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academy-museum-rendering.jpg Also: The "super bloom" of yellow mustard across SoCal hillsides needs to be stopped.

LA Times undoes those Lee Abrams datelines

lat-front-32712.jpg This morning's Los Angeles Times quietly returned to using the "By" on story bylines — and went back to the simple datelines that newspapers used for generations before Tribune's innovations guru got confused.

Friday short stack 2.3.12

A second teacher was removed from Miramonte Elementary School this week and is the subject of a criminal investigation, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. LAT, AP...

Fox 11's new news show the right lead-in for TMZ

liz-habib-fox11promo.jpg Fox 11 is flubbing its golden opportunity at 5 p.m. by going with an even dumber form of TV news than celebrities, animals and car chases: pre-planned "outrage" by the...

Heisler on Tribune, Zell and the L.A. Times

Former NBA columnist's comments on earlier sports deadlines are interesting,

They still talk about Alycia Lane in Philly

AlyciaLane-thumb-180.jpg Larry Mendte, a former news anchor in Philadelphia, is interesting here in L.A. pretty much only because he was the colleague who criminally snooped in co-anchor Alycia Lane's email.

Morning Buzz: Friday 10.29.10

AEG talks about football stadium plans for Downtown, Boxer goes up by eight points, Villaraigosa is in Lu Parker's home state and KTLA's Eric Spillman catches a bad guy.

Michaels and Abrams, the Hitler spoof

Hitler finds out that Randy Michaels and Lee Abrams are out at Tribune over some naked breasts, after surviving much worse in radio...including the Macarena

Why one former LAT staffer dropped the paper

Robert Niles, a former editor at the Los Angeles Times who also was editor of USC's Online Journalism Review, writes at OJR that he has canceled his print subscription because continuing to pay for a copy "was an act of co-dependence for sick and troubled organization."

Tribune's Abrams defends himself, hits at his critics

Lee Abrams, whose goofy tenure as the Tribune company's in-house innovation advocate ended over that sluts video last week, sent an email that calls the video parody "brilliant" and suggests he's the victim of a cultural fight for control of Tribune and of newspaper dinosaurs who just didn't get his style.

Michaels headed out as Tribune CEO, reports say

Both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune are reporting tonight that the Tribune company board is expected to seek the resignation tomorrow of CEO Randy Michaels.

Abrams resigns from Tribune. Note timing.

It's late Friday afternoon, and Tribune CEO Randy Michaels sent a note to the far-flung Sam Zell empire notifying everyone that Lee Abrams era at Tribune is over.

Abrams' 'sluts' video

Here's the The Onion's "sluts spill" spoof that Tribune's Lee Abrams called "pretty inspirational or at least interesting."

Tribune suspends Lee Abrams

Note to the troops company-wide just now from Phi Zappa Tribune CEO Randy Michaels: From: Tribune Communications Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 11:29 AM Subject: Message from Randy Michaels/Lee Abrams...

Abrams does the mea culpa

With his latest missive generating adverse reaction and more bad PR for Tribune, Lee Abrams has sent out an apology.

Tribune execs go off-color again *

leeabramsshow.jpg This time it's the always-entertaining Lee Abrams, the radio guy who's been drawing a Tribune Company paycheck as chief innovations guru for a few years now.

Fun with L.A. Times writing cliches

Former LAT feature writer Roy Rivenburg zings a few parody arrows at the paper's current word stylists (and editors.)

OMG, Zell's dude gets another show

leeabramsshow.jpg Gawker can't contain its sarcasm about Sam Zell's bankrupt Tribune's latest gift to America's airwaves. Instead of just flying his prop job around the Midwest to have unhealthy lunches on...

Zell's tenure at Tribune summed up *

Mark at LA Biz Observed picked up this morning's news out of Chicago about Tribune Company creditors trying to delete Sam Zell from any reorganization that comes from the bankruptcy....

Lee Abrams innovates his hobby

leeabramsfood.jpg Remember Sam Zell's chief innovation officer, the irrepressible Lee Abrams? Turns out he has been a pilot since he was 17, and like many hobbyist pilots across the U.S. he...

L.A. Times profiles Neda *

nedaaghasoltan.jpg Borzou Daragahi reports out a very good story in the Los Angeles Times on Neda Agha-Soltan, who was 26 when she was gunned down Saturday on a street in Tehran...

Sign of the (L.A.) Times: layoff signs

Maybe this has been up for awhile, but it was just pointed out to me today. The L.A. Times website has a little photo slide show feature called: "Are you...

2008: Signs of the (L.A.) Times

Everyone in power at the Los Angeles Times vowed that 2008 would be the year the paper stopped making news for the wrong reasons — remember how unbelievable 2007 seemed?...

Zell more Dewey than Truman

News item: Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, arrested on suspicion of corruption, believed that Sam Zell planned to use "certain corporate reorganizations and budget cuts" to get the Chicago Tribune editorial...

Times still has foreign correspondents

With all that's gone down at the L.A. Times on Sam Zell's watch, it's good to point out that the paper has retained most of its foreign-based staff writers (even...

Morning Buzz: Tuesday 11.25.08

An unidentified LAPD officer was shot in the leg in Venice overnight in what is being called a "negligent discharge of firearm" incident. Breeze wires The state will look...

Lee Abrams: Still not impressed with the LA Times

Chief Tribune innovation honcho, Lee Abrams, was in town this week for a Press Club event and, in addition to this YouTube video, left a flurry of news stories...

Think piece

There's a cottage industry of black humor and killer irony at the Times thanks to Lee Abrams' smug memos, with their hefty helpings of hubris tinged with Tourettes. Here's one...

Morning Buzz: Monday 11.10.08

Gov. Schwarzenegger hopes the state Supreme court overturns Proposition 8 and urged the Republican Party to move away from some of its core conservative principles and embrace spending on...

LAT redesign: nothing to see

Not much to say about today's lite redesign of the Los Angeles Times. They added the color to the nameplates that I told you about, moved "Times Staff Writer" to...

LAT redesign already has a critic

The Los Angeles Times won't unveil its top to bottom redesign until Tuesday's paper, but Tribune innovation dude Lee Abrams shared his thoughts with the staff. He sounds kind of...

Abrams shrugs off newspaper cuts

Radio guy turned Tribune innovation guru Lee Abrams is talking a lot these days. Today, Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici caught up to him at the Dow Jones/Nielsen Media & Money conference...

L.A. Times focus-groups more changes

I got a look at some of the latest Los Angeles Times redesign options being tested with selected readers. They're being asked their reaction to new designs for the front...

Zell looking to...buy?

Even the original item sounds skeptical, but the Wall Street Journal's Heard on the Street page speculates today that Sam Zell may share the newspaper empire-building gene of his predecessors...

Who remembers Tim and Tom?

I enjoyed reading the story of Tom Dreesen and Tim Reid, who met at a Jaycees meeting outside Chicago in 1968 and struggled to break through as a black-and-white comedy...

Ex-Times reporter blogs what he learned

William Lobdell launched his new Orange County-centric blog with a list of the 42 things he knows after a career at the Los Angeles Times. Excerpts: 8 - The idea...

Site spoofs Sam Zell's L.A. Times

Former Times feature writer Roy Rivenburg calls his send-up Not the Los Angeles Times and includes spoof blogs by Sam Zell and Tribune innovation guru Lee Abrams, some digs at...

Tribune star reporter quits

Maurice Possley, a Chicago Tribune criminal justice reporter who was on the team that helped free wrongly convicted death row prisoners, asked to be included in his paper's involuntary separation...

Morning Buzz: Monday 7.14.08

Daily News wakes up to the real Valley Three-part series by Tony Castro called "San Fernando Valley: The New Ellis Island" focuses on the influence of Latino cultures and, in...

'Profound malaise' at L.A. Times

That's how one staffer describes the mood around the Los Angeles Times offices, where editors were believed to be working last night on their final lists of staffers — 150...

Scribe to Zell: you're not funny

The reason Sam Zell and company get so much attention (and let's face it, derision) here is not that they want to force change on institutions like the Times and...

Abrams: Rethink book reviews

Sam Zell's in-house innovator Lee Abrams has memoed again, long and rambling and ungrammatical as usual. Now that the cost-cutting Los Angeles Times is apparently moving towards folding the stand-alone...

Yes, another Lee Abrams bobble

Tribune's Lee Abrams, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, sought to clarify some of his image as...a not very informed observer of newspapers, even though he's the...

Video: Steve Lopez on Sam Zell

At the Los Angeles Press Club awards on Saturday night, L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez had some fun at Sam Zell's expense — alluding to Zell's lame ideas, four-letter...

Abrams memos again

This time the Tribune innovation guru explains why the Orlando redesign will work. Again, nothing about higher quality or better, deeper, smarter stories. It's all about the presentation and marketing....

Today in Sam Zell

The anonymous L.A. Times staffer (plural?) behind Tell Zell has posted a list of the LAT journalists who have left the newsroom in the past two years and a link...

Lee Abrams memos again

New week, new pearls of official innovation-ness from Tribune's chief research scientist. The graduate of the FM radio school of higher thinking sent out 1,238 words this time. Before I...

Changes coming to Zell's KTLA

I'm told that staffers at Channel 5 were gathered together for two all-hands meetings yesterday and told that ND Rich Goldner would exit today for that new job in San...

Mr. Innovation blogs again

My favorite part of Lee Abrams' latest pearls of wordiness emailed to Tribune's weary innovators is this, from Romenesko: Using my favorite music analogies--Imagine Newspaper CONTENT is a major artist....

Zell names a new COO

Perhaps Sam Zell realized his troubled new company needs a full-time boss, or maybe he just tired of his newspaper toys after a few months in charge. Whatever, executive VP...

Abrams brings his act to L.A. — and likes it

Tribune innovation czar Lee Abrams blogs that before coming to Los Angeles, "For years I have heard the Industry dirt on the Los Angeles Times. Got a lot of 'good...

Trib talking to Bob Dylan

Let's assume that the Times forgetting to print the top part of the shark-kills-man story on Saturday — necessitating a reprint in Sunday papers — is not the kind of...

Abrams' rock and roll speech

Sam Zell's new innovation guru, Lee Abrams, uses a video on the company site to explain his vision of how the 1950s growth of rock and roll and reinvention of...

Tribune's innovation guru tones it down

Now that's he actually on the job, Lee Abrams is pleasantly surprised to found there are lots of people in his company who actually know stuff and are open-minded about...

Zell raids Clear Channel *

Four more Clear Channel executives jumped to Tribune last week, and together with the radio and TV veterans that had already joined the Sam Zell team it suggests to the...

More stream of consciousness from Tribune's thinker

Tribune's new innovation honcho Lee Abrams finally began work today after a career in radio and a bunch of pre-memos. He immediately blogged his notes on a vision for the...

Radio vet reacts to Abrams

Ever since Lee Abrams began memoing his future co-workers all over the Tribune Company with his ideas on Innovation!, I've been getting emails that skewer his ideas as less than...

Trib's new innovations guy discovers journalism

Lee Abrams hasn't started yet, but writes another memo in which he gets all enthused thinking of original ideas...that newspaper and TV editors and website producers have been doing all...

Tribune's new innovation guy speaks

"I am ecstatic with no-bullshit excitement and pride in joining The Tribune Company," writes Lee Abrams, hired from XM Satellite Radio. He calls news and information "the NEW Rock n...

Morning Buzz: Wednesday 3.12.08

How NYT got the Spitzer story And kept it quiet. NY Observer From Tuesday Howard Berman gets foreign affairs Keeper of LA's saints Columnist blogs his firing Antonio likes the...