In your fed-up Wednesday media column: Bill Keller must be stopped, a new Encyclopedia of News, the LAT's long-awaited vindication, Katie Couric considered, and Gwyneth declines to launch a magazine, thank god.
"Most Americans had likely never heard of RadarOnline before now. But the site almost instantly made a name for itself with the Octo-Mom story."—LAT, today. Come on now. I mean, really.
Surely, everyone remembers when Bob Hope passed the Emancipation Proclamation, ensuring that even women would have the right to vote at the Oscars. Well, now you dames have gone and upset the LAT's Tom O'Neil!
The Tribune Company, owner of the LA Times and Chicago Tribune, has filed for bankruptcy. Bummer. Pretty much everyone saw this coming. The company is $12 billion in debt, its revenues are going steadily downward, it's been having round after round of layoffs, and it's run by an angry (but honest!) billionaire gnome…
LA Times columnist Patrick Goldstein used his blog yesterday for the entertaining purpose of viciously mocking Variety and its Hollywood fixture editor, Peter Bart. Mocking them for being poor! This column is awesome for the following reasons: because media outlets don't usually air their dirty laundry like this;…
The LA Times has a videotape of Obama at a luncheon with known Arab Rashid Khalidi. They say they won't release it because they promised their source they wouldn't. We said that somebody there should release it just so they can claim the $150,000 bounty offered for it and buy essential office supplies, such as toilet…
We've already seen that Wasilla, Alaska, Sarah Palin's hometown, is a mix of wild animals and Jesus freaks. But did you know it has a Taco Bell and a Senor Taco! Diversity. Hollywood liberal columnist Steve Lopez of the LA Times went for a visit to Wasilla, and found one guy who heard Palin say she would "see Jesus"…
While these parts have been known to house a predatory cougar or two, nothing could have prepared us for the family of bobcats who have moved into a foreclosed home in Lake Elsinore. The brood — at least two adult cats and three kittens — have lived in the house for weeks, sunning themselves on an outside wall and…
A retired police officer and microbrewer in the town of Weed, California has won the right to use the slogan "Try Legal Weed" in his marketing material—though he's never touched the herb himself. The news gives the LA Times the chance to use up all those weed jokes it had laying around. [LAT]
The LAT ran a feature today on the newest male-bonding craze to consume Hollywood power players — and no, it doesn't involve cocaine, Red Bull, or bottle service at Opera. Instead, it's an activity dubbed "Nerd Poker," and it offers almost 100 of Hollywood's behind-the-scenes talents a weekly chance to socialize…
The LAT ran a fascinating piece today on Richard Dutcher, the filmmaker who was anointed the father of Mormon cinema after his 2000 sleeper hit, God's Army, ushered in a wave of Mormon-focused indie flicks. Now, Dutcher is releasing what's being marketed as "the first R-rated Mormon movie" — and it's a doozy,…
Outfoxed: Though ticket prices continue to rise and box office records are broken nearly every week, this will be 20th Century Fox's first summer without a $100 million hit since (yikes) 1997. How could anyone have predicted such dire earnings from a blockbuster slate that boasted Space Chimps, an X-Files sequel…
Dog Days: By August 29, the struggling L.A. Times will have laid off 150 of its employees following job cuts announced last month. Exactly what does the paper plan to do with its diminished resources now that so many of its "non-essential" employees are gone? Why, run a 35-page "Stars With Puppies" slideshow, of…
Gnomish, Harley-riding media Methuselah and Tribune Co. boss Sam Zell inspires a bit of resentment amongst his minions, mainly for doing things like laying them all off while cussing them out. But his ex-Tribune employees are now striking back-on a blog! Prepare to be hoisted on the new media petard of broke, grizzled…
Chuck Philips, the LA Times reporter who wrote a huge front page story in March tying Puff Daddy to the shooting of Tupac Shakur-only to find out that this main source was a serial con man and the story was wrong-has been laid off from the paper, along with 150 colleagues. On one hand, Philips once won a Pulitzer; on…
The work of "Big Picture" columnist Patrick Goldstein accurately reflects the LA Times' dedication to producing nothing but the hardest of hard-hitting entertainment journalism: his columns, which run the gamut from "Here Is An Old Producer I Had Lunch With" to "This Focus Group, Made Up Exclusively of Ten-Year-Olds…
Sports blogs might be losing their edge! Back in the good old days they were all bile-spewing, rumormongering perverts who cared about nothing but posting pictures of NFL players cavorting drunkenly with Buzz Bissinger (pictured, ranting). But as time went on, they actually started making money and gaining…
The plan to turn the LA Times' Sunday magazine over to the paper's business staff, ending its four-decade run as an editorial product, is now a reality. LAT editor Russ Stanton acknowledged that he didn't like the idea, but said that the paper's budget issues make holding onto editorial control of the magazine…
Seeing as the L.A. Times wouldn't rush any story it couldn't retract in disgrace a few weeks later, John Horn took his sweet time pounding out today's analysis of all the dramatic agency-hopping exploits over the last week-and-a-half. There's a little bit of a long view, here, however, and it's decidedly ugly; for…
After an independent investigation into yesterday's stunning report by The Smoking Gun that the LAT had managed to be duped by a federally incarcerated Turtle-like, who forged FBI documents implicated Sean "Puffy" Combs's entourage in the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur at the Quad Recording Studios in Times Square…
