Observed on Friday about his experiences covering Daryl Gates and the LAPD in the early 1980s has been getting some nice attention and attracting favorable emails. Johnston will be a guest on "Which Way, L.A.?" with Warren Olney on KCRW at 7:30 p.m.

Media notes: Waxman, Arellano, Katz, Welk

Catching up on some notes.

California Watch hiring again

The investigative reporting venture based up north is looking to add another enterprise reporter and a new position for them, public engagement manager.

Now begin The Entryway spoofs

Ophelia Chong posts an item at her KCET blog on moving in with some women in the Valley, "so that I can better report back to my friends who refuse to go north of the 134 and west of the 405."

The Entryway responds to criticisms

The journalists who are living with a Mexican immigrant family near MacArthur Park posted some new FAQs tonight aimed at addressing some of the criticism directed at the reporting project.

'The Entryway' spurs dismay and a response

Daniel Hernandez's post about the white journalists living with a Latino family near MacArthur Park has attracted a number of commenters who agree with him that it's a misguided and in some ways offensive project.

Celebrating the art of the desert

bray-train-desertart.jpg Ann Japenga's new website wallows in the art, history and landscape of the California desert, "an online magazine and gathering place for desert rats, collectors, historians, artists and anyone who loves the early painters of the desert...where landscape, history and art come together under the brow of Mount San Jacinto."

New L.A. charity: The Jamie Fund

Jimmy-Choo-shoes.jpg Boston and Fenway Park have the famous Jimmy Fund. Now eTrueSports.com thinks it's time for all of Los Angeles to get behind The Jamie Fund.

Deadline.com hires again, expands into TV

The show business news franchise anchored by Nikki Finke's Deadline | Hollywood has hired Nellie Andreeva, television editor of The Hollywood Reporter since 2004, to become TV editor.

LA Observed on KCRW: Media future

The recent onslaught of announcements about new ventures in local news media, leading with The Entryway around MacArthur Park — and my visit this week to a class at USC Annenberg — inspire today's LA Observed Friday commentary on KCRW. Keyword: optimism.

Breitbart, new media David or neocrank?

andrew-breitbart-time.jpg The Time magazine that hits print tomorrow will have a piece by Steve Oney on Andrew Breitbart, the Brentwood-based right-wing media impresario and culture war provocateur. The story covers the rise of Breitbart's website empire and his driving passion to conquer liberal influence on American culture and politics.

Huffington loses investigative editor after 10 months

Larry Roberts, hired away last spring from the Washington Post to run the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, is leaving for Bloomberg News.

The Hump shuts its doors

the-hump-logo.png The Santa Monica Airport restaurant that served whale sushi posted on its website that it was closing today after 12 years with an apology to "our loyal customers, the city...

Google ads as a force in elections

"Marketplace" aired a story today that looked at how Google ads were used to good effect by the Scott Brown Senate campaign in Massachusetts.

Sylvie Drake is an old joke-telling Jew

Sylvie Drake, theater critic of the Los Angeles Times for a couple of decades, shows up now in the video series Old Jews Telling Jokes.

AOL's Patch launches in Manhattan Beach

The Patch approach of hyper-local news hubs debuted today on the West Coast with the unveiling of a site in the South Bay.

Matt Labov leaves B|W|R after a month as president

Actually, Labov was co-president of the Hollywood PR firm with Leslie Sloane Zelnik. Therein may lie a clue into his departure.

Elvis Mitchell, sartorialist

elvis-mitchell-sartorialist.jpg Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist posted this photo of longtime L.A. media person Elvis Mitchell after being interviewed by Mitchell on "The Treatment" on KCRW.

James Cameron to direct Tiger Woods press conference (not)

tiger-avatar.jpg But just imagine if Cameron did take over Woods' Friday coming out, as the crazy guys have at eTrueSports.

Dan Weintraub launches health news website

HealthyCal debuts today, billing itself as "a new independent, non-profit web site focused on the health of Californians and their communities."

Google makes quick fixes to Buzz

Journalists and others with confidentiality issues may no longer have to worry quite as much about Google's new Buzz social media product automatically disclosing their Gmail address and frequent correspondents.

How 'Rough & Tumble' comes together each day

Jack Kavanagh has been producing Rough & Tumble, "the single most essential news source for California political junkies," since 2002 and has logged more than 35 million page views.

Visiting blogger: The Wrap punk'd by Republican

jay-rosen-thumb-140x151-2346.jpg NYU journalism professor and media critic/innovator Jay Rosen argues in a Visiting Blogger post that The Wrap fell for a tale about GOP consultant Frank Luntz going Hollywood.

ESPN/LA hires have domino effect in local market

When ESPN staffed up its local operation in Los Angeles, it hired several staffers from the Daily News and Los Angeles Times. The result has been some promotions and hiring at those papers.

Bay Area news startup names editor, rest still unclear *

jonathan-weber.jpg Jonathan Weber, the former Los Angeles Times tech editor who co-founded (and recruited me to join) The Industry Standard magazine a decade ago,will be the editor-in-chief of the new Bay...

Afternoon news and notes

A roundup of items in the news and our in-box.

Anne Thompson analyzes Finke moves

Hollywood columnist-blogger Anne Thompson says that hiring Mike Fleming away from Variety is a smart move for Deadline|Hollywood, if he can co-exist with Nikki Finke.

Finke takes a couple more reporters

The company backing Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood blog is expanding the site with two more entertainment journalists, including Variety veteran Mike Fleming.

Amanda, only sometimes real

amandacongdonscreen.jpg When Amanda Congdon, the host of web show Sometimes Daily, got married in June, I linked to video of her apparently skateboarding down the hill on Ocean Park Boulevard to...

Happy New Year from LARadio

LARadioLogo201.jpg Don Barrett has made his daily news posts at LARadio.com free without registering.

Nikki Finke takes a reporter

Diane Haithman, the former Los Angeles Times arts and enterrtainment writer, has joined Finke's Deadline Hollywood as an interviewer of TV show runners

Breitbart kicks off Big Journalism

andrewbreitbart.jpg Los Angeles-based media impresario and culture warrior Andrew Breitbart launched his latest website.

TMZ suckered by fake JFK photo

jfknot.jpg Even if the creased, black-and-white picture of John F. Kennedy on a boat with naked skinnydippers were real, TMZ went more than a little overboard.

TMZ's next target: sports

Harvey Levin is already staffing up for TMZ Sports, says Brian Stelter in the New York Times. TMZ’s specialty is unvarnished celebrity coverage. And because Mr. Levin sees a lot...

Rushfield leaving Gawker?

Richard Rushfield, hired away from the L.A. Times just last July to be west coast editor for Gawker, is leaving for an entertainment start-up, says Dylan Stableford at The Wrap....

ESPN kicks off in L.A.

ESPN's new Los Angeles website does have, as rumored, columnist J.A. Adande, plus former Daily News sports staffers Tony Jackson and Ramona Shelburne, Steve Mason and John Ireland from ESPN...

LAT books, science (and sports?) take hits

Today is departure day for some of the Los Angeles Times staffers who were laid off this week or who retired and/or took buyouts. Arts reporter Suzanne Muchnic sent a...

Mashable's Open Web Awards

More than 780,000 online votes were cast for the best in 50 web and social media categories. The New York Times won for best online newspaper. List...

$2 million in funding for 'Goodreads'

The books-and-social-networking site Goodreads announced last week it has picked up $2 million in venture capital funding — its second round. Founder Otis Chandler, grandson of the former L.A. Times...

Breitbart expanding into righty news

Andrew Breitbart's Los Angeles-based family of aggressively right-wing websites will soon grow by one. Big Journalism's target will be what Breitbart calls the "Democratic-media complex” and the stated goal will...

Variety tries pay wall again

This is at least the third iteration I recall, but Variety on Thursday will start charging again for some web content. Here's how the trade explains it: After clicking on...

"Nine" packs a crowd

One tactic the Hollywood news site The Wrap is using to get its name out there is to host free film screenings. Judging by tonight, it's working. So many people...

Daily News needs new online editor

Online Editor Ryan Garfat is leaving the Daily News to be one of five editors working on ESPN's soon-to-launch Los Angeles site, working out of the L.A. Live newsroom downtown....

OK, here's the HuffPost release

The Los Angeles page is up. Here's a snip from the release out of New York, where the Huffinton Post's paid staff of editors and aggregators is based: The Huffington...

HuffPost starts rolling out L.A. content

The debut Los Angeles page isn't officially up yet, but if you poke around at the Huffington Post you can find new posts by UCLA Chancellor Gene Block saying that...

ESPN sets the date with L.A.

The sports giant said back in July it was coming to Los Angeles with a local news website, and now we know it will launch Dec. 21. "ESPN's launch of...

AOL bloggers get their orders

A leaked email from an editor at AOL reveals how the service wants its blogger-journalists to get the job done. One way is to focus to an extreme on using...

Little Green Footballs breaks with right

It has admittedly been a long time since I looked at Charles Johnson's blog Little Green Footballs, and I don't find myself picking up all that much from Pajamas Media,...

Spot.Us names editor for L.A.

Anh Do, a former columnist for the Orange County Register and vice president of Nguoi Viet Daily News (the largest Vietnamese-language newspaper in the U.S.), will be the managing editor...

Eyes on L.A.

My KCRW commentary today talked about two photographers of L.A. who approach their subject from different directions, Bruce Davidson and Martin Schall. It aired, as every Friday, at 4:44 p.m....

Paging Dr. Fielding

Last night on KCRW's Which Way, L.A.?, Warren Olney noted that Dr. Jonathan Fielding, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, declined to take questions directly from...

HuffPo's pitch to L.A. bloggers

If you receive an email with the subject line "An Invitation from The Huffington Post Los Angeles," you are one of the legions being offered the chance to blog for...

Yaroslavsky as web news pioneer

zevblog.jpg That innovative new website for Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky that we told you about in May has gone live. It features a blog by Yaroslavsky and stories about county news and...

H1N1 flu deaths detailed *

h1n1map.jpg The students at USC's Neon Tommy looked into the Los Angeles County deaths attributed to the H1N1 flu and mapped the cases — 57 since April, when it was known...

HuffPost gears up in L.A.

Talk is of a Dec. 1 launch date for the Los Angeles edition of the Huffington Post, which has been interviewing for positions. Tina Daunt, laid off last month by...

Chronicle embeds a message to Guv

The Flash Report's Jon Fleischman spots a coded message to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the margin of a San Francisco Chronicle editorial about the governor's embedded finger to Assemblyman Tom...

Bonnie Fuller hires an editor, is hiring

Bonnie Fuller is the "tabloid maven," as Style Section L.A. puts it, who is revamping HollywoodLife.com as part of the fledgling Jay Penske media empire. Fuller has hired New York...

Mikulan joins The Wrap

About a week after leaving the LA Weekly, Steven Mikulan has been inked to write a new blog for The Wrap to be called L.A. Noir. The site also announced...

KNBC polling on LA Observed?

knbcharrispoll2.jpg One of our helpful readers emailed the evidence that KNBC is asking its readers to rate the station's staffed-up, big-deal but news-lite website alongside little old us: Thought you might...

Huffington launches a book channel

The Huffington Post — which, incidentally, has been interviewing potential staffers for its upcoming Los Angeles news site — today announced a book section. From Arianna's post: Since I was...

Rushfield: LAT 'kind of tragic'

Now that he's jumped to be west coast editor for Gawker, Richard Rushfield talks about why he left as entertainment editor of the Los Angeles Times website — and why...

Create a fake expense report

Use Expense-a-steak to generate some phony receipts, from a restaurant in midtown Manhattan via Virginia Postrel on Twitter. Hahaha....

Community journalism play expands to L.A.

David Cohn's Spot.us, which raises money from website readers to finance longer-form journalism, is opening in Los Angeles in association with USC Annenberg. He's looking for a managing editor. The...

Anschutz adds another media arm

Billionaire Phil Anschutz's Examiner.com is acquiring the citizen journalism site NowPublic for about $25 million, according to paidcontent. Remember, back in June Forbes said that L.A.'s most publicly elusive major...

TMZ caught back-dating a post

The Smoking Gun was the first site to post an old police mug shot of John Mayer, but for awhile there TMZ claimed it was first — and looks to...

Microsoft apologizes for Polish black-out

msftads.jpg Yeah, Microsoft is shocked and dismayed at its own Photoshopping of an African American man out of its Polish website. We pointed out the original yesterday; here's Guy Adams, the...

Too black for Poland (or Microsoft)

msftus.jpg Look who Microsoft PhotoShopped off of its business productivity web page in Polish. After the jump:...

Parting ways with Crux L.A.

Journalist Donnell Alexander has been talking recently about he and his fiance being the "founding curators" of an upcoming Los Angeles culture website called Crux L.A. Well, that honeymoon is...

New L.A. music website

Bluefat is by John Payne, a former music editor of the L.A. Weekly. He calls it "a magazine for music, film and visual art devotees with open minds and a...

New food site

Former Los Angeles Times reporters are key players in Zester Daily, which bills itself as "the latest news and information from around the globe about all aspects of food and...

Kaye's meltdown 'denier' called out

Ron Kaye's new organ for his activist brand of politics and news, OurLA.org, ran a long piece yesterday claiming to debunk the "meltdown myth" regarding the 1959 nuclear reactor incident...

Chez Manny, the hair salon chain

chez manny.jpg Not really. But Frank Coffey at eTrueSports has fun with the concept of a chain of shops where everybody can just be Manny. Noted: Time Warner Cable's official story is...

TMZ falls for hoax

TMZ.com received a lot of attention and some praise — including from me — for scooping the rest of the media on the cardiac arrest and later death of Michael...

HuffPost grabs from WashPost

Jose Antonio Vargas, a national reporter at the Washington Post who covered the intersection of politics and technology during the 2008 campaign, was named Technology and Innovations Editor of the...

ESPN invading Los Angeles

The cable sports giant will announce plans Monday for a website devoted to covering Los Angeles sports teams. It has worked for ESPN in Chicago, but L.A. Times sports boss...

L.A. Jewish history on Flickr

Frances Dinkelspiel, the author who talks tonight at ALOUD about "Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California," is also president of the board at the...

LA Biz Journal back online

The Los Angeles Business Journal site went dark on Tuesday and didn't come back until late this morning. No, they weren't mourning Michael Jackson. Editor's note posted today: The Business...

Draw on Dana Goodyear's website

Move your cursor around and create some art on the site of poet and Los Angeles-based New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear....

Jackson good for L.A. Times numbers

TMZ may have won the breaking news competition, but the Los Angeles Times is happy with the web traffic brought in by Michael Jackson's death. It's a new record for...

TMZ's win on Jackson

While mainstream news outlets played it cautious and lagged behind on Michael Jackson, or flopped around online as the L.A. Times did, it was upstart TMZ that displayed the best...

Kodachrome no more

The Eastman Kodak Co. announced today that it's retiring Kodachrome, the world's first commercially successful color film, after 74 years. Declining demand in a digital age. Huffington Post Regarding Huff...

From TV Week to the web

Josef Adalian, the television editor at Variety for nine years until jumping last year to TV Week as deputy editor, is moving again. This time he is going to The...

NBC to acquire football fan website

Mike Florio, the fan who started Profootballtalk.com eight years ago, hits it big. NBC will announce Monday that is acquiring rights to PFT's content and will run it at the...

Morning Buzz: Thursday 6.11.09

Conan O'Brien has lost viewers each night since his debut, and on Tuesday David Letterman won the ratings. LAT, Variety Twentieth Century Props, the entertainment industry's second-oldest prop house,...

Nice L.A. custom search

You can now search the websites of Los Angeles County and all of the cities in the county simultaneously, using this custom Google search by Matthew Barrett of the MTA's...

Skipping the media middleman

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky is adapting to the new media order by revamping his official website to be more newsy under the guidance of Joel Sappell, who used...

Lit props to Venice Paper

When Elmore Leonard was researching his new novel "Road Dogs," Venice Paper publisher Tibby Rothman showed him around Venice for a few hours. Now she's in some of the book's...

Geffen tried to buy stake in NYT

Fortune.com reported the basic story that Hollywood mogul David Geffen recently sought to acquire the 19% stake in the New York Times that is held by hedge fund Harbinger Capital...

New titles at Yahoo news & sports

Yahoo has promoted Jimmy Pitaro to oversee what they call "North America Vertical Audience Experience," meaning he's in charge of News, Finance, Sports and a whole bunch more. That means...

Book prize winners — and a no-show

stevewassermantruthdig.jpg How times change. Steve Wasserman, the former books editor at the Los Angeles Times, presided for years over the LAT Book Prizes soiree at UCLA's Royce Hall. He didn't even...

Scratch another Calif. political writer

In this case, Mary Anne Ostrom of the San Jose Mercury News is "Silicon Valley's top political writer," says Capitol Alert's Peter Hecht. Ostrom is joining the gubernatorial campaign of...

LA Observed on KCRW

Today's segment on KCRW looks behind the scenes at The Wrap, the new Hollywood news website headed by Sharon Waxman. It airs at 4:44 p.m. at 89.9 FM, or is...

Traffic rising at newspaper websites

The most-visited newspaper websites — errantly labeled the "top sites" by the Nieman Journalism Lab — all posted big gains in readership in 2008. While the absolute numbers from Nielsen...

Checking out USC's new news operation

NeonTommy.com at USC Annenberg is an "online digital news Web site created to fill a void in local and national news while providing news and commentary across multiple platforms—audio, video...

White House.gov right now

The website switched over right about 9 a.m. PST....

New ethnic news hub

LA Beez is an online collaboration of "ethnic media organizations featuring hyperlocal news content covering the metropolitan Los Angeles area." The participants are: Arab-American Affairs Magazine Asian Journal Carib Press...

LAT.com trails Boston and Houston

I hate to think what fresh traffic generation gimmicks these stats might encourage at LATimes.com, but the numbers are surprising. Even after all the photo galleries, reader pets, Oscar speculation...

Today's L.A. weather, from David Lynch

The director's daily weather report on camera from his home in Los Angeles. Because I hadn't linked to it before. Lynch's website...

Undercover work for writers who drink

Barfly Staff Monitoring Service is looking for writers to do some undercover work. Hitch: you must have bartending experience. From a craigslist ad that landed in my email box: This...

Online Journalism Review revived

USC Annenberg mothballed the original Online Journalism Review in June. But Geneva Overholser, the new director of the Annenberg School of Journalism, announced today that OJR is coming back under...

Write for free for people with money

RealTalkLA lives on, in a way. (I can't get the website to work.) Craiglist has an ad for LA Reporting and Writing Interns Sought that reads: RealTALKLA.com, founded by Jay...

Pay day for paidContent

Rafat Ali's Santa Monica-based paidContent.org, which has covered the business side of websites since 2002, will be acquired by Guardian Media Group in the U.K. for “north of $30 million.”...

Time for some New Geography

New Geography.com, based in Sherman Oaks and North Dakota, has launched as a website "devoted to analyzing and discussing the places where we live and work. Practitioners at heart, we...

USC shuts down Online Journalism Review

The Online Journalism Review had survived for ten years under the stewardship of USC's Annenberg School of Communications. No more. Editor Robert Niles posted today: I'm pleased to say that...

Local Webby finalists

The Webby Awards are annual plaudits bestowed on corporate and institutional websites and a relative few blogs, with 8,000 entries in nearly 70 categories. Five finalists in each category were...

New watchdog in town

Well, just a new name. Jamie Court has abandoned the snooze-inducing Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in favor of...ta dah...Consumer Watchdog.org. Broadcasters everywhere will no doubt applaud the switch....

TMZ paid $165,000 for O.J. tape, The Smoking Gun says

That audio of O.J. Simpson hollering at sports memorabilia collectors in a Las Vegas hotel last year was worth $165,000 to TMZ.com, reports The Smoking Gun today. TMZ reportedly bought...

WowoWow launches

The new website created and bankrolled by Liz Smith, Lesley Stahl, Peggy Noonan, Mary Wells and Joni Evans went live today. Backed by $1 million and a fulltime staff of...

Examiner.com looking for L.A. help

No print edition, just online, and not much more ambitious than the mix already posted at the Anschutz media empire's obscure Los Angeles site — AP wires and generic stuff...

Metromix is growing

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...

Home of the Draft Colbert movement

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...

New CEO for Huffington Post

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....

Beckhams buy PCH

Writer Frank Coffey's spoof site eTrueSports.com is now in video on YouTube....

Cooper picks up a gig

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...

TMZ apologizes for Ito video

TMZ.com ran a video clip of Superior Court Judge Lance Ito pronouncing O.J. Simpson "guilty as sin" of the Las Vegas charges — except it wasn't Ito. "A stupid mistake,"...

Perky, peppy bloggers wanted

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...

Wasserman joins Truthdig as books editor

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 &...

Power outages hit web

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....

Payday for Laurel Touby

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...

New housing website

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...

Mirthala and Fabian?

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 Núńez....

L.A. Radio.com "at crossroads"

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...

New editor at LA.com

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...

Pasadena news site outsources to India

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...

Breitbart.tv arrives

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...

Wind damage

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...

LATimes.com's new editor thinks local

Meredith Artley, named earlier this month to be executive editor of the Times website, tells the Online Journalism Review that her focus will be on strengthening the local impact of...

Bee takes Weintraub behind the wall *

The Sacramento Bee today announced a big new risky online gamble: a premium politics website called CapitolAlert that costs a whopping $499 a year and gives subscribers early access to...

HuffPost gets more communal

HuffIt is a new beta-test section of The Huffington Post where readers can indicate (Digg-style) which news stories of the moment interest them. Those stories will then get priority play...

More old L.A. eateries

If you enjoy remembering old local restaurants and already exhausted Jonathon Foerstel's Los Angeles Time Machines, writer Mark Evanier's POVOnline is an entertaining place to spend some time. His pages...

Art and radio, on the web

What do you get when you put together art and radio? Not much, frankly. But what if you add visuals? ArtScene magazine is doing just that with the newly launched...

HuffPost hires again

Elinor Shields leaves the BBC to become managing editor of the Huffington Post, based in New York. She will oversee day-to-day editorial operations, including the site's expanding ambitions toward original...

Remember that name

City news junkies will soon start hearing more about the "912 Commission." More formally called the Neighborhood Council Review Commission, it is required by the City Charter revamp that created...

Ron Fineman, web journalist was 54

Ron Fineman lost his battle with colon cancer today. The founder of the television news website Ron Fineman's On the Record was taken off his respirator Dec. 21 and told...

Add one Hollywood website

Hollywood Today calls itself a "newsmagazine, with attitude...we cover the world of entertainment in all its multimedia glory, from screens and stages large and small." The site has been active...

'Dateline Hollywood' sucks in CBS

No, Michael Richards did not attend a celebrity roast for Whoopi Goldberg in blackface. Nor did he pour a bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup over Whoopi's head. That was satire...

Huffington Post to hire journos

Melinda Henneberger, a Newsweek contributing editor who used to be at the New York Times, joins the Huffington Post as political editor and will hire reporters to cover Congress and...

Magazines observed

Inventing Lonelygirl15: Wired's December issue goes inside the Los Angeles apartment where the wildly popular web tale of Bree and Danny was hatched and taped. Writer Joshua Davis met creator...

Vernon is lovely this time of year *

Ah, the rich cultural history, snow-capped mountains and sun-kissed beaches. Sounds lovely — too bad the Vernon link on Supervisor Gloria Molina's county website doesn't point to the strange little...

New look for Paid Content

Rafat Ali's Santa Monica-based news operation — a success story among the many local web startups — has completely redesigned and shifted to a new content management system. PaidContent.org originally...

New look at 'Reporter'

The Hollywood Reporter has joined the website redesign parade, giving the site a thorough remake. Flackage: New features include site-wide integration of The Reporter’s database, streamlined video, easier navigation and...

Beirut-Los Angeles website

Beirut | Los Angeles calls itself a "nonpartisan albeit progressive project for peace, linking Americans with Lebanon in particular and the Middle East more generally." It's from the Levantine Cultural...

Lefty guide to L.A.

Came across a website that bills itself as A People’s Guide to LA: "an attempt to map sites of racial and class struggle in Los Angeles’ history and landscape." Sites...

So many menus

Suddenly we're awash in online restaurant menus. An email announces the Los Angeles launch of MenuPix, "free access to menus and basic information" on 3,000 local restaurants and fast-food places....

He was here—again

Martin Schall, the German photographer who runs one of the best Los Angeles architecture websites, has posted a bunch of new images at his site You-are-here.com. His latest visit produced...

Open letter to Amoeba Music

From the editors of zines The Big Takeover, Dumb Angel Gazette, Roctober, Scram and Ugly Things: Dear Amoeba, We the undersigned, the editors of five of the most long-lived and...

Lowe's double-bad day

Derek Lowe started the Dodgers opener today and kinda bombed—he gave up eight runs in five innings. Either before or after the game, he also probably got word that revelations...

Pellicano to defend himself?

Anthony Pellicano will go into court today and ask for an expedited trial, possibly foregoing the use of a federal public defender, journalist Ross Johnson reports. Family members tell Johnson...

Examining Los Angeles

There may not yet be a Los Angeles Examiner in the fledgling Philip Anschutz newspaper empire, but there is a dedicated L.A. page on Examiner.com. The website lets you choose...

Hot blogs

Dave Sifry of Technorati tracks what bloggers link to and notes in his latest report that the New York Times receives by far the most inbound links—and that mainstream media...

Can't we all just get along?

Dateline: Hollywood's spoof of the week headlines the news that "automobile fatalities in Los Angeles are up 85% in the past month as residents seeking meaning in their lives intentionally...

Cutting her some slack *

Snopes.com weighs in on the case of the USC cheerleader on the side of she may not be to blame—after all, it was a close play. * Another alternate take:...

Escaping Justice.com claims a collar

District Attorney Steve Cooley's website designed to put pressure on felons who flee to Mexico—and authorities who tolerate it— is getting credit for the arrest in Mazatlan of accused murderer...

Kudos to Morgan

Yahoo's hiring of Dave Morgan, the #2 editor in the LAT Sports section, gets a thorough dissection in the forum at SportsJournalists.com....

January's TPR

The new issue of The Planning Report has a Q-and-A with departing L.A. planning director Mark Winogrond, a discussion with planning commissioners Jane Usher and Robin Hughes, and urban critic...

Glitch at Weekly

The LA Weekly website redesign I mentioned this morning is currently down; the old design is back up in its place, with last week's stories. They are working on the...

More UCLA

The attempt by a conservative website to out and possibly intimidate UCLA professors who espouse political views has media legs, at least today. Shawn Steel, the former California Republican Party...

Why Craigslist is winning *

Here's a letter to the editor in the latest Fortune magazine, posted on the website Online News Squared: Could Craigslist turn newspaper classifieds to ashes? If it does, the fault...

Golden Groundhogs

Gawker has the news that the Golden Groundhog award will honor the best underground movie of 2005, chosen from among "genuinely outstanding films from the previous year that lacked the...

The woman behind Truthdig

New media reporter Anne Riley-Katz's LABJ piece on Robert Scheer's venture Truthdig.com focuses less on the deposed L.A. Times columnist and more on co-founder and publisher Zuade Kaufman. With good...

He-is-Here

I told you early last year about an extraordinary website that presents hundreds of photographs of Los Angeles landmark buildings, giving dates and information on the architects along with city...

Scheer out as of December

Here's an update to my exclusive post last Friday on the end of Robert Scheer's column on the L.A. Times op-ed page: He went on KPCC's "Airtalk with Larry Mantle"...

Robert Scheer in the news

Lots of chatter in local media circles these days about the syndicated L.A. Times columnist and KCRW commentator from the left. First, it appears that Scheer is about to lose...

First thing Friday, 9/9 *

Posting will be light today...    • Mayor Villaraigosa safaris out to Tujunga this morning to unveil his appointees to the Fire Commission. If you don't know where that is, well, it's...

New WeHo news source

WeHoNews.com promises to be an online newspaper covering West Hollywood as an "independent, fair, balanced and effective local news vehicle." The first issue has features on gay community legends Ivy...

Pat wants Jared dead

Ripped from the headlines at Dateline Hollywood, TV evangelist Pat Robertson has called for another well-known figure who annoys him to be assassinated. That would be Jared the Subway Guy:...

First thing Wednesday, 8/31

A little morning briefing...    • Brian Cullen, the suspected killer of model Iryna Singerman, was found dead in a Tijuana motel room. Authorities say he killed himself with a bullet to...

LAPD wives stick together

LAPD Wife posts word of a new club for the wives of officers. From the group's website: The LAPD Wives Club is for women dating, engaged or married to LAPD...

Introducing 'Car Keys' **

LA.com is jumping into the traffic biz with a monthly newsletter of commuter tips called Car Keys. The first edition carries links to traffic-related stories in the Daily News (where...

Hehateslatraffic.com

Steve Harvey's Only in L.A. column in today's Times points to a new website for rants, discussions and tips about traffic. The forums at The I Hate LA Traffic Homepage...

Political Pulse thinks big

Up in Sacramento, Political Pulse bought the Capitol Weekly website and newspapers and plans to launch a state political news portal later this summer. The portal, a partnership with Scott...

Getaway day shorts

Here are some items from the week. Posting over the weekend will be sporadic at best. • Los Angeles magazine celebrated this month's comedy issue last night with drinks, schmoozing and...

E! does the mea culpa

Over on Wilshire, the online staff at E! is trying to take back a gossip nugget they posted announcing the collapse of the Jessica Simpson-Nick Lachey marriage. Under a red...

LAT Magazine's style editor

Women's Wear Daily's MemoPad page says that Kent Black [mentioned on L.A.O. in February] has filled the long-vacant post of style editor at the soon-to-be-relaunched L.A. Times Sunday magazine. And...

KNBC staffers fired over affair

Ron Fineman follows up today with reporting on his scoop last week that KNBC reporter Kyung Lah and "Today in L.A." producer Jeff Soto got fired for having an affair—and...

Gagged by Disney

Jim Hill gives reality tours of Disneyland to tourists who want the inside story, not the official Magic Kingdom pablum. During yesterday's tour, park security and an Anaheim police detective...

LARadio.com back on the air

Don Barrett's pay site that follows Los Angeles radio has recovered from its system crash. The first email published Thurday is from Charlie Cook: "As long as you are unable...

LARadio.com didn't back up...

And now the site is down, possibly all week, following a total hard drive crash. Don Barrett draws every day on his rich archive of Los Angeles radio facts and...

Salon's David Talbot steps down

The founder and editor of Salon.com will announce Thursday that he is leaving after 10 years to write a book about Robert F. Kennedy, the New York Times says. Joan...

Spinsanity suspends

Where else but here can you get two-week-old news? An emailer just pointed out to me that Spinsanity announced on Jan. 19 that the political truth squad site would stop...

Black Clock #2

I can't swear that PEN Center USA's website is new, but I just came across it for the first time. Bookmark it as another good place to find about literary...

CityBeat redesigns the website

Not a moment too soon, CityBeat has given up the white-type-on-black look that made its website so difficult to read. The new design is definitely bolder. It's much easier to...

No holiday at Google

Google is known for its creative holiday plays on its familiar logo. Last year artists came up with a logo for most big holidays plus Earth Day, Bloomsday, St. Patrick's...

Layne's new gig

My favorite job used to be to roam around upstate California and Nevada looking for stories, then try to write them onto the front page of the newspaper. I would...

New California books

CaliforniaAuthors.com has freshened up its exclusive listing of books written by California authors or about the state. Those coming in 2005 include: Wrong Side of the Wall. By Eric Stone....

Sharon Tay heads for MSNBC

Friday is Sharon Tay's last day at Channel 5, says Ron Fineman. The longtime KTLA Morning News co-anchor is headed to MSNBC to co-host an entertainment show. She won Emmy...

LABJ separates the pack

In a front page story in the latest L.A. Business Journal, Howard Fine says internal campaign polls show Antonio Villaraigosa and Bernard Parks—the two council members in the mayor's race—ahead...

Anschutz thinks national

L.A.'s most important Denver-based player, Philip Anschutz, has filed trademark applications to reserve "The Examiner" as the name of newspapers in 69 cities. The Denver Post (via Romenesko) only mentions...

Grading the websites

LAVoice.org has competition for its series keeping tabs on the web presence of the five top candidates for mayor. In the Downtown News, Jon Regardie submits their websites to expert...

Online moves

Both the L.A. Business Journal and LA Weekly are getting ready to unveil newsier websites. In the new issue, the Journal announces that over the next two weeks it will...

L.A. for foodies

The Food Section, the New York-based website Gourmet calls "the consummate gastronomic blog," is devoting a week to Los Angeles culinary spots. Guest editor Kristin Franklin, a recent L.A. arrival,...

Notes for a Monday

• Milton Bradley did it again. The volatile Dodgers outfielder was cited for disorderly conduct after allegedly interfering with a police traffic stop near Akron, Ohio. The winter baseball meetings are...

Winner couldn't afford Online News awards

This is (probably) the final follow to the Online News Association conference that was held here last week. I noted earlier that the entry fee of $499, among the highest...

South Bay, A to Z

From Garrison Frost in his online "journal of arts and ideas," The Aesthetic: American Martyrs Church: You can't understand the South Bay until you understand Manhattan Beach, and you can't...

Romer sues over fake site

Los Angeles schools chief Roy Romer and the school district have sued that disgruntled ex-student who posted gay pornography on a website and claimed it was connected to Romer. As...

ONA finalists

The contenders in the Online News Association competition I helped judge over the weekend are now posted. Local finalists include the L.A. Times Outdoors section, the Orange County Register's series...

A sure way to lose credibility

Some guy with a worker's comp claim against the L.A. school district emails me that in a desperate plea to push his case, he has registered web domains in the...

Moving is hard *

At the end of last week, the editors at LAist posted that the site would be migrating to a new server over the weekend. Always frightening words. As of Monday...

Cutbacks at LA.com

Mack Reed at LAVoice.org breaks the news that LA.com, the city guide and shopping site put together by the parent of the Daily News and others — but best known...

The writers' website

WriterAction.com is where about 400 members of the Writers Guild go for their daily fix of of dish, dirt and grousing, behind a firewall open only to other guild members....

Monday shorts *

   • The contents page in Sunday's L.A. Times Magazine had a posed photograph of a faux prisoner in a faux cell, to illustrate a cover story on the Three Strikes law....

L.A. burger talk

OK, we recently noted an L.A. hot dog website. Now we've been pointed to Hamburger LA. They evalute by price, meat and patty, buns, fixings, extras and style and service....

Monday shorts *

   • Architecture: The owner of Santa Monica Place is in quiet talks with the city to raze the Frank Gehry-designed shopping center and build an open-air adjunct to the Third Street...

Weschler on L.A.

LAist excerpts an interview about the beauty and other qualities of Los Angeles with author and New Yorker writer Lawrence Weschler, a Valley boy from Van Nuys who spoke with...

LAT does LALA Times

David Shaw's Media Matters column in yesterday's Times was all about George Wolfe and his news satire site, the LALA Times. Wolfe, 40, is an ex-playwright from Virginia and now...

Playing catch up

Some things to note from while I was gone:    • Larry McCormick: The co-anchor of the KTLA "News at Ten Weekend Edition" began at channel 5 as a weatherman in 1971....

Less free lunch online

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Starting Sunday, craigslist will charge $25 for placing job ads on the website in Los Angeles and New York. The cheapskates who want models, actors and artists to work for...

That Bush-Kerry spoof *

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The creators of that cartoon parody sweeping through the Web — a Shockwave clip of Bush and Kerry singing to the tune of "This Land is Your Land" — are...

Snopes speaks, but so what?

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For what it's worth, the folks at Snopes.com have declared false the notion that writer Anne Jacobsen encountered a band of rehearsing terrorists on her Northwest flight into L.A. last...

Depicting Los Angeles *

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In his cinematic essay Los Angeles Plays Itself, filmmaker and Cal Arts professor Thom Andersen tries to correct the false images of the city he says are created by L.A....

Those rumors about Slate

Yes, Microsoft is talking about selling the online magazine to the Washington Post, the New York Times or a handful of other potential buyers, the Post's Howard Kurtz reports. Microsoft...

Flying with Arabs

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Salon's resident airline pilot Patrick Smith reacts to that woman's account last week of her uncomfortable flight on Northwest Airlines with a bunch of Arabs who she feels in her...

On flying these days

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Writer Annie Jacobsen at Women'sWallStreet.com goes into detail about her nerve-wracking flight from Detroit to Los Angeles in June with 14 suspicious-acting (to her) Middle Eastern men aboard. She writes...

So sue us them

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Lawyers for Cameron Diaz want the Gawker Media websites to stop reporting on and having fun with that for-sale video showing the actress topless in S&M scenarios when she was...

Holiday shorts

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   • LAist, the SoCal version of New York's Gothamist, goes public Tuesday. Earlier: Gothamist going bicoastal.    • We're number one: The feds seize more contraband cigarettes at the ports of Long Beach...

Gothamist going bicoastal

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The local knockoff of the New York website will be called LAist when it launches next week. Tom Berman will do the writing. Franklin Avenue got the word from publisher...

Is it Pat Riley? *

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Long Beach Press-Telegram columnist Doug Krikorian said on his radio show on KSPN this afternoon that Lakers owner Jerry Buss met face-to-face with Miami Heat president (and ex-Lakers coach) Pat...

News site blackout

CNET reports on why popular news websites were down on Tuesday morning....

Craig distilled

Sunday's L.A. Times Magazine has a cover piece on Craig Newmark, the former IBM programmer and computer security geek who started and still runs Craigslist. Craig Newmark was the kid...

Email, private or public?

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The Westmar Sun is "a Web-based journal of news and opinion about Mar Vista and the Westdales," small L.A. neighborhoods on the border of Santa Monica. Journalist George Garrigues runs...

Yet more website awards

Editor & Publisher, the print newspaper trade mag, and Mediaweek today handed out the 2004 EPpy awards to honor "the best new media work by media companies." "California Connected," the...

They got permission, right?

Someone emails to ask if it's a little ironic or something that the Writers Guild of America, West negotiations website has posted the full text of stories from Variety, the...

Hummingbird closes LAX

SWAT teams summoned. Only in the spoof world of George Wolfe's LALATimes. Also in the new issue: "Bush Declares California Disaster Area - In General" and "Celebrities Who Look Like...

Toby Young's in town

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Toby Young, the Brit journalist who used to write for Vanity Fair, is writing the Slate Diary this week about living in L.A. for three months while he works on...

New column at FilmStew

Former E! Online columnist Andy Jones today begins a new weekly gig for FilmStew.com about party life. It's called SWAG: See Where Andy Goes. In the first installment, he writes...

New guide with a twist

Chill Out LA is a website and weekly newsletter "devoted to helping you become a happier, healthier, more centered Angeleno."...

LA.com reviewed

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In some depth, by Mack Reed of LAVoice.org (who didn't get the job to be the site's editor). The site - almost two years in the making with heavy investment...

Welcome to L.A.

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PaidContent.org, which authoritatively tracks media efforts to make money on the web, is now listed among my links on the left side as a Los Angeles website. Founder and editor...

Goodbye to Cy Zoerner

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Garrison Frost writes in The Aesthetic (The South Bay's Journal of Arts and Ideas) of attending a memorial service last week for Cy Zoerner, a contributor to his site who...

LA.com prepares to launch*

Online city guide LA.com formally launches this week, two years after Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group bought the domain name from Las Vegas Internet entrepreneurs. The L.A. Business Journal says the...

The Simon reads Phillips

The "Article of the Week" in The Simon is a mostly favorable take on Kevin Phillips, the disgruntled ex-Republican (and LAT Opinion contributor) whose new book American Dynasty rakes over...

Q-A with Larry Flynt

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Beverly Hills' own smut publisher Larry Flynt is interviewed about porn, civil liberties and the Internet by Xeni Jardin today at Wired News. Wilshire Boulevard trivia question: why is there...

Freeway jams of another kind

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At LAVoice.org, Mack Reed posts about the increasing number of political protest signs hung above and alongside the freeways. He links to FreewayBlogger.com, an antiwar site that encourages the guerrilla...

Pro and con on Kerry

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You can't say Joe Shea doesn't take the road less traveled. Two years ago, the editor in chief of the online newspaper American Reporter ran for office in the Hollywood...

L.A. claims Mars water!

In the parallel universe of George Wolfe's LaLaTimes, that is. Doesn't he know you don't joke about water in Los Angeles?...

Ben Stein's last column

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The actor, writer, economist and Republican activist wrote "Monday Night at Morton's" for E! Online for seven or eight years. He cites his changed worldview -- and a new reverence...

LAVoice.org, a new site

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LAVoice.org is a new community site made up of, says the FAQs, "ultra-local newsgatherers, pundits and outspoken writers whose collective knowledge of their neighborhoods and the city at large far...

Too liberal for her

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Cathy Seipp pokes fun at Pitzer College president Laura Skandera Trombley -- and the school's decision to stop using the SAT -- in a piece today at National Review Online....

'Walmart Acquires California'

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Lead story in the LaLaTimes (not to be confused with any other Times)....

Sheehan.com adds audio channel

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Film critic Henry Sheehan, a regular on KPCC's "Film Week" segment, has added audio interviews to his website at HenrySheehan.com. The first is a lengthy (more than an hour) conversation...

Five more seconds of fame

The website Sports By Brooks says that during last night's Lakers game, Nicole Richie (the non-Hilton half of "The Simple Life" duo) was interviewed on Fox Sports Net and said...

From the wayback machine...

The once-pioneering JenniCam is closing down December 31 after seven years online, and Terry Teachout at ArtsJournal.com writes that Jenni Ringley deserves credit as the Milton Berle of the Web:...

New at The Planning Report

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Snappy new look to the website for The Planning Report by David Abel and friends, and an interesting list of L.A. stories this month: Steve Soboroff on Playa Vista, Antonio...

MCN 100 debuts

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Movie City News has unveiled the MCN 100, a panel of critics, reviewers and film watchers who will vote periodically for Best Picture and other awards. The voters listed include...

Stripping for science

Nerve.com's resident guinea pig Grant Stoddard takes on the assignment: get three L.A. women to pose naked for his digital camera. Continuing my assimilation into California culture, I joined a...

No cute Spector hed here

Low Culture finds a certain similarity in the archives of writing about Phil Spector -- who, if you didn't know, was a millionaire before......

'I Want Media' profiled

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Most in the media know the basic Jim Romenesko story -- news guy starts "MediaGossip.com" on his own, moves to Poynter, gets a paycheck, drops gossip from the name, eventually...

How Ben Stein wins money

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Ben Stein revels in the cushy life where Hollywood meets Fox News Channel. His gig for E! Online website must be the easiest column in town....

LALATimes see$ the future

The spoofy LALATimes, slogan "everything absurd under the sun," is looking for "a bone fide publisher and investors to guide and support it through its upcoming expansion," says a press...

A new L.A. website

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Matt Welch clicks on LA.com, the new city guide beta site from Gannett and Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group, and finds it lacking. The team includes Lynda Keeler, a venture capital...

Courthouse news and blog

Courthouse News, the Pasadena-based legal website, has a blog by journalist Matthew Heller. His latest item is about a lawsuit against L.A. Focus magazine by community activist Najee Ali, who...

Taking issue with imdb.com

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Richard Horgan makes a persuasive case that the London-based World Entertainment News Network is commandeering celebrity news and gossip without crediting the right sources, and he argues in his weekly...

They want their DVDs

The volume of stories and Hollywood reactions to the loss of free screener movies has officially surpassed L.A. Observed's ability to keep up. (Kind of like with the recall.) Movie...

Health inspections online

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RestaurantWatch.com is a new site that lets you check the health inspection grade of L.A. restaurants by zip code. With registration, you can create a watch list, see inspection details...

Disneyland watch

The Los Angeles-based Theme Park Insider is all over the latest Disneyland accident in which a man was killed on the Big Thunder Mountain roller coaster. Clearly, a dangerous pattern...

Lisa Carver gives up sex

After the birth of her second baby, she no longer feels like the woman who would seek out erotic adventures and tell all online, in books and in magazine articles....

The Simon joins the roll

Another Los Angeles-based online culture mag just found me. The Simon began about five years ago as a give-away quarterly and went Web-only last year, Tim Grierson says. He and...

The Onion meets EW

The headlines: Special Investigation: Hollywood Marred by Nepotism Arnold Vows to Move State Capital to Vancouver C-SPAN Takes Reality TV to Higher Plane Dateline: Hollwood, the newest satirical site to...

Zap2It.com sorry for sending viruses

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The L.A.-based movie reviews and showbiz news website was struck by a mass-mailing virus that flooded subscriber in-boxes with infected attachments last night and today. In an email to subscribers,...

Remembering the other Hope

Writing at FilmStew.com, columnist Richard Horgan goes for the contrarian take on Bob Hope and talks with Arthur Marx, author of an unauthorized biography a decade ago that detailed numerous...

Conversation with 'Today's Papers'

Eric Umansky took the place of the late Angeleno Scott Shuger doing the popular Today's Papers feature for Slate. He's 30, has never worked at a newspaper, and though he...

'Dems Grow Spine from Stem Cell'

The lead story in The LALA Times -- "all the news that's fit to be tied."...
New at LA Observed
Clinton fundraises in LA
kermit-la-brea-closer.jpg Jim Henson Studios on La Brea became a presidential campaign stop on Thursday.
Brown declares disaster area
porter-ranch-sign.jpgThe natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Wet coyote
wet-coyote-vdt.jpgSpotted between the storms at Here in Malibu.
Performing arts with cheer
guys-dolls-kevin-parry.jpgDonna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
Junkyard down
upick-firetruck-560.jpgAfter 53 years, Sun Valley's Aadlen Brothers and U-Pick Parts cleans out. Photos