LA Observed tag:www.laobserved.com,2009-03-28://1 2016-12-01T18:17:52Z Los Angeles media, politics, news and place Movable Type Pro 4.25 Midweek notes: Xavier Becerra, Jeff Michael, P-45 and more tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55412 2016-12-01T17:06:12Z 2016-12-01T18:17:52Z New attorney general appointed. An anchor leaves the news desk. What to do with P-45. Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php Our occasional roundup of media and politics news, with some additional items, from a variety of sources. Follow us on Twitter.


Breaking story: Governor Brown has appointed Rep. Xavier Becerra to succeed Kamala Harris as attorney general. This elevates the Los Angeles Democrat to instant statewide status. First domino: Former speaker John Perez says he'll run for Becerra's seat. Brown release

 
jeff-michael-insgm.jpgAnchor out: Jeff Michael, the longtime Fox 11 anchor, announced at the end of Tuesday night's news that it was his last newscast for the station. He had been with KTTV for 18 years. He gave a short statement about his time but there were no other details. Co-anchor Christine Devine posted on his Instagram page: "Jeff is the smartest man I know, so conscientious, a quality journalist who brings wisdom, honesty, integrity, and passion each and every night. Truly what a news man should be. As the journey of life takes us on a new path I am encouraged knowing that a new door will open for Jeff and he will make his mark in some exciting new way." Fox 11 veteran Tony Valdez retired earlier this month.

 
CAO ankles: Miguel Santana, the highest non-elected adult in City Hall as City Administrative Officer, announced he will leave for a high-paying job running the nonprofit Los Angeles County Fair Association. A major loss, said former county supervisor and councilman Zev Yaroslavsky. LA Times
 
P-45 update: The Malibu rancher who got a permit to hunt and kill puma P-45 now says she wants the mountain lion trapped and placed in captivity. Daily News, LA Times, CBS LA, previously on LA Observed
 
 

Media notes

Grant Tinker, the former head of NBC TV and MTM, died at age 91. His shows included "Mary Tyler Moore," "Hill Street Blues" and "Lou Grant." CNN Money, LA Times
 
HBO’s TV series “Ballers” is moving production from Miami to Los Angeles, and for its next 10 episodes will employ 135 cast, 209 base crew and 5,700 extras. “Ballers” is the seventh TV series to relocate to California under the expanded tax credit program. LABJ
 
CBS Trump reporter Sopan Deb is jumping to the New York Times culture beat. Michael Calderone
 
IMDb has sued California over the new state law requiring the site to remove even accurate ages from online bios if requested. Deadline
 
If Trump Tweets It, Is It News? A Quandary for the News Media. New York Times
 
Breitbart News has lost Kellogg's as a sponsor and calls the move "unAmerican." LA Times
 
Decades in the making: 16 New York Times journalists recount working at some point on the paper's Fidel Castro obituary, first drafted in 1959.
 
Attention all Netflix users: you can now download shows and movies for offline viewing. Wired
 
Michael Ferro and Patrick Soon-Shiong have both bought up more Tronc shares. LABJ
 
 

Politics notes

More than 2,300 scientists, including 22 Nobel Prize winners, signed an open letter to Donald Trump and the next Congress, urging them to “adhere to high standards of scientific integrity and independence in responding to current and emerging public health and environmental health threats.” Washington Post
 
Trump will be the first modern president to get less than half of the vote in both the primary and general elections. With nifty graphic. Washington Post
 
Inside Steven Mnuchin's Hit-and-Miss Path From Hollywood to Treasury Secretary Pick. Kim Masters/Hollywood Reporter
 
Rabbi Susan Goldberg of Wilshire Boulevard Temple has returned from Standing Rock with a report. Jewish Journal
 
Gerrymandering explained brilliantly. Washington Post Wonkblog
 
City Controller Ron Galperin posted on Facebook: "Mourning the loss of our beloved & amazing dog Daisy." She died suddenly on Thanksgiving.
 
And happy trails to Michael D. Antonovich after 36 years on the LA County Board of Supervisors. (Don Knabe too.)


Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich: A Legacy of Service from Los Angeles County Newsroom on Vimeo.


 
 

Media people doing stuff

Carolina Miranda writes about visiting Manzanar and Tule Lake: "It connected to my life in ways I would have never imagined." LAT column... MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff guests on an episode of Chelsea Handler's show that posts on Thursday... Former LA correspondent for the New York Times Charlie LeDuff leaves Detroit's Fox TV channel today, Next step unstated... Gina Nahi has been asking other Iranian Jews about Donald Trump, for her Jewish Journal column... David Davis writes for Deadspin on The Story Behind The Perfect Photo Of Sports' First Streaker... CNN's Brian Lowry had a co-byline on the LA Times' Grant Tinker obit. He quips: "Former LA Times colleague suggests Tronc saw my byline...and wants to figure out how to retroactively lay me off."
 
Plus: CBS LA weathercasters Evelyn Taft, Amber Lee and Jackie Johnson are ready for the Trump era.
 
 

Place

In advance of the Dec. 9 opening of "La La Land," Fandango has created a video mashup of other Los Angeles-based movies and a map to the locations seen in the new film, which stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.

FAN_LaLaLand_Map_WEB.jpg

Also: Alison Martino posts that her Vintage LA site and Facebook page has been given a coverage spot on the red carpet for the opening of "La La Land." She posts: "What thrills me the most about this opportunity is that VLA is now considered a valuable and legitimate Entertainment media source and is becoming a reliable brand. This is something I've worked very hard for these past 6 years."

 
Tusks, a tooth and a skull from ancient mammoths or mastodons have been uncovered 15 feet deep in the excavation for the Purple Line subway station at Wilshire and La Brea. These are the first fossils found in the work on the Purple Line extension, but more ancient remains are expected the closer the work moves to the La Brea Tar Pits — which have already provided thousands of old animal bones and remains. Metro The Source, LAT
 
Los Angeles in Buildings: The Bradbury Building. KCET/Colin Marshall
 
A look at the $80 million At Mateo project in the Arts District. Los Angeles Magazine
 
And another drone-over-LA piece by Mingomatic.
 
 

Selected tweets

 
 
 
 
]]> Marty Baron warns of what's ahead for the press tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55410 2016-11-30T07:45:00Z 2016-11-30T07:47:56Z The Washington Post editor known for the film "Spotlight" doesn't scare easily. Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php marty-baron-sarah-ellison-v.jpgScreen grab: Martin Baron with Sarah Ellison of Vanity Fair.


Martin Baron, the editor of the Washington Post who is possibly better known as the editor who pushed the Catholic Church abuse investigation depicted in the movie "Spotlight," accepted an award Monday that is named for the late journalist Christopher Hitchens. In his speech, Baron talks about Donald Trump's year of ugly threats and vile verbal attacks on the Post and on all reporters who cover him, and says the best response journalists can make is to keep telling the truth.

Sounds like Marty, a former colleague at the Los Angeles Times, expects a rough four or eight years. As a privileged child of wealth and an obsessed seeker of approval, Trump has never accepted the right of the press to tell the truth about him and his business practices. Now as a politician he will have more power to go even uglier in his dishonest crusade to weaken the media oversight of his administration. His assault on the core American value of a free press is, for me, the most threatening and anti-American inner demon of Donald Trump. By running for president, he signed up for 24/7/365 coverage. His words and actions since the election have only proven he needs more scrutiny than any previous incoming president. I'm with Baron: good honest truthful journalism and journalists are needed in the face of Trump's war on the tradition of a strong, independent press.

Here's the part of his speech that is about the media and Trump. Read the entire speech at Vanity Fair.

This is a time we are compelled to fight for free expression and a free press—rights granted us under the Constitution, yes, but also the very qualities that have long set us apart from other nations.


We will have a new president soon. He was elected after waging an outright assault on the press. Animosity toward the media was a centerpiece of his campaign. He described the press as “disgusting,” “scum,” “lowlifes.” He called journalists the “lowest form of humanity.” That apparently wasn’t enough. So he called us “the lowest form of life.” In the final weeks of the campaign he labeled us “the enemies.”

It is no wonder that some members of our staff at The Washington Post and at other news organizations received vile insults and threats of personal harm so worrisome that extra security was required. It is no wonder that one Internet venue known for hate and misogyny and white nationalism posted the home addresses of media executives, clearly inviting vandalism or worse. Thankfully, nothing that I know of happened to anyone. Then there was the yearlong anti-Semitic targeting of journalists on Twitter.

Donald Trump said he wanted to “open up” libel laws. And he proposed to harass unfriendly media outlets by suing them, driving up their legal expenses with a goal of weakening them financially.

With respect to The Washington Post, he ordered our press credentials revoked during the campaign, barring us from routine press access to him and his events, because our coverage didn’t meet with his approval. Even before we were subjected to his months-long blacklist, Donald Trump falsely alleged that our owner, Jeff Bezos, was orchestrating that coverage. And he openly hinted that, if he became president, he would retaliate.

Jeff Bezos himself addressed this perfectly at one point—on several occasions actually.

“We want a society,” he said, “where any of us, any individual in this country, any institution in this country, if they choose to, can scrutinize, examine, and criticize an elected official, especially a candidate for the highest office in the most powerful country on earth. . . .

“We have fundamental laws and . . . we have Constitutional rights in this country to free speech. But that’s not the whole reason that it works here. We also have cultural norms that support that, where you don’t have to be afraid of retaliation. And those cultural norms are at least as important as the Constitution.”

Getting elected didn’t change anything. After his election—in the midst of protests against him—Donald Trump resorted to Twitter to accuse the media of inciting violence when, of course, there had been no incitement whatsoever by anyone.

The other night, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour eloquently explained the gravity of such deliberately false accusations emanating from a future head of state. She was speaking when she was honored by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Postcard from the world,” she said, “This is how it goes with authoritarians like Sisi, Erdoğan, Putin, the Ayatollahs, Duterte, et al . . . First the media is accused of inciting, then sympathizing, then associating—until they suddenly find themselves accused of being full-fledged terrorists and subversives. Then they end up in handcuffs, in cages, in kangaroo courts, in prison—and then who knows?”

When the press is under attack, we cannot always count on our nation’s institutions to safeguard our freedoms—not even the courts.

At times throughout our history, they have shamefully failed to do so—whether it was the Sedition Act of 1798 under President John Adams, harshly repressive Sedition and Espionage Acts under Woodrow Wilson in the context of World War I, or the McCarthy Era that still serves to remind us of what comes of a dishonest and reckless search for enemies.

The ultimate defense of press freedom lies in our daily work.

Many journalists wonder with considerable weariness what it is going to be like for us during the next four—perhaps eight—years. Will we be incessantly harassed and vilified? Will the new administration seize on opportunities to try intimidating us? Will we face obstruction at every turn?

If so, what do we do?

The answer, I believe, is pretty simple. Just do our job. Do it as it’s supposed to be done.

The principles begin like this: “The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.”

The public expects that of us. If we fail to pursue the truth and to tell it unflinchingly—because we’re fearful that we’ll be unpopular, or because powerful interests (including the White House and the Congress) will assail us, or because we worry about financial repercussions to advertising or subscriptions—the public will not forgive us.

Nor, in my view, should they.

]]> Park service: P-45 alpaca kills not 'abnormal or aberrant' tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55409 2016-11-30T06:32:06Z 2016-12-01T17:17:58Z Eliminating P-45 won't solve the problem of livestock and pets being killed, the National Park Service explains. Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php p-45-smmnra.jpgP-45 last year. National Park Service photo.


In response to the news that a state permit was granted to hunt and kill one of the Santa Monica Mountains pumas it studies, the National Park Service put out a statement of condolence on Tuesday "to those who have lost a pet or animal as a result of being preyed upon by native wildlife. This is extremely unfortunate for everyone."

The statement says, however, that killing P-45 will not solve the problem of domestic animals being preyed upon by mountain lions in the Santa Monicas. At least four of the local lions have killed livestock in the past year, the park service letter says.

P-45 has been blamed for the weekend deaths of at least 11 alpacas in the western Santa Monica Mountains. Ten of those animals were killed at one ranch.

I had wondered in yesterday's post and on Twitter why a puma would kill 10 alpacas in one spree — much more prey than is necessary for feeding. When one of the local lions kills a deer, for instance, I gather that the feeding on a single deer takes place over more than one day. Today's statement from the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area addresses the issue — basically it's because the lion is a predator and the alpacas are trapped in an enclosure and can't run away.

The solution is keeping ranch animals and pets in lion-proof enclosures, says park service spokesranger Kate Kuykendall.


Here is the entire statement.

We extend our condolences to those who have lost a pet or animal as a result of being preyed upon by native wildlife. This is extremely unfortunate for everyone.


Our partners at the California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW) have issued a permit, as they are required under state law, for the mountain lion known as P-45 to be killed within 10 days. Although we conduct research on the local mountain lion population, CDFW is responsible for managing the state's wildlife.

We respect the legal process that is currently underway, but also suggest that we all need to work together in the future to ensure that pets and livestock are safe and that mountain lions can continue to roam in the Santa Monica Mountains, as they have done for millennia. To that end, we are co-hosting a workshop tomorrow night with CDFW (http://bit.ly/2faU2sF) that will offer simple and affordable solutions to protect animals in safe enclosures. We have worked with a number of landowners in the past to develop solutions that have successfully protected goats and alpacas.

The only long-term solution to keeping mountain lions in these mountains is mountain-lion proof enclosures for otherwise defenseless animals. Eliminating P-45 does not solve the problem, especially given there are at least four mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains that have killed livestock over the past year. Nor is P-45's behavior abnormal or aberrant in any way, even if the number of animals killed is large. In a typical natural setting, animals flee from a mountain lion attack, but if animals are stuck in an unsecured pen, a mountain lion's natural response can be to prey upon all available animals.

We look forward to working with local residents and our partners to keep pets and livestock safe and also to keep these mountains wild.

Kate Kuykendall
Spokesperson
Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area
National Park Service

P-45 was first tagged by researchers in late 2015 as a fully grown male — only the third adult male that was recognized in the western Santa Monicas. P-12 no longer wears a working collar but park service researchers believe he is still alive and fathering new cub litters. P-27 is a male who inhabits territory further east and keeps his distance from P-12. The park service also monitors P-22, the often-photographed male who lives off by himself in the canyons of LA's municipal Griffith Park.

The park service, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Mountain Lion Foundation are meeting with residents on Wednesday night at Paramount Ranch above Agoura Hills in hopes of avoiding any more lion conflicts.

]]> Los Angeles councilman calls Trump a 'tyrant' tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55406 2016-11-29T08:41:29Z 2016-11-30T07:48:33Z Councilman Jose Huizar has had enough already, tweeting "If we acquiesce to his falsehoods, we fall victim to tyrannical government." Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php huizar-6th-st-viaduct.jpg

In the midst of another bizarre night of tweets from Donald Trump's account, Los Angeles City Council member Jose Huizar dropped a little bomb of his own. A t-bomb, you might say.

Far as I can find, this is the first time that Huizar has called the president-elect a "tyrant." He's only saying what a lot of Americans (and by now, probably some Trump voters and many foreign observers) fear the most about the erratic future leader. But still, this is coming from an elected official in the city of Los Angeles, one of the cities that seems most destined to clash with Trump's administration, whoever turns out to be actually running it in the long run.

Mayor Eric Garcetti, for instance, was on CNN tonight with Don Lemon talking about LA and Trump.


In the short run, I have to expect Huizar will be in for some ugly immigrant-baiting from the angriest men among the Trumpists. That's what they do. The liberal Democrat from Boyle Heights who represents the Eastside and downtown was first elected to the City Council in 2005 and reelected in 2007, 2011 and 2015. He was on the school board before that. As his bio notes (in English and Spanish), Huizar is an immigrant to America.

José Huizar was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley, a Master’s degree in Public Affairs and Urban Planning from Princeton University and a Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law. He is the first Mexican immigrant elected to the City Council in Los Angeles’ history and in 2004, he became the first Latino to serve on the Princeton Board of Trustees.

Huizar lived in the village of Los Morales in the municipality of Jerez, and immigrated with his parents at the age of three. He grew up here in Boyle Heights.

Meanwhile, Trump himself posted five tweets tonight pushing his voter fraud claim, again without offering supportive evidence. Instead, he quotes the angry tweets of Trump supporters -- one of them a 16-year-old kid. Included in Trump's programming for tonight was this bit of child-like desperation, demanding that CNN prove a negative: "what PROOF do u have DonaldTrump did not suffer from millions of FRAUD votes?"

What unhinged Trump this time was apparently something on CNN, because he sputtered in his final tweet of the night (for the record, the 34,046th tweet of Trump's long and odd Twitter career):

This all elicited a right-on-point retort from Chicago Tribune reporter Dawn Rhodes:

There's been a lot of analysis the past few days of the recent Trump twitter mania. James Fallows at the Atlantic is conducting an ongoing discussion that centers this week on the question: "A man who will literally have life and death power over much of humanity seems not to understand or care about the difference between truth and lies. Is there any way for democratic institutions to cope?"

It all seems to call for the New Yorker cartoon that's been going around.

11-23-16-media-1000.jpg
Show me on the doll where the media hurt you.


And because I always like pics of Los Angeles politicians on horseback, here is Huizar at this past weekend's East Los Angeles Christmas Parade. From his Facebook page:


huizar-on-horse.jpg

]]> Kill permit issued for mountain lion P-45 tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55402 2016-11-29T05:20:28Z 2016-11-30T07:52:12Z The mountain lion, one of the last adult males in the Santa Monicas, is blamed for killing more than 10 alpacas this past weekend. Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php p-45-smmnra.jpgP-45. Photo: National Park Service.


State wildlife officials said Monday they have issued a 10-day permit allowing a rancher in the Malibu mountains to hunt and kill P-45, one of the last remaining adult male pumas in the Santa Monica range. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife says it was required to give the special "depredation permit" to the rancher after P-45 was believed responsible for killing 11 alpacas and a goat over the weekend. P-45 also was blamed last month for the slaughter of a miniature horse at a ranch near Malibu and an attack on llamas at another ranch last year.

P-45 is one of the 53 mountain lions that have been studied by the National Park Service, some of them collared and tracked. He was trapped for the first time as an adult last November, setting off a mystery the NPS is still trying to answer with DNA testing: was P-45 born in the Santa Monicas and just go undetected until he was two or three years old? Or was he born elsewhere and somehow entered the mountain range, perhaps by crossing the 101 freeway.

"It’s rare to see more than two adult male mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains, but so it is," the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area says on a new web page that lists basic information on each of the identified pumas. "In November 2015, this large male--in fact, the largest since P-1--was trapped in the central region of the range. Was he born in the Santa Monicas undetected by researchers? Did he crossover from the 101 Freeway? Genetic testing is underway and will help us understand."

P-1, the dominant original male in the study, was first captured in 2002. He has not been seen since 2009 and is presumed to be dead, the park service says.

The killing of so many domestic animals has the ranching community in the western Santa Monica Mountains in an uproar. The park service is holding an informational meeting on Wednesday night at Paramount Ranch in the mountains between Malibu and Agoura Hills.

From tonight's LA Times story on the hunting permit that quotes Andrew Hughan, a spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The 10-day permit allows the hunter to scour the hills within 10 miles of the homeowner’s ranch, located near Mulholland Highway and Little Sycamore Canyon Road. There, the lion attacked a herd of alpacas on Saturday night, killing 10 and injuring two others, Hughan said.


“The homeowner did everything she could to protect her wildlife,” said Hughan, noting that the animals were kept in a locked area with barbed wire and motion-sensing security lights. “This lion was very determined to get in there.”

The second attack occurred Sunday night at a ranch about 2 miles away, where an alpaca and a goat were killed.

P-45 dined on only one of the alpacas, leading wildlife officials to suspect he may return to feed later. The cat wears a radio location transmitter and has been linked to other attacks in the Malibu area....

Anticipating criticism of the permit to have the lion killed, Hughan called on the public to remember that a woman lost a significant part of her income as well as her pets.

“If your livestock is killed, you have the right to get this permit,” Hughan said. “This woman is obviously upset.”

P-45 was first blamed for an attack last November at Malibu Family Wines that claimed several llamas. NPS biologist Jeff Sikich captured and relocated P-45 into a wilder part of the mountains, but he returned and killed another llama in January.

The Times story says the state last year issued 265 permits to kill mountain lions that posed a threat to humans or livestock. With those permits, 107 lions were killed. It looks as if the state issues more than 100 permits to shoot mountain lions every year.

]]> LA Observed Notes: Imaginary votes, fake news, media people tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55399 2016-11-28T08:56:35Z 2016-11-30T07:49:12Z Donald Trump tweets his way to the top item again by inventing a new conspiracy. Plus much more. Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php Our semi-regular column of media and politics notes, with other news and observations. From multiple sources and the LA Observed inbox.

Join us on Twitter: 23,809 followers already have.

At the top

wsj-front-112816.jpgIn over his head? President-elect Donald Trump is still making it up as he goes along, claiming without evidence in a tweet that he would have won the popular vote if "millions" had not voted illegally. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla responds to the "absurd" claim: "His reckless tweets are inappropriate and unbecoming of a president-elect." But still, Trump got the headlines. He's trailing by 2+ million votes. NYT, LAT, WSJ
 
Cities vs Trump: If Trump cuts off cities that don't cooperate with deportations, Los Angeles could lose as much as $500 million of its $9 billion budget. "Taking away funding because our law enforcement will not act as federal agents would not only be irresponsible but immoral,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said. “It would be an unprecedented overreach of federal executive power to take even more of our taxes away.” NYT
 
Feeding the beast: How one web entrepreneur in suburban LA created fake pro-Trump news for profit: Made-up stories like buying pot with food stamps and the murder of an FBI agent linked to Clinton emails were gold to the gullibles: "We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked...You'll get debunked within the first two comments." NPR
 
An LA story: Authorities keep razing Ceola Waddell Jr.'s homeless settlement under the 110 freeway and he keeps rebuilding. LAT, Facebook video
 
 

Media notes

Solid deep global reporting by the New York Times into Trump's many business entanglements and conflicts of interest around the world. The lead byline is former LA Times foreign correspondent Richard C. Paddock in Manila... Also NYT: In Trump, Breitbart's Steve Bannon found his vessel into real power... The NYT says it has netted 70,000 new subscribers since the election... Journalist Masha Gessen has spent years reporting on Vladimir Putin’s rule in Russia: U.S. journalists need to begin imagining the unimaginable...Also: Maneuvering a new reality for US journalism in CJR... Patrick Soon-Shiong, the wealthiest person in Los Angeles, spent the week before Thanksgiving buying up more shares of Tronc stock. He's now at 15.2 percent of the LA Times parent company... Participant Media is shuttering TakePart... Los Angeles Magazine is hosting a Tuesday press conference with mayoral spouse Amy Wakeland and philanthropist Austin Beutner to promote a new giving initiative.
 
ICYMI: Here's the full transcript of Donald Trump's meeting at the New York Times last week.
 
Recalibrating for Trump: In a note to readers and supporters about the future, Reveal/Center for Investigative Reporting editor in chief Amy Pyle harkens back to covering the 1994 Northridge earthquake for the LA Times in the San Fernando Valley: "From this day on, nothing will be the same."
 
 

Politics notes

Three top Trump surrogates, led by spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway on Sunday's politics shows, disparaged Mitt Romney as a possible Secretary of State — and the weird part is it's unclear if they were speaking for the boss or trying to sway him.... Former Obama advisor David Axelrod tweeted "I have never, EVER, seen any aide to a POTUS or PEOTUS publicly try and box the boss in like this. Extraordinary."... Right-wing pundits Laura Ingraham and Monica Crowley are in the conversation for White House press secretary... Orange County congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a former LA reporter, is Putin's favorite congressman and in good graces with Trump, apparently... How Nancy Pelosi's daughter and Dianne Feinstein's granddaughter became part of the electoral college. LAT
 
Some politics is local: Mayor Eric Garcetti said that Trump voiced support for LA's 2024 Olympics bid in a phone call last week... City Council President Herb Wesson unveiled a May 2017 ballot measure that would overhaul LAPD Board of Rights panels, a reform sought by the police union. LAT
 
 

People are talking about...

steve-wasserman-heyday.jpgJoe Morgenstern, the Wall Street Journal and KCRW film critic, apologized by tweet for mistaking Dev Patel's past work for Kal Penn's in a review of "Lion."... Of the 4 reporters with bylines on the Fidel Castro obituaries in the NYT, LAT and WaPo, only one still works at the paper where it was published. One is dead. The LA Times piece is by Carol J. Williams, who left last year. The foreign editor called her then "possibly one of the most versatile foreign correspondents I have ever known." Hat tip: Amy Fiscus of the LA Times Washington bureau... A profile of Steve Wasserman (above) in the San Francisco Chronicle says the new head of Heyday Books is "a man of many, many words." He is former books editor of the LA Times... The LA judge who knocked down a lady dog-walker and the homicide detective who cheated to help him.
 
 

Media people doing stuff

tim-rutten-blog-art.jpgAnn Louise Bardach revisited her 1994 Vanity Fair interview with Fidel Castro after his death for The Guardian... Tim Rutten, the former LA Times and Daily News columnist, is blogging about Trump including a chiding of religious leaders and this: With Trump the worst is yet to come... Bryan Chan, an editor on the online photo desk at the LA Times, is leaving after 19 years and moving to the county Hall of Administration as chief photographer for the Board of Supervisors. .. The NBCLA.com paid internship program is accepting applications... Thursday is the deadline to apply for USC Annenberg's Center for Health Journalism $1,000 California Fellowship stipend... Tap-O-Ween is an original all-new tap dancing show presented by students, guests and dance colleagues of LA Times education reporter Howard Blume
 
Book notes: Megyn Kelly's "Settle for More" opens as #1 bestseller in the hardcover nonfiction section of SoCal independent bookstores. "The Whistler" by John Grisham is #1 fiction... Here are the NYT's 100 notable books of 2016... Some of the contributors to "Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine: Los Angeles in the 1970s" will be at Chevalier Books on Larchmont on Thursday at 7 p.m.... Jennifer Clement, President of PEN International, will be in conversation with KPCC's Adolfo Guzman-Lopez Friday at 6 p.m. at the LA Times.
 
 

Notes on place

Lewis MacAdams stepped down as head of Friends of the LA River. LAT, KCRW


An Orange County Republican Party official and Trump campaign volunteer, Mary Young, posted on Facebook (in all caps, of course) that "I do not want any type of Muslims' in this country, period." OC Register

Air pollution hot spot in Paramount spurs calls for action on metal factory emissions. LAT

sophia-amoruso.jpgWhat went wrong at Sophia Amaoruso's Nasty Gal, the DTLA fashion company that is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy? Business of Fashion

Writer Marc Myers' love for the Capitol Records tower. JazzWax

The most spectacular spots for viewing the LA skyline. Los Angeles Magazine

Santa's Village near Lake Arrowhead reopens on Friday after 18 years. KPCC

Looking back 38 years to the murders of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and elected supervisor Harvey Milk by former supervisor Dan White. NPR

The Rams lost in New Orleans 49-21 and are now 4-7 in their first season back in Los Angeles.

 
 

Selected tweets


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
]]> Read the memo: LA Times finally names an obituary editor tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55388 2016-11-22T07:27:27Z 2016-11-29T05:28:54Z It's been awhile since there was an editor in charge of covering prominent deaths. He doesn't get any assigned writers. Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php latimes-sign-sideview.jpgThe Los Angeles Times has gone without a designated obituary editor for some time now, at least since the buyouts that cut deep into the staff last year around this time. There hasn't been even a dedicated obits writer since Jill Leovy stopped doing them in July. (Her last obit: longtime LA sports columnist Melvin Durslag.) Now a former obits editor, Steve Marble, is coming back to be the go-to guy. He won't have any writers reporting to him, unlike the last time he pinch-hit on what was then a formal Obituary desk with its own place on the Times' staff roster.

Going it alone on obits is big change in philosophy from just a few years ago when the editors realized readers love obits and kept a writing staff that ran at least three or four deep. Everyone in that last full class of obituary writers and editors — Elaine Woo, Steve Chawkins, David Colker, Claire Noland, Dennis McLellan — are gone from the paper. Woo was quickly signed up by the Washington Post to write obits from her home here and did a nice job with the Tom Hayden obit.

The Times has gotten by with a heavy dose of Associated Press obituaries, even of prominent Angelenos that would have rated significant staff obits in the recent past, such as Hollywood powerhouse Norman Brokaw, legendary pilot Bob Hoover, singer Bobby Vee and LA Philharmonic violin master Barry Socher. Other prominent deaths have just been skipped — chef Michel Richard and UCLA professor Don Nakanishi come to mind. And in selected cases, Times staff writers on other beats have been tapped to write timely news obits of people they covered or knew. For example, the Times is running an obit tonight of its own longtime music freelancer, Don Waller, written by pop music critic Randall Roberts. Waller was 65 and died of lung cancer. I had an item in this morning's LA Observed Notes.

Marble will be empowered to tap reporters around the paper as needed, and will write obits himself. Here's the memo from managing editor Larry Ingrassia:

To: The Staff
From: Larry Ingrassia, Managing Editor


I am pleased to announce that Steve Marble has been appointed obituary editor.

Steve has held various editing jobs in the newsroom, for years in metro and most recently on the national/foreign desk, giving him the breadth and depth of knowledge to oversee an important coverage area for The Times.

In this role, Steve will have the lead responsibility for helping to identify obituaries that are of the highest interest to our readers – notable Californians in culture and the arts, business, local politics and government, or people with a strong connection to California who have made an important contribution in some way. And selectively, we will continue to write obituaries of luminaries who have left a significant mark in areas, like entertainment, that have special resonance to Angelenos.

Steve will write some obituaries himself, but he will assign most obits to be written by various desks, drawing on the expertise of writers in those departments. He will work with desks to make sure we have advance obituaries on those especially important figures for whom we want to be able to quickly post a thoroughly reported and well-written obit.

He will also need each desk to help make sure we don’t overlook obituaries we should be doing, on evenings and weekends as well as during the day. That’s already happening now, to a large extent, but ideally each major desk should have a person who monitors news and takes the initiative to assign obituaries as soon as we learn of a notable person’s death. Steve will be meeting with all the desks in the next couple of weeks, to help set up a process for this to happen smoothly.

Obituaries are a signature element of our news report, and it’s great to have someone of Steve’s experience directing this coverage.

Readers without newspaper experience may not realize that some of the obits they see were written years earlier by reporters who are no longer with the paper. Last week's obit of heart transplant pioneer Denton Cooley carried the byline of Thomas H. Maugh II, the longtime health and science reporter who retired in 2011. McLellan's byline is on the obit this month of actor Robert Vaughn. Former pop music writer Richard Cromelin, whose last non-obit byline was in 2011, has the byline on the Leonard Cohen obit, and the October obit of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand has the byline of David Lamb, a retired foreign correspondent who died in June. So it happens.

]]> LA Observed Notes: American Nazis, fake news and media moves tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55385 2016-11-21T09:53:31Z 2016-11-28T09:02:30Z Our semi-regular column of media and politics notes, with other news and observations. Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php nbc4stormranger-twitter.jpgNBC 4's serious looking "storm ranger" truck on duty in the Inland Empire during Sunday's rain. Posted to Twitter by station meteorologist David Biggar.


Our semi-regular column of media and politics notes, with other news and observations. From multiple sources and the LA Observed inbox. Join us on Twitter: 23,804 followers already have.


At the top

Official violence: On Sunday night in North Dakota, authorities doused Dakota Access Pipeline protesters with water from a fire truck (as well as rubber bullets and tear gas.) Air temperature at the time: 25 degrees. Organizers report numerous injuries and "mass hypothermia." AP, NBC

American Nazis celebrate Trump: An alt-right rally Saturday in Washington ended with the racist movement's ideological leader, Richard Spencer, railing against Jews, quoting Nazi propaganda in the original German, proclaiming that America belonged to white people (he called them the “children of the sun”) and the room erupting in “Heil the people!" This after most of the media had left, including the LA Times apparently. New York Times

On the front lines: Carolyn Cole and Molly Hennessey-Fiske continue to report for the LA Times in the battle for Mosul in Iraq.

 

Fake news mill in SoCal: Two guys in Long Beach discovered an audience for made-up headlines to enrage Trump supporters and now make a living. "We’re the new yellow journalists,” says one of the men behind LibertyWritersNews.“We’re the people on the side of the street yelling that the world is about to end.” Washington Post

Also: The closing credits of "The Simpsons" on Sunday night included best wishes for Vin Scully. Tweet. He will be the first sports broadcaster honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday, Tom Hoffarth calculates.

 

Week 2 in Trump's America

commander-in-tweet-nypost.jpgIf Trump wants to be respected like a president, he could try acting like one. After the ugly and dishonest campaign he ran, he has to earn respect. Perhaps start by denouncing for real the anti-Jewish hatred being spoken in his name. And STFU on Twitter... The New York Post quips Trump has become Commander in Tweet. The lowlight of the president-elect's Twitter week was a snit with the cast of Hamilton over the dialogue with Mike Pence, whining that SNL's satire is " biased—not funny at all" and misspelling Democrat Charles Schumer's name... New York Magazine's Mark Harris writes that "the Hamilton-Pence incident was more than just a distraction," and says reopening the culture wars with the arts as the battlefield was probably inevitable... Pence quipped later that being booed at a Broadway show (with some cheers too) is what democracy sounds like .. A Hamilton investor says he hopes Trump keeps tweeting: "The show will sell out for decades, not just years." Hamilton is already sold out through 2017... ICYMI: Here's the statement from the stage by Hamilton co-star Brandon V. Dixon... Washington Post: Fake Donald Trump returns to SNL, and the real one is not happy.


The Pew Research Center post-election survey finds that Trump supporters are confident he will deliver a successful first term. On the other side, 58% of Clinton voters are “willing to give Trump a chance and see how he governs as president,” but 39% say they can’t “because of the kind of person he has shown himself to be.”... Here's a look at enthused Trump supporters in California... The Washington Post goes Sunday night with Trump’s business empire raises concerns about foreign influence... In the LA Times: Obama's final foreign trip was "his last chance to warn the world about Trump, and to warn Trump about the world."... Trump agreed to a $25 million settlement of the fraud lawsuits by former students who said they were gypped by Trump University and the New York attorney general... A Columbia humanities professor argues that the Democrats lost because of their identity politics and need to come with a better way... Melania Trump and son Barron will continue to live in New York City so he can stay in his private school, the New York Post says.


Media notes

soon-shiong-twitter.jpgMajor Tronc shareholder and vice chair Patrick Soon-Shiong (right), who wants control of the LA Times, met with Trump and called it an "incredible honor"... In response to Trump's Twitter rant about "Saturday Night Live," LA Times Sacramento bureau chief John Myers tweeted: "In 41 yrs, SNL has refused to lampoon any sitting or elected president other than: Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon."... An open letter to Trump from the nation's journalism organizations... The NYT says it received 41,000 new print and digital subscribers in the week after the election... James Surowiecki in the New Yorker: Research shows there’s a reason that you shouldn’t call your company Tronc.

Fake news: Brian Stelter of CNN on a new age of information warfare... Here's Buzzfeed's data analysis on how fake election news stories outperformed real news on Facebook. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has now outlined a seven-point plan to combat fake news sites. LAT... Facebook needs an executive editor, argues media columnist Margaret Sullivan... A case study of how fake news goes viral. NYT.

joe-resnick-tribuite-hellio.jpgObituary: Joe Resnick, the Associated Press sports writer who was visited by several LA media colleagues earlier this month, died Sunday from his cancer. He was 62. At Sunday night's Kings-Ducks game in Anaheim, the Ducks placed a tribute at his empty seat in the press box, per the LA Times' Helene Elliott.

Obituary: Don Waller, the rock music journalist for the Los Angeles Times and numerous other outlets, former managing editor of Radio & Records, author of "The Motown Story," and the co-founder in 1975 of Back Door Man, a fanzine out of the South Bay "for hardcore rock ’n’ rollers only," died last week. donwaller-1.jpg He was 65. "Waller carried with him seemingly infinite reserves of both knowledge and passion about music, particularly soul and R&B, garage and punk," writes Steve Hochman at BuzzBands. "A truly caring, truly passionate presence, advocating for us all to dig deeper into music, into relationship with music, into the way it binds us." Waller was the longtime partner of LA journalist Natalie Nichols. On her Facebook page, Richard Cromelin writes: "Editing Don’s reviews at the Los Angeles Times was probably the most challenging and entertaining part of my job there." He was "the hardest-hustling freelancer in the rock-writing bizness," writes John Payne at LA Weekly.

Also this: KCETLink and Town Hall Los Angeles are partnering on a new series called "Town Hall LA" that will debut Dec. 6 at 8:30 p.m. and air here on KCET and nationwide on Link TV... The Daily Californian at UC Berkeley plans to digitize every issue of the student newspaper back to 1871.

 

Politics notes

The state Senate race between Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang (R-Diamond Bar) and Democrat Josh Newman has narrowed to a difference of 187 votes, "making the Democrats' chances of securing a supermajority in both houses of the Legislature suddenly much more likely." LA Times... Los Angeles County has tabulated 2,736,593 votes, but still has more than 700,000 provisional or vote by mail ballots to look at. Latest results... As they keep counting, the statewide vote for Clinton stands at 61.7 percent and for Trump at 32.7 percent, the lowest share for a Republican presidential candidate in California since at least 1988.


Some politics is local: More than 100 Angelenos filed paperwork to run for mayor or City Council, "a veritable stampede of candidates for an election that only a fraction of L.A. residents will vote in." Hillel Aron/LA Weekly... Los Angeles city officials talked to the media last week about their strategy for dealing with a Trump presidency, vowing to push back against deportation efforts while trying to protect federal funding for City Hall projects... Peter Jamison had one more project to finish before leaving the LAT for the Washington Post: Paying for public retirees has never cost LA taxpayers more... The LAPD is running stings to nab Uber and Lyft drivers, stings that are being funded by the taxi industry, KPCC says.


A weekend gathering of California Democratic Party leaders in San Diego to figure out where they go now was part therapy session and part pep rally, says the LAT's Phil Willon... Gavin Newsom fundraising pitch: "Look, I know it’s a hard time to dive into another campaign, but we just got another opponent: Former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced his campaign for governor of California. I need you more than ever..."... There’s one thing most Californians still have in common: They love their majestic coastline and sandy beaches and want more access, a new poll finds.

 

People are talking about...

I Wish We Could All Be Californian by author Daniel Duane in the New York Times Sunday Review. He argues "California is now both a place and a body politic apart" from most of the U.S: multi-racial, multi-cultural and progressive in politics.
Anyone who doubts that progressivism is good business has to reckon with the fact that California is now the sixth largest economy in the world, ahead of France, Russia and India, with $2.46 trillion in gross domestic product.


It’s not all sunshine, of course. California’s $54 billion agriculture industry thrives on the exploitation of migrant workers, and our poverty rates and income inequality are among the nation’s worst, thanks partly to a technology economy that makes millionaires in coastal cities but does little for the hinterlands except raise the cost of living. That helps explain why 3.7 million Californians — 33 percent of the vote — chose Donald Trump and why California’s electoral map resembles the national one, with red counties in the rural white interior and blue mostly on the coast.

GENSLER_TRIBUNE_STREEt.jpgAlso: A rendering shows the 30-story condo, office and retail building planned for over the new subway station being built across Second Street from the Los Angeles Times. Gensler is the architect. Who remembers the shoe repair shop on that block of Second, and even longer ago the Chevron gas station at Second and Spring? The new project would claim the current Times garage. Added: It stays apparently.

The Guardian U.S. reports that civil rights advocates have filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against Optimus Properties for targeting, harassing, and trying to evict low-income and minority tenants from a handful of Koreatown apartment buildings... Since 1990, at least 43 people have died on movie and TV sets in the U.S. and more than 150 have been left with life-altering injuries, the AP found.


Recently on LA Observed

Tony Valdez retires from Fox 11 news, last of a generation
Veronique de Turenne: Hello (again) Kitty
Joel Bellman: It is happening here
Gary Leonard: Site of Pandora's Box
Scully, Abdul-Jabbar, Gehry and more to get White House honor
Gwen Ifill, Washington journalist, 61
LA Observed Notes: Week 1 in Trump's America

 

Media people doing stuff...

Alice-Walton-zocalo.jpgAlice Walton, the LA Times City Hall reporter and co-author of the Essential California newsletter, signed off the newsletter at the end of Saturday's email. She has also taken the LA Times out of her Twitter bio but hasn't said officially where she is headed, other than "it's time for me to move on to my next adventure." She's the former City News Service reporter at City Hall who reinvented herself after graduate school in 2010 as The City Maven, which led her to KPCC in 2012 then last year to the Times... Nikki Finke plans a return to journalism in January with a new senior columnist gig at Mediaite, but her former employer Penske Media isn't pleased. Penske says a non-compete clause that was part of the settlement over Deadline Hollywood would preclude coverage of the news media or of a Trump presidency, as well as anything more conventionally thought to be the entertainment biz. Stay tuned... Jose Antonio Vargas, the famously undocumented journalist formerly with the LA Times, writes in a NYT piece that "this is a time of palpable and overwhelming fear for immigrants, our families and friends...What will you do when they start rounding us up?"... Jewish Journal editor and publisher Rob Eshman columnizes with faint praise 10 reasons Trump’s victory is not the apocalypse.... Reason Magazine editor Matt Welch offers some optimistic advice for liberals who "woke up to the sick realization that an authoritarian boor they didn’t support would soon take the same oath of office as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln."


Also: AP entertainment reporter Derrik J. Lang has left after 12 years to be senior editor at American Way, the magazine of American Airlines... A Kickstarter campaign is trying to raise $142,500 to archive more than 400 cable TV programs by LA arts journalist Victoria Looseleaf and produce a documentary... Finalists for the National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Awards from the LA Press Club. The winners are named Dec. 4.

And this: LA Observed contributor Iris Schneider had a story and photos in the Los Angeles Times from Samburu, Kenya, where she spent a week with a group that is helping bring clean water to villages there.

Plus a book: "Los Angeles in the 1970s: Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine" is a new anthology from Rare Bird Books with writings on the decade by LA media people Chip Jacobs, Deanne Stillman, Joe Donnelly, Luis Rodriguez, Lynell George and others. The editor is David Kukoff and the writers also include Joy Picus, the former City Councilwoman from the Valley, The Doors drummer John Densmore and LAPD homicide detective turned author Steve Hodel.

 

Notes on place

A new analysis of census bureau data shows that Los Angeles is one of the American cities with the greatest declines in millennial residents from 2005 to 2015. Dennis Romero/LA Weekly

Germany has purchased the Pacific Palisades residence once owned by Thomas Mann, averting its demolition. LAT

Speaking of, sort of: In 1945, the FBI raided a warehouse in Los Angeles that was used for storage by the Nazi Germany consulate. The files included 3x5 cards with contact information for LA Times publishers Harry and Norman Chandler, the head of Lockheed and the founding chancellor of UCLA, among other leading Angelenos. Paleofuture

The Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority purchased the 71-acre Chesebro Meadow land in Agoura Hillsy west of the Valley, a big step toward creation of a Liberty Canyon wildlife crossing over the 101 freeway. KPCC

102 million dead California trees is 'unprecedented in our modern history,' officials say. LAT

In LA County, the sheriff's deputies can throw a few moves.



The Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank is under quarantine after several horses tested positive for equine herpesvirus, which resulted in one horse being euthanized. LAT

The Cat & Fiddle name is going to be on a new spot on Highland Avenue in Hollywood. Eater LA

The Beverly Hills fitness studio of Richard Simmons held its final exercise class on Saturday. NBC 4

The Rams finally started rookie quarterback Jared Goff, the #1 overall pick in the NFL draft, and still lost 14-10 to the Miami Dolphins.

USC defeated UCLA 36-14 at the Rose Bowl on Saturday night.

 

Selected tweets

 
 
 
 
 
]]> Tony Valdez retires from Fox 11 news, last of a generation tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55381 2016-11-19T00:53:27Z 2016-11-29T05:29:44Z "Your impact on this town is difficult to measure," Fox 11 anchor Steve Edwards says in a video tribute. Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php

Today was the final day at Fox 11 for longtime Los Angeles newsman Tony Valdez. He started in TV news here when there were not many Latino faces. "I was fortunate enough to be one of the people who, to put it bluntly, broke the color barrier," he says.

Valdez has been a general assignment reporter for decades and for 20-something years he has also reported the LA's Most Wanted segment, where he profiles criminal suspects and missing persons. For 31 years he also has hosted "Midday Sunday," a weekly public affairs program on Channel 11.

Valdez joined KTTV Channel 11 in 1981 after stints as a writer, producer and reporter at KCET and KTLA. He previously had worked for La Opiñion and I believe some radio stations. Valdez grew up on the Eastside and as a kid shined shoes on Olvera Street before taking his first news job: a paper route for the Los Angeles Herald-Express.

tony-valdez-grab.jpgValdez said via email that he was at KTTV Channel 11 for 35 years, five months and four days. "It’s always been a challenge but I am grateful for all the opportunities and all the amazing people I have worked with here."

Valdez cited colleagues who also helped open the doors of Los Angeles TV news to reporters of color. "I am the last of the first generation of 'ethnic' television news reporters in Los Angeles," he said. "I was fortunate to work with Ken Jones, who was the first African-American anchor in Los Angeles, and Bob Navarro, the first Chicano/Latino/Hispanic television reporter in SoCal." He also mentioned Asian-American reporters Tritia Toyota and Sam Chu Lin.

"It’s gratifying to see that the people reporting the news in Los Angeles now look just like the people who are watching it," he said.

"Your impact on this town is difficult to measure," Fox 11 anchor Steve Edwards says in a video interview with Valdez. "I've always thought of you as kind of the soul, maybe a little of the gatekeeper, of local television news."

Valdez is an Angeleno native who attended Los Angeles City College and Cal State Northridge. He has received numerous Emmy, Golden Mike and Los Angeles Press Club awards. He says he would have been a newspaper photographer if he had not gone into television.

Nice pic of the newsroom gathering posted by colleague Jeff Michael.

fox11-group-valdez.jpg

]]> Scully, Abdul-Jabbar, Gehry and more to get White House honor tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55375 2016-11-17T02:08:43Z 2016-11-22T07:27:34Z It's the Presidential Media of Freedom for Vin Scully and 20 others. Watch the call from the White House. Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php vin-scully-twitter.jpg

President Obama named Vin Scully one of 21 new recipients of the Presidential Medal Of Freedom, often described as the country's top civilian Honor. This year's list is heavy on entertainment and sports figures and on Angelenos.

Other winners in this year's announcement include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Gehry, Bill and Melinda Gates, Robert Redford, Tom Hanks, Maya Lin, Diana Ross, Ellen De Generes, Cicely Tyson, Robert DeNiro. Michael Jordan and Lorne Michaels.

But it was Scully's call that the White House set up and recorded. Press Secretary Josh Earnest does the honors.

The medals will be handed out Nov. 22.

]]> Gwen Ifill, Washington journalist, 61 tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55372 2016-11-15T06:30:18Z 2016-11-17T05:58:20Z Ifill died of cancer complications. Co-anchor Judy Woodruff gave viewers the news on "PBS News Hour," where Ifill was managing editor. Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php gwen-ifill-pbs.jpgPhoto: PBS.

Gwen Ifill, the veteran Washington journalist who was managing editor and co-anchor of "PBS News Hour," died Monday from complications of cancer. She was 61 and had been ill for the past year, but only recently left the air. Her death was announced by PBS.

"It is with extremely heavy hearts that we must share that our dear friend and beloved colleague Gwen Ifill passed away this afternoon following several months of cancer treatment. She was surrounded by loving family and many friends whom we ask that you keep in your thoughts and prayers....

“Gwen was a standard bearer for courage, fairness and integrity in an industry going through seismic change. She was a mentor to so many across the industry and her professionalism was respected across the political spectrum. She was a journalist’s journalist and set an example for all around her."

Ifill was on "News Hour" and the host of “Washington Week" over 17 years with PBS. She moderated two vice-presidential debates and had previously reported for the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News and Baltimore Evening Sun. She was the author of the bestseller “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.” PBS obituary.

From co-anchor Judy Woodruff: “She was not only my dear friend, she was the best partner one can imagine, because she was committed to fairness and to the finest in journalism. You always knew when working with Gwen that she had your back. I’m crushed that she won’t be sitting by my side on the NewsHour any more, but her mark on this program and on American journalism will endure.”

Woodruff informs the audience on tonight's "News Hour:"


Both President Obama and President-elect Trump praised Ifill.

Obama spoke at a Monday afternoon press conference: "Gwen was a friend of ours. She was an extraordinary journalist. She always kept faith with the fundamental responsibilities of her profession, asking tough questions, holding people in power accountable, and defending a strong and free press that makes our democracy work."

This was posted on the Trump Facebook page: "We are saddened by the passing of Gwen Ifill and extend our deepest condolences to her family and loved ones. Gwen was a broadcasting pioneer, shattering barriers throughout her career and blazing a path for future generations following in her considerable footsteps. Her presence and legacy will be felt forever."

]]> LA Observed Notes: Week 1 in Trump's America tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55370 2016-11-14T09:55:34Z 2016-11-17T05:58:52Z Some observations, plus a weekly dose of media and politics notes. Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php trumps-on-6-minutes-cbs.jpgDonald and Melania Trump interviewed in their penthouse by Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes."


Our semi-regular column of media and politics notes, with other news and observations. From multiple sources and the LA Observed inbox.

At the top: some observations

♦ Donald Trump won the election — thanks to an edge of just about 100,000 votes in four key states. He squeaked in. The vote results and exit polls reveal some deep pessimism, contradictory choices and meaningful shifts in the electorate. Embracing the whole Trump package isn't one of them. Hillary Clinton will end up with about two million more votes than Trump, and when you count third-party votes it's stark: more Americans voted against Trump than for him. Votes are still being counted, but Clinton could end with a bigger edge in the popular vote than winners John Kennedy in 1960 and Richard Nixon in 1968, or 2000 loser Al Gore.

♦ Here is Trump's first TV interview as president-elect, with Lesley Stahl on "60 Minutes." He came across as more prepared and modest than he often did during the campaign, cooled some of his rhetoric and discussed his post-election conversations with President Obama and both Clintons.


♦ Trump claimed to Stahl that he didn't know about the racist and anti-Semitic threats and attacks that have begun to happen since his election, and expressed dismay. He looked into the camera and told his supporters to stop it. Then he named Stephen Bannon of Breitbart News as senior White House adviser, equal to his chief of staff. Bannon has been accused of anti-Semitism and ugly white nationalist views. He is "hostile to core American values," the Anti-Defamation League said. CNN's Republican pundit Ana Navarro tweeted "A white supremacist Neanderthal in WH w/President's ear is DISGUSTING & TERRIFYING!" Republican strategist John Weaver: "The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office. Be very vigilant America."

♦ My view: The protests in Los Angeles and other cities are less about Hillary Clinton losing and more about the very real fears millions of Americans have about Trump and his friends. He chose to form the base of his support around fear of minorities and immigrants — it got his whole thing started — and while it's too glib to say that fear mongering explains his win, it is a real segment of the multi-faceted Trump coalition. This minority of the larger Trump base is the deplorables that Clinton meant -- arguably the most cancerous and immoral dark corner of American culture -- and bringing the racists and anti-Semites out of the shadows is the main reason that Trump begins his term as a pariah to so many Americans. Making Bannon his consigliere just confirms the fears. Trump does not begin with a blank slate, and for me, all of the bullying, slurs and insults that are starting to happen are on his ledger. It's on Trump to make it right, as David Lehrer writes with a broken heart in the Jewish Journal:

Whether Trump is himself a bigot and a misogynist is irrelevant. That’s an issue between him, his conscience and his God. What is absolutely relevant is the demonstrable way in which he espoused, tolerated and almost welcomed bigotry into the mainstream of his campaign....


His dependence on a conspiracy nut like Steve Bannon to run his campaign betrays the notions that underpin his dog whistles to bigots... Hopefully, Trump’s aides (at least the saner ones) will induce him to seek to bridge the chasms that he has fostered.

♦ Also: The politics media did not do a great job this election, and it's not just the polls. They covered Trump and Clinton OK, but did not grasp and sufficiently explain what was happening out in the country. They also never came up with an effective answer to Trump — perhaps the most brazen serial dissembler ever in national politics? — accusing the profession and individual reporters of dishonesty. It's a wake up call for journalism to re-bond with the heartland and the angry — by telling their stories better and more truthfully than Trump ever could or would want to. I have covered politics off and on for 40 years and I'll take the journalist's good intentions and quest for the truth over the politician's spin 99 percent of the time. From any party. It's an age-old divide: We want the real story and they want the positive story. Trump is worst than most on this point.

♦ Michael Moore, of all people, called the Trump phenomenon well before the election and tried to warn liberals: "You are living in a bubble that comes with an adjoining echo chamber where you and your friends are convinced the American people are not going to elect an idiot for president." Five Reasons Trump Will Win

Some more writing on the subject:
♦ The U.S. Media Is Completely Unprepared to Cover a Trump Presidency. The Atlantic
♦ Polls got Clinton right; they got Trump wrong. Vox
♦ Our First Amendment test is here. We can’t afford to flunk it. Margaret Sullivan/Washington Post
♦ "The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic...a sickening event in the history of the United States." David Remnick/New Yorker
♦ Expect more Russia-linked hacks now that Trump will be president. Wired


Looking ahead

Organizers are calling for student walkouts Monday morning at all the LAUSD high schools in the Boyle Heights and East LA area.


Media notes

Trump tweeted that the New York Times "is losing thousands of readers" because of its coverage of him. The NYT responded it has actually enjoyed a growth surge... Before that exchange, NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger memoed the staff that the Times would cover a Trump Administration without bias or fear of being bullied... People magazine put Trump on the cover just weeks after one of the magazine's writers detailed being sexually attacked by the future president. Editor Jess Cagle memoed the staff: "I assure you that the cover on the president-elect is in no way a celebration or endorsement of this deeply polarizing figure. And we continue to stand steadfastly by Natasha."... His job done, paid Trump shill Corey Lewandowski resigned from CNN. He's expected to get a job in the administration... Los Angeles Times editors tried to gloat that their outlier tracking poll showing Trump with a lead was vindicated by the results. But it wasn't tracking electoral votes. It was predicting the popular vote, which Trump lost. The LAT's final electoral map prediction? 352 votes for Clinton and a landslide. Maybe they should not crow about this one... NYT Phoenix bureau chief Fernanda Santos says she was told by a coffee shop patron to "speak English" for the time ever in that city. The f-word was also thrown... The New York Observer, owned by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, ended its print edition.

On the LA beat: Bill Plaschke did a nice LAT column on longtime Associated Press sports stringer Joe Resnick, who has colon cancer. Sports scribe Steve Dilbeck and shooter Lori Shepler play key roles... Lisa Dillman, a veteran of more than a decade on the LA Times hockey beat, is leaving for NHL.com... Former LA Times staffer Joyce Croker died at age 62....The Pasadena Star-News has closed its Colorado Boulevard office. Moving to new digs this week.


Politics notes

Northern California campaign strategist Ace Smith tried to advise Hillary Clinton in 2014 that to win she had to go after disaffected white voters. She didn't listen... Antonio Villaraigosa finally confirmed he is running for governor in 2018. In a way, Trump may help him... As of Friday, LA County had counted 2,382,271 votes but get this: there are still 421,000 unprocessed provisional ballots and 598,300 unprocessed vote-by-mail ballots, plus 17,410 with write-ins, damage or other reasons to get further review. So more than a million ballots are still out. The next update is scheduled for Tuesday. Latest count... Noted: Hillary Clinton is currently at 71.5 percent of the county vote. Former Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra defeated the surprise winner from two years ago, Patty Lopez. Michael Antonovich lost his bid to become a state Senator after four decades on the county Board of Supervisors. New supervisors Kathryn Barger (59%) and Janice Hahn (56%) will make the board four women and one man. Ex-lawmaker Warren Furutani also won't be going back to Sacamento. On and off-convicted former councilman Richard Alarcon got about 25 percent in his bid for Congress in the Valley. LA County voted 58% to legalize marijuana.

Some politics is local: Hollywood over-building activist Doug Haines filed the papers to challenge Councilman Mitch O’Farrell in the March election... Dakota Smith has shifted her Twitter bio: "LA Times reporter covering Mayor Garcetti and City Hall."... NBC 4 News Conference this weekend: Doug McIntyre talking about the importance of social media in politics.

LAPD shows the way: During Saturday's anti-Trump protest downtown, the LAPD tweeted:

People are talking about...

In her new book, Fox anchor Megyn Kelly tells of intense bullying from Donald Trump and constant contact between Trump Fox News management during the campaign... The most-edited Wikipedia pages over the last 15 years.


Media people doing stuff

Former Los Angeles Magazine and LAT writer Jesse Katz talks about his gig as an editor in the Los Angeles office of the international law firm O’Melveny & Myers. "I have to admit, I was a little intimidated stepping in here,” said Katz. “I come from the scruffier corners of journalism."... Larry Harnisch in the LA Review of Books: "As Philip Marlowe might ask: Why am I looking for Michael Connelly books? Since I retired in December after 27 years at the Los Angeles Times, ending 34 years in daily journalism, I have been catching up on decades of neglected reading. Many of my colleagues in the news business are voracious readers, but after a busy shift on the Times copy desk, the last thing I wanted to do was go home and read more L.A. crime, unless it related to my lengthy book project on the Black Dahlia....And so I began a self-imposed project to read as many mysteries set in Los Angeles as I could find."... Connelly's 19th Harry Bosch novel, "The Wrong Side of Goodbye," is dedicated like this: "For Vin Scully with many thanks." Is this the first mystery set partly within the city of San Fernando Police Department?... Book critic David Kipen suggests a library for your Trump respite... The Firesign Theatre will celebrate its 50th anniversary on Thursday. The comedy group formed at radio station KPFK in 1966. The originals include Peter Bergman, Phil Austin, David Ossman, and Philip Proctor.

Great LA Walk: The 11th iteration of Michael Schneider's daylong group outing will take place Saturday on Pico Boulevard. Starting point is at Grand Hope Park at 9 a.m. The annual walk is "inspired by the book Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles, by Kevin Roderick (with research by J. Eric Lynxwiler.)" Hey, glad we could help.

Map nerd: Jon Christensen, an occasional columnist here at LA Observed, comments in a National Geographic piece on Robert Berlo, a self-made map collector and road trip chronicler whose remarkable life's work resides at Stanford University. From the story: "As an adult, while on trips with his wife and two sons, Berlo would type up index cards listing every town they’d pass along their route...In the evenings after dinner, when other people might turn on the TV and mentally check out, Berlo would turn on classical music, sit at his desk, and work on his maps, often late into the night." He also "created" an entire town on the shore of Mono Lake.


Selected tweets


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
]]> Leonard Cohen, 82 tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55361 2016-11-11T02:14:18Z 2016-11-14T10:18:52Z Cohen's official Facebook page announced his passing without details. Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php leonard-cohen-fb.jpg

Posted on Leonard Cohen's Facebook page about 5:30 p.m.

It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist, Leonard Cohen has passed away.


We have lost one of music’s most revered and prolific visionaries.

A memorial will take place in Los Angeles at a later date. The family requests privacy during their time of grief.

I could have picked any of 25 classic songs. "Take This Waltz:"

Now in Vienna there are ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost

Cohen released his 14th album last month. "You Want It Darker" — it played like a farewell and was difficult to listen to even before today.

BBC obituary.

Leonard Cohen was called "the high priest of pathos" and the "godfather of gloom."


But the influence and appeal of this poet, novelist, songwriter and legendary ladies' man has endured throughout his career.

Often prone to depression throughout his life, is often, witty, charming and self-deprecating manner was reflected in his lyrics.

And after a period of retreat in the 1990s he reemerged with his creativity undimmed.

Leonard Norman Cohen was born in Westmount, a well-to-do area of Montreal, on 21 September 1934.


Rolling Stone.

Cohen was the dark eminence among a small pantheon of extremely influential singer-songwriters to emerge in the Sixties and early Seventies. Only Bob Dylan exerted a more profound influence upon his generation, and perhaps only Paul Simon and fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell equaled him as a song poet. Cohen's haunting bass voice, nylon-stringed guitar patterns, Greek-chorus backing vocals shaped evocative songs that dealt with love and hate, sex and spirituality, war and peace, ecstasy and depression. He was also the rare artist of his generation to enjoy artistic success into his Eighties, releasing his final album, You Want It Darker, earlier this year.


"I never had the sense that there was an end," he said in 1992. "That there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot."

New York Times.

Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet and novelist who abandoned a promising literary career to become one of the foremost songwriters of the contemporary era has died, according to an announcement Thursday night on his Facebook page. He was 82.


Over a musical career that spanned more than 45 years, Mr. Cohen wrote scores of songs that addressed, in language that was spare and often oblique, themes of religion and love, depression and suicide, politics and war. More than 2,000 recordings of those songs have been made, by artists ranging from the folk singers who were his first champions, like Judy Collins and Tim Hardin, to leading rock, pop, country and even rhythm and blues performers, including U2, Elton John, Sting, Trisha Yearwood and Aretha Franklin


Cohen's friend, former lover and musical muse, Marianne Ihlen, died earlier this year. Cohen with Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen in Olso in 1993.



Also last month, New Yorker editor David Remnick profiled Cohen at his home in Los Angeles.

Leonard Cohen lives on the second floor of a modest house in Mid-Wilshire, a diverse, unglamorous precinct of Los Angeles. He is eighty-two. Between 2008 and 2013, he was on tour more or less continuously. It is highly unlikely that his health will permit such rigors ever again. Cohen has an album coming out in October—obsessed with mortality, God-infused, yet funny, called “You Want It Darker”—but friends and musical associates say they’d be surprised to see him onstage again except in a limited way: a single performance, perhaps, or a short residency at one venue. When I e-mailed ahead to ask Cohen out for dinner, he said that he was more or less “confined to barracks.”


Fans of Cohen are flooding the Facebook pages of longtime collaborators Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen. Neither has posted yet.


Added: The Montreal Gazette.

The loss of Leonard Cohen, who has died at age 82, is huge, and is going to take some getting used to. As poet, novelist and most influentially as a late-starting singer-songwriter, Montreal’s most celebrated son left an indelible mark on the past five-plus decades. An artist who was considered old by the standards of pop culture in 1967, when his debut album Songs of Leonard Cohen was released, ended up outlasting almost all of his contemporaries as a vital creative force and cultural presence.

Cohen is survived by two children living in Los Angeles, son Adam Cohen and daughter Lorca Cohen.

]]> Kamala Harris elected, pot legalized, death penalty retained tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55359 2016-11-09T08:15:01Z 2016-11-14T00:57:38Z There's no surprise that Attorney General Kamala Harris was elected to succeed Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate. The news is that California voters also approved legal marijuana, kept the... Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php There's no surprise that Attorney General Kamala Harris was elected to succeed Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate. The news is that California voters also approved legal marijuana, kept the death penalty and added limits on appeals, allowed bilingual education in schools, put restrictions on ammunition sales and rejected a law to require condom use in pornography.

And more. Remember, there were 17 measures on the state ballot.

Under Proposition 64, people 21 years old and up can grow six marijuana plants, possess or buy up to 28.5 grams, and smoke in private — as soon as Wednesday. Pot smoking will be banned anywhere tobacco smoking is banned by state law, while driving, and within 1,000 feet of a school, day-care center or youth center while children are present. Eventually, stores will be licensed to sell marijuana and the sales can be taxed.

It looks as if California voters have decided, as they always do, to retain the death penalty. Proposition 66 was also leading to put a time limit on appeals. They gave the day's biggest margin to Proposition 58, which reauthorizes bilingual education. They slapped a background check requirement on some ammunition sales, passed the cigarette tax and rejected the AIDS Health Foundation's bid to require condoms on male adult film performers everywhere in the state.

The voters went for Proposition 57, which will allow earlier release from prison of felons held on so-called nonviolent crimes. And they appear to be rejecting Proposition 61's limit on prescription drug prices.

Latest statewide results.

county-vote-graphic.jpgIn Los Angeles County, the results were coming in slowly. At a bit after midnight, just 29.65 percent of precincts were counted. More than 500,000 vote by mail ballots had been counted.

Kathryn Barger had a sizable lead in the open race for county supervisor in the 5th district, and Janice Hahn led in the 4th district.

Measure M, the sales tax increase for transit and freeway projects, needs two-thirds of votes cast and had that, but with under 30 percent of votes counted. Too close to call.

The LA city ballot measure to fund the construction of homeless housing, HHH, was running well ahead of the two-thirds vote it needed. JJJ, labor's measure to add a bunch of requirements on local residential projects, also was passing easily.

County results.

]]> LA's first presidential election was different tag:www.laobserved.com,2016://1.55356 2016-11-08T17:21:02Z 2016-11-09T08:12:17Z Franklin Pierce won with the help of early LA figures like the Californio Andres Pico. Kevin Roderick http://www.laobserved.com/writers/kevinroderick.php andres_pico-lapl-crop.jpgAndres Pico.

KCET's resident historian Nathan Masters was surprised to find that no one had written much about the first time Los Angeles voted for president, in 1852. So he went back to the primary sources and reconstructed the time. The election was between Democrat Franklin Pierce and Whig Winfield Scott, neither of whom had apparently ever been to Los Angeles, a village outpost of 2,000 people in the lightly populated, two-year-old American state of California.

The scene of actual voting is interesting for how different it was. In those days, the men allowed to vote cast ballots for electors pledged to the candidates. One of the electors for Pierce was one of my favorite early LA characters, Andres Pico, a Californio who at one time had controlled most of the San Fernando Valley as his rancho. He led an army of Californios against the United States during the war with Mexico, and most famously surrendered the province of Alta California to Col. John C. Fremont in an adobe house that stood where Lankershim Boulevard now passes through Universal City. The Capitulation of Cahuenga occurred on Jan. 13, 1847. Five years later, Pico was a presidential elector and a Democratic Party lawmaker, although he never did pick up English. His brother, Pio Pico, was the last Mexican governor of California and a noteworthy Los Angeles figure in his own right.

The election was on Tuesday, Nov. 2. Voters had to come to a polling location and be visually identified by officials. From Masters' post on the KCET website:

n Los Angeles itself, a crowd gathered that morning outside the adobe county courthouse at Spring Street and Franklin Alley. The contest between Pierce and Scott, fought over slavery and other sectional issues, might not have stirred much passion among Angelenos, but the races for state and local office certainly had. Just to reach the polling window, voters had to push through the throng of candidates and other campaigners huddled around the courthouse. Inside, behind the ballot box, the election officials – inspector Alexander Bell and judges John G. Downey and Ignacio del Valle – tried to manage the chaos.


Because California did not use voter rolls until 1866, these officials made a spot determination about each voter’s eligibility. Despite spirited arguments from the crowd about each voter’s citizenship and residency status, most white men who presented themselves before the officials were allowed to vote, as were most Mexican-Americans, made U.S. citizens by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Indians were not permitted, however, nor were African-Americans (though Afro-Mexicans like Pío Pico were). Women regardless of ethnicity could not vote, either; they would not win suffrage in California until 1911.

The ballots themselves were usually pre-printed tickets supplied by local Democratic or Whig partisans. To vote a straight party ticket, a voter simply placed the slip of paper in the ballot box. To cross party lines in a race, the voter simply crossed out the pre-supplied name and wrote in his preferred candidate...

Pierce's slate of four electors won Los Angeles County with 571 to 574 votes, to 496-498 for Scott’s slate.

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