Politicians behaving badly, part two

Fox 11 News has uncovered the back story for why the city of Hawthorne fired its city manager and finance director earlier this year, and why the police chief later resigned.

 Fox learned that in July 2009, City Manager Jag Pathirana and Finance Director Louis Esober allegedly told police they were Hawthorne cops while being questioned about a scuffle Escober got into with a dancer at the Wild Goose strip club. Pathirana was arrested for soliciting a prostitute in 2003 minutes from the same club.

In April, Pathirana was fired in a hastily called council meeting. Escober was later let go as part of budget cuts. Fox News obtained tape of the two men removing records from City Hall the night before Patharina got the axe.

Police Chief Michael Heffner resigned earlier this year when confronted by the interim city manager about what had happened in the July 2009 incident.

(found via LA Weekly)

Politicians behaving badly, part one

The North County Times pulled its endorsement for Vista City Council candidate Mario Carrillo after a San Diego Union-Tribune reporter found he'd inflated his educational experience. Carrillo had touted in his campaign materials and at council meetings that he had a bachelor's and master's degree. Turns out, the degrees came from a well-known diploma mill.

From the U-T story:

Shaftesbury University is part of a consortium of unaccredited universities called the University Degree Programs run by Jason and Caroline Abraham starting in the 1990s. According to the 2004 Chronicle of Higher Education article, sales people at call centers in Romania and Israel recruited students over the telephone. In the past, recipients of their degrees have been prosecuted for fraud in connection with the use of the degrees for employment.

Carrillo might have fibbed about his music accomplishments, too, and could lose other endorsements over the affair, the U-T reports.

Echoes of Christine O'Donnell, eh?

LANG likes Facebook, mobile apps

The nine newspapers in the Los Angeles Newspaper Group (LANG) plan to use Facebook's commenting system. Readers will have to sign into their Facebook accounts to leave a message at the bottom of a story. The system should make it easy to offer a comment, as long as the reader has a Facebook account; editors also hope to the system discourages people from leaving nasty comments since Facebook provides a link on the person's Facebook page.

Here's part of the memo from San Bernardino Sun/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin editor Frank Pine:

Just a heads up that we’re planning to make a fairly significant change to all of our websites in the very near future: We’ll be switching our commenting functions from Topix to Facebook. BANG is already doing this on insidebayarea.com, and it’s a substantial improvement over what we have here in that it makes commenting much easier, and by linking the comments to users’ Facebook accounts, it cuts down the more objectionable anonymous comments. While the traditional thinking is that requiring registration or real names with comments reduces traffic, insidebayarea.com has actually seen an increase in traffic and referral traffic from Facebook.

The memo goes on to say LANG is working on mobile phone apps for each of the newspapers and will soon get started on apps for computer tablets.

J. Gold apologizes to Paula Deen

The announcement of a Tournament of Roses grand marshal often gets worldwide attention, even if it's not a particularly newsworthy event (person chosen to ride in car and wave at people). Tuesday, the announcement became newsworthy when Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold let fly with his unvarnished opinion of Paula Deen, the 2011 marshal, for her embrace of Twinkie-pie cuisine.

Today, Gold, apparently feeling somewhat badly about his reaction, penned an apology letter to Deen, saying he treated her as a brand rather than a person. From the letter:

But our mutual friends say that you are delightful. You clearly love food. And I know that if we were to sit down together, we would probably get along just fine - I suspect that you, like me, could talk for an hour about the finer points of grits, or country ham, or pie crust without beginning to exhaust the topic. I realize that your recipes reflect the way people actually do cook in the South, rather than the way they think they should cook; that they skew toward getting dinner on the table as opposed to an Olympian ideal.

Deen is as charming and good-natured as any Southerner could be. But having grown up myself in a home with Southern-influenced cooking that often relied on the horrible, refined ingredients offered by chain supermarkets, and having since been converted to be more adventurous with ethnic foods and fresher ingredients, I think Gold had a good point that he shouldn't let go of - even if he's sorry about the way he framed it. He'll be on tonight's "Which Way, LA?" to expand on his thoughts. Listen here starting at 7 p.m.

39 percent of Americans want to cut off NPR

A majority of registered Republicans and 39 percent of Americans overall want to see the federal government pull its funding to NPR, a new survey found. Only 45 percent of those surveyed want to keep the funding the vanquisher of Juan Williams.

From the survey summary:

In partisan terms, Republicans favored ending U.S. funding 54-28 percent, while Democrats wanted the funding to continue 58-25 percent. NPR funding was favored by independents 49-38 percent.

Broken down by ages, the 18-29 group supported continued taxpayer subsidies 62-30 percent. The 30-44 group narrowly sided with halting the funding 42-39 percent, and older groups were almost evenly split on the idea.

Men backed NPR’s federal funding 50-40 percent, but women were not so decisive. They supported continued funding 40-37 percent, with another 23 percent undecided. Support hovered around 50 percent among all ethnic groups in the survey – whites, blacks, Latinos and others.

More circulation numbers for LANG

Here are more circulation numbers for LANG's nine newspapers (still two missing):

Pasadena Star-News: daily rose 2.13 percent to 24,480; Sunday rose 0.34 percent to 27,133

San Gabriel Valley Tribune: daily rose 11.19 percent to 37,123; Sunday rose 2.29 percent

Whittier Daily News: daily rose 9.86 percent to 14,365; Sunday rose 0.85 percent to 15,118

Inland Valley Daily Bulletin: daily rose 2.6 percent to 49,268; Sunday rose 1.3 percent to 55,277

San Bernardino Sun: daily grew 11.2 percent to 52,273; Sunday grew 3.9 percent to 57,150

Redlands Daily Facts: daily rose 5 percent to 6,940; Sunday rose 25 percent to 7,072

I have not seen numbers for the Long Beach Press-Telegram or Daily Breeze in Torrance.

As noted yesterday, the LA Daily News saw a 0.14 percent rise in daily circulation, to 89,093 papers, and a Sunday increase of 3.9 percent, to 97,000.

The numbers consist of print and online subscriptions to the papers. Last year, LANG launched e-editions of its printed papers (essentially .pdfs) and the strategy has bucked up the numbers for at least some papers. For example, the Sun would have dropped 3.5 percent in Sunday circulation if the e-edition hadn't been counted.

Are the e-editions subscriptions as profitable as subscriptions to the print edition?

SGV Tribune article leads to charges

The LA District Attorney's Office has filed criminal charges against four current and former city officials in Irwindale in response to revelations first reported in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

Councilman Mark Breceda, former city manager Steve Blancarte, finance director Abe De Dios, and former Councilwoman Rosemary Ramirez have been charged with using roughly $14,000 in city funds to pay for baseball tickets and Broadway shows while visiting New York between 2001 and 2005.

A 2007 Tribune story written by then-reporter Jennifer McLain (today's Tribune article misspelled her name - *now fixed) documented the unusual expenses and questioned their legality. According to the Los Angeles Times, a anonymous tipster sent the story to the DA's Public Integrity Division, triggering an investigation.

McLain has since left the newspaper to pursue a degree in public administration at USC.

J. Gold-en quote

Paula Deen's Southern-fried cooking and Food Network sensibilities have not won over Pasadena foodie and LA Weekly columnist Jonathan Gold. When the Tournament of Roses announced Deen would be the parade's grand marshal in 2011, Gold offered this take to the Pasadena Star-News:

"Paula Deen? That's absolutely horrifying," Gold said in an e-mail Tuesday. "Julia Child grew up on Pasadena Avenue, just a few blocks from the start of the parade, and practically everything Ms. Deen has done both exploits and despoils the culinary movement Child did so much to prod into being.

"As a food person and as a Pasadenan, I should be proud that the committee is honoring somebody in my profession," Gold said, "but the news makes me cringe.

I hope the Star-News or Gold himself spin a feature or two out of this; to explore Child's culinary legacy and the cultural and political overtones of Gold's criticism.

San Francisco vs. Texas, Obama vs. the Tea Party, Gold vs. Deen. It's all coming together.

(found via LA Observed)

LANG inches up

The newspapers in LANG saw circulation rise slightly, according to the LA Daily News. Sunday circulation rose 1 percent for the nine papers, to 428,100. It was up 3 percent on weekday, to an average of 408,200.

The story does not break out numbers for individual papers.

The Daily News, which is the largest of the nine LANG papers, did provide it's own circulation numbers. From the story:

The Los Angeles Daily News saw its Sunday circulation increase nearly 3.9 percent to 97,000 during the six months that ended Sept. 30, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to figures released Monday. 

The same report by the Audit Bureau of Circulations recorded a 0.14 percent increase in the paper's average daily circulation to 89,093.

Newspaper circulation drops slightly less sharply

Circulation numbers are out of the last six months and most big newspapers saw a decline when compared to last year. The drop isn't as bad as in past years, but that's not saying much. For some papers, such as the San Francisco Chronicle, this decline has been relentless. Here are the numbers for the 25 largest papers, as reported in the New York Times, with this year's first, followed by last year's, and the percentage change:

WALL STREET JOURNAL   2,061,142 … 2,024,269 … 1.82%
USA TODAY   1,830,594 … 1,900,116 … -3.66%
NEW YORK TIMES   876,638 … 927,851 … -5.52%
LOS ANGELES TIMES   600,449 … 657,467 … -8.67%
WASHINGTON POST   545,345 … 582,844 … -6.43%
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS   512,520 … 544,167 … -5.82%
NEW YORK POST   501,501 … 508,042 … -1.29%
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS   477,592 N/A
CHICAGO TRIBUNE   441,508 … 465,892 … -5.23%
HOUSTON CHRONICLE   343,952 … 384,437 … -10.53%
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER   342,361 … 361,481 … -5.29%
NEWSDAY    314,848 … 357,124 … -11.84%
DENVER POST   309,863 … 340,949 … -9.12%
ARIZONA REPUBLIC   308,973 … 316,873 … -2.49%
MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE   297,478 … 304,544 … -2.32%
DALLAS MORNING NEWS   264,459 … 263,810 … 0.25%
CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER   252,608 … 271,182 … -6.85%
SEATTLE TIMES   251,697 … 263,588 -4.51%
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES   250,747 … 275,641 … -9.03%
DETROIT FREE PRESS   245,326 … 269,729 … -9.05%
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES   239,684 … 240,146 … -0.19%
OREGONIAN   239,071 … 249,164 … -4.05%
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE   224,761 … 242,693 … -7.39%
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE   223,549 … 251,782 … -11.21%
NEWARK STAR-LEDGER   223,037 … 246,006 … -9.34%

Four today

1. New media is just as dicey as old: Digg laid off 25 people, equivalent to 37 percent of its staff. TechCrunch

2. What's worse than elitists? New ones. Charles Murray at WaPo

3. Striking news: Fox News Channel profits from polarization. PoliticusUSA

4. A primer on the newspaper circulation numbers dropping today. AdAge

Michaels gone

The slow-motion firing of Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels has finally reached its end. He's gone, a board of four will take over until a new CEO is named. LA Biz Observed

Tribune Co. is supposed to file bankruptcy plan today

The Wall Street Journal reports that Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and other media outlets, will file its plan to emerge from bankruptcy sometime today. A former News Corp. executive, Peter Chernin, is on a short list to replace Randy Michaels as CEO.

From the Journal:

People familiar with the matter said Mr. Chernin is being considered, and might be interested in, heading Tribune's new board. His spokesman said he isn't interested in the CEO job but declined to comment on whether he was approached about or is interested in becoming chairman ...

Tribune's post-bankruptcy team isn't expected to include Chief Executive Randy Michaels, who is expected to resign by the end of the week after damaging revelations about the company's culture. People familiar with the situation say he will be succeeded temporarily by a four-person team comprising Tony Hunter, publisher of the Chicago Tribune; Eddy Hartenstein, publisher of the Los Angeles Times; Nils Larsen, chief investment officer at Tribune; and Don Liebentritt, Tribune's chief restructuring officer.

A second look at Juan Williams, and then looking past him

The Juan Williams flap is more interesting than I first suggested yesterday, once the personalities and Fox squawk are toned down some.

The predictable calls for Congress to de-fund NPR were predictable. But conservative critics could gain some ammunition in their charge of liberal bias since, earlier this week, NPR accepted $1.8 million from a foundation run by liberal activist billionaire George Soros. On the other side of the partisan divide, David Weigel at Slate asks whether conservatives are letting themselves get sidetracked in the final week of campaign season:

Doesn't this remind that voter whom the Democrats are trying to spook with Christine O'Donnell attacks that the GOP he's voting for is going to wage culture war as much as it's going to try and bring back jobs?

And, of course, there's the increasing pressure on journalists to "get real" by offering opinions and reactions, rather than muck up the American reality show with mushy impartiality and faux objectivity:

The Williams firing shows that NPR, in many ways, is an example of a news organization trying to navigate new media without muddying the role of journalism in society, says Jen Reeves, an associate journalism professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

"It's confusing to the general public what journalism is anymore," says Ms. Reeves. "Our job as journalists is to question the culture and present it to the general public to think about. But instead we're constantly [playing up people's fears]."

I'm still not sure why people seek elite stand ins to sloppily represent their thoughts and opinions; and I don't see how a response to fake outrage on a show like the O'Reilly Factor offers a truthful glimpse into reality. But whatever.

There's the question of how Muslims are being used by ideologues to stand as symbols of what we should fear or what we should celebrate; there's a profit issue (people get paid more to bash on cable than to think on NPR), and then there's perhaps the most interesting question to me, one related to the opinion and spin journalism on television and online. The story was done by a reporter at NPR and it will sound sympathetic to the president to some. Here's an excerpt:

[Walt] Rowen counseled patience, sounding very much like the owner of a family business that's now celebrating its 100th year.

"Like businesses, many, many times it's a long-term process. You can't expect immediate results," he said. "You've got to look down the road and say, 'These are the policies that I need to implement now that will get me where I want to go.'

"And that's very difficult to get across in our society today. Everybody is like Velma Hart. She wants an immediate answer. She wants instant gratification. And it's not possible."

Rowen's words reminded me of Cavalier's and Amadeo's. But their philosophy isn't one that's getting a lot of airtime these days. That has left Rowen asking the question one hears from across the political spectrum: left, right and especially center.

"Why aren't people like me that have opinions like mine being asked or talked to?" he asked.

Across the country, there's no shortage of shouting this election season.  But beyond the backyard, real conversations about politics are hard to come by.

A journalist needs to set his own opinions aside to hear and report Rowen's. And it's a hell of a lot more interesting than what Juan Williams thinks when he gets on a plane.

The filthy New York Times

Best quote of the day comes from the Times' City Room blog:

Most of Adam is a deep dark brown; his penis, though, is worn golden from extensive handling.

(h/t Michael Scherer)

Juan Williams, the most important man in America today

I find it hard to get too worked up about NPR firing Juan Williams for saying he gets "nervous" when he sees Muslims on an airplane. One could certainly argue that NPR handled the situation poorly from a PR perspective; and any inconsistency in how NPR applies its policy prohibiting analysts and reporters from offering opinion is certainly newsworthy. My main takeaway: If Williams wasn't supposed to offer opinions on cable news shows, NPR should have fired him long before he stumbled into an issue that's so politically charged.

What have we learned from all of this? First, conservatives who didn't like NPR before don't like NPR even more now. Second, despite repeated claims that NPR is a taxpayer-funded operation, it really isn't. Third, getting fired by the "lamestream" media is lucrative. Last, pundits yelling the loudest about censorship aren't necessarily the most consistent on the issue. From Bloggasm:

The conservative media watchdog Newsbusters claimed today that “Juan Williams has done nothing wrong” and that “what he said echoes what the vast majority of Americans believe.” This is the complete opposite of the view it took on Nasr’s rather anodyne tweet. “CNN has finally taken a step in the right direction in removing a terrorist sympathizer from their ranks,” the blogger wrote several months ago. “It’s a shame it took this amount of publicity and attention from organizations like the MRC to get the job done, as Octavia Nasr should never have been granted the position of authority to begin with.”

Sly goes to Washington Post

Liz Sly will leave her job as Baghdad correspondent for the Los Angeles Times to become Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post. She replaces Leila Fadel, who heads to Egypt for the Post. fishbowlDC

Four in the morning

1. Guests on public television news and interview shows are mostly white and male. FAIR

2. NPR fired Juan Williams for statements he made about Muslims on "The O'Reilly Factor" (WaPo). There's some push back from other media (Slate). NPR's president explains further (LA Observed). Williams does more talking on Fox (NYT).

3. Jim Rainey does not think public radio will replace newspapers as a main source of local news. LA Times

4. Have you applied to become the next editor of Newsweek? Hispters should probably apply twice. The Awl

A pro-am tool for getting public documents

Nieman Journalism Lab today profiles MuckRock, an online tool that's supposed to make it easier for anyone, including professional journalists, to retrieve public documents through from America's thicket of government agencies.

Not only does MuckRock help identify which agency has the record you might be looking for, but has a tracker to follow the grinding progress as that agency drags its feet in responding to your request.

From the Lab:

The idea was to build a service that anyone could use — a long-time journalist, a neighborhood blogger, or someone simply looking to get answers out of city hall. The value to bloggers or citizen journalists seems clear: Providing not just tools but guidance on the sometimes labyrinthian process of making document requests. But for journalists working at established media outlets, the pitch is a little more tricky. “We’ve kind of found our sweet spot right now is helping out anybody who’s at least that pro-am journalist or a community blogger,” said Morisy, who has written for the New York Daily News and Business 2.0. “But also the overburdened reporter who writes stories, blogs, tweets, and has to juggle investigations.” In theory, a new resource to help newsrooms expedite FOIA requests would be a help, particularly at a time when shrinking staff and rising demand on reporters may exclude investigative projects. In reality, experienced journalists are generally more comfortable undertaking FOIA requests themselves, if not for accuracy than to keep a story under wraps from competitors or the government itself.

Layoffs, departures at the Press-Enterprise

The Press-Enterprise in Riverside laid off 11 pressmen, a photo tech, and an editorial assistant this week, I'm told. No word on whether the Belo-owned newspaper plans to change its printing operations.

The paper also had some recent departures from the newsroom, but not due to layoffs. Cops reporter Paul LaRocco is headed to Newsday and prep sports reporter and columnist Matt Calkins took a job with the Vancouver (Wash.) Columbian to cover the Portland Trail Blazers.

Randy Michaels watch, day three

Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels has "decided to resign," according to the Chicago Tribune, and company executives have a succession plan in the works that includes Los Angeles Times publisher Eddy Hartenstein.

From the story:

Randy Michaels, Tribune Co.'s embattled chief executive, has decided to resign his post at the Chicago-based media company and intends to leave the company before the end of the week, sources close to the situation said.

He will be replaced by a four-member office of the president that the sources said would comprise Eddy Hartenstein, chief executive and publisher of the Los Angeles Times Media Group; Tony Hunter, president and publisher of the Chicago Tribune Media Group; Nils Larsen, Tribune's chief investment officer; and Don Liebentritt, chief restructuring officer.

The development comes after weeks of turmoil at the bankrupt company, brought on by assertions that Michaels and his management team displayed boorish behavior and fostered a sexist, hostile work environment. The Tribune board met Tuesday, but no announcement on Michaels' fate followed.

-snip-

The sources said Michaels had willingly decided to make his exit, having concluded that it was best for the company under the circumstances. He and the board had determined that the turmoil was distracting employees, threatening to hurt business and complicating the company's efforts to emerge from a contentious bankruptcy process.

Does anyone else think the unnamed sources sound a lot like the company executives who forced Michaels to willingly resign his job?

Tribune has done a good job of turning what should have been a single "CEO fired" story into multiple days of incremental updates and anonymous leaks that have probably bored most readers and will end with Michaels announcing he's going to step aside for the good of all involved.

Randy Michaels not gone yet*

The Wall Street Journal confirms that the Tribune Co. board is debating whether to dump CEO Randy Michaels, but the paper reports that it remains unclear whether a decision will be made today.

*Update: The New York Times, which first reported Tribune Co. wanted Michaels gone, says that the board told Michaels he should resign but stopped short of demanding his resignation. Perhaps they think the company will look more stable if Michaels departs as part of some bankruptcy deal or something.

As rumored, Texas Tribune and New York Times to partner

You read it here first and probably forgot/ignored it, but the Texas Tribune has now announced/acknowledged that it will partner with the New York Times.

From the TT:

Starting Oct. 29, we'll be the third local partner in the Times' stable, joining our nonprofit pals at The Bay Citizen and the Chicago News Cooperative in providing homegrown reporting and analysis to augment that of the very capable journalists in the paper's regional bureaus. Specifically, we'll be publishing a total of eight stories a week that will run on Fridays and Sundays in print editions of the Times distributed in Texas. The stories will appear in two-page sections labeled "Texas," and they'll be billed as a collaboration between the Trib and the Times. There will be also a new, Texas-branded area of the Times' website — accessible, obviously, no matter where you live — that will showcase even more of the Trib's work.

My March scooplet: "Heard through the grapevine that the New York Times and the Texas Tribune are considering a collaboration, possibly something like what the Times has done with locally produced content in San Francisco and Chicago."

Christine O'Donnell and what she didn't learn while not attending Claremont Graduate University*

For a constitutional scholar, Christine O'Donnell, the Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, made some strange statements today in her debate with Democratic rival Chris Coons about the contents of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

From the Associated Press:

The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O'Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons' position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.

Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious doctrine doesn't belong in our public schools."

"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked him.

When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?"

It is in the First Amendment. In fact, it's the first line: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".

A campaign spokesman later said O'Donnell was saying the phrase "separation of church and state" didn't appear in the Constitution. But she seemed extremely skeptical about the "shall make no law" bit, too.

O'Donnell also stumbled when asked about the 14th and 16th Amendments, which enumerate citizenship rights and federal powers to collect income tax, respectively.

Why the added scrutiny for O'Donnell? First, because she says her legislative priorities are based on her understanding of the Constitution. Second, because she claimed to have taken a graduate course in constitutional government from the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank (that is not an accredited college and offers no graduate courses). Then there was the LinkedIn profile that claimed she'd studied constitutional government at Claremont Graduate University, a real college that she did not attend and that has nothing to do with the Claremont Institute.

*Update: Let's go to the video:

Tribune CEO Randy Michaels could be out of a job tomorrow

The firestorm surrounding Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels in recent days is what happens when your days are numbered and your supposed friends and colleagues become sources for a piece like this.

Whatever one thinks of the New York Times story that portrayed the Tribune executive suite as a low-rent frat house full of aging radio execs who think locker room chat is a form of creative enterprise, it should come as no surprise that Michaels would soon be shown the door. After all, little of the information in the story was new - its just that no insiders had felt the need to help the Times connect the dots. Until now.

And so the other shoe drops:

The board of directors of the Tribune Company is expected to ask Tuesday for the resignation of Randy Michaels, the controversial chief executive of the company, according to a person directly involved in the matter.

The individual, who spoke on the condition of not being identified, said the board had lost confidence in the ability of Mr. Michaels to lead the troubled company. 

Mr. Michael’s resignation would follow by days the exit of another top executive at the media company, Lee Abrams, Tribune’s chief innovation officer, who resigned on Friday after sending a sexually explicit memo to the entire company. 

All of this comes ahead of Tribune's expected emergence from nearly two years of often contentious bankruptcy proceedings. Michaels, who was brought in by company owner Sam Zell, would likely be out of a job even if it weren't for the bad press; especially since Zell himself will probably lose his stake in the company as part of the bankruptcy deal. The bad press about Michaels just adds momentum.

NPR wants to expand statehouse reporting

National Public Radio has accepted a $1.8 million grant from the Open Society Foundations, a group started by billionaire and liberal activist George Soros, as part of an effort to hire 100 reports in 50 states to keep an eye of state politics. NPR president Vivian Schiller described the project to the New York Times, which summarized it this way:

The journalists would not be part of typical statehouse coverage, but instead would work on enterprise journalism that looks at how state government decisions play out over years, and extend beyond a single state’s borders.

Another Star-Newser goes to AOL Patch

AOL's Patch site for Monrovia (yes, it's leafy, suburban and educated) went live today, with former Pasadena Star-News reporter Nathan McIntire at the helm. He's the second Star-News reporter to take a Patch job; former Star-News city hall reporter Dan Abendschein launched the Altadena Patch on Wednesday.

Slapping down hits-based journalism

A study released today of online ad revenues found the stories that generated the most money for news sites aren't necessarily the stories that attract an explosion of clicks. The death spiral of Lindsay Lohan is less valuable to a news site than ongoing coverage of illegal immigration.

To capture the ad revenue, news sites need a system that matches ad content to news content. As Nieman Journalism Lab points out, this adds pressure on the news side to cover those issues that are more likely to attract advertisers:

It’s worth noting that the high-paying topics are united less by their hard-news nature than by their proximity to companies interested in hawking their wares. Immigration lawyers want their ads next to immigration stories; mortgage brokers and “Refinance now!” types want to be next to mortgage-rate stories; job sites want their ads on those Gulf-recovery-jobs stories. That makes sense, but it doesn’t do much for the sea of worthy news stories that won’t have an easy e-commerce hook. There aren’t many good contextual ads for Lohan court stories, but there also aren’t many for corruption investigations.

There are ways to protect editorial independence under a context-based ad system, and the numbers people are using to measure success shows content has value. However, some will read the study as more evidence for niche coverage, and the greedier news sites will undoubtedly begin to demagogue certain topics (immigration, for example) as a way to pull in money. Hopefully, though, a study like this shows that success in the news business means thinking more about content and coverage than fishing for clicks on a link.

Making sense of Census data

Population data from the 2010 Census is due out in December. The Knight Digital Media Center is holding a workshop to give reporters idea on how to present the information in comprehensible and potentially creative ways. Find out more here.

Tribune innovation guru Lee Abrams quits

Lee Abrams, chief innovation officer for the Tribune Co., quit today, two days after being suspended for sending out a companywide memo with a racy video parody attached.

The Chicago Tribune summarized his tenure at parent Tribune Co thusly:

Championing change at Tribune newspapers and broadcast outlets, Abrams repeatedly accused TV news of clinging to a late-20th century look, sound and feel. He wondered aloud whether readers knew that a newspaper dateline meant the reporter was actually writing from the location where the story occurred.

Abrams also advocated new and different styles of storytelling and conveying information. In Houston, where the Tribune TV station has virtually no viewers to lose, he was developing an anchorless newscast.

It's not known what will happen to Abrams' Tribune projects and initiatives with his departure.

 That's about as impartial as it gets.

Even more Patch work

AOL Patch sites continue to stand itself up in Southern California. The online news network has hired Rich Kane, a former managing editor of the OC Weekly, to cover Laguna Beach.

Patch has also picked up Aldrin Brown, former city editor at the San Bernardino Sun, to oversee the network's San Bernardino-area sites. This confirms the rumors I heard last month, when Brown first departed.

Speaking of SB County, I'm told Redlands - home to leafy trees, a university, decent schools and desirable homes - will remain the battlefield of choice for ad starved news orgs. AOL plans to launch a site there, while the Press-Enterprise and the Redlands Daily Facts, owned by Belo and MediaNews Group, respectively, continue to clash on the newspaper side. The P-E has pulled back coverage in the rest of the county.

The bad news

Moody's has downgraded its outlook for the newspaper industry to "negative." What does that mean? From Dow Jones:

The ratings agency expects newspaper revenue to decline 5% to 6% in 2010 and drop roughly the same amount next year. It slumped 22% last year amid a plunge in advertising activity. 

In the short term, aggressive increases in home-delivery prices have boosted newspaper publishers' revenue, Moody's said, while advertising-revenue declines have slowed. 

However, "the industry's longer-term secular deterioration is returning to the forefront" as readership continues to erode "as readers embrace free and low-cost content on the web and mobile devices," despite a "slowly growing economy," said Moody's vice president John Puchalla.

MediaNews Group to hire

LA Observed got the memo that MediaNews Group plans to hire two state reporters, one covering the Capitol and the other covering Silicon Valley. This is good news for all papers in the chain - and an opportunity for reporters toiling at regional political beats to finally have a chance at climbing the ladder and putting their experience to good use. These are positions I wish existed when I worked for the chain (MediaNews would probably set my resume on fire at this point).

AOL Patch hearts leafy cities, continued...*

AOL Patch has an ad out for a reporter/editor to cover yet another leafy Southern California city. Having named a patcher for South Pasadena, the network has listed an opening to cover Claremont, which the Los Angeles Times loves to call "the city of trees and PhDs," because it has trees and colleges and because it rhymes. The listing is here.

Wondering how much a Patch job pays? From the LA Weekly:

Each local editor — who essentially acts as reporter, editor, aggregator and community-outreach manager — is given a website, a MacBook Pro, a digital camera with video and an iPhone or BlackBerry, and reportedly paid between $38,000 and $45,000 with health benefits.

*Update: Here's an even better link (thanks to a reader) that shows the broader scope of where Patch plans to plant roots in California. Duarte, Glendora and Walnut/Industry  are all in SGVN territory and they're looking for an associate editor to oversee all of the San Gabriel Valley. AOL already has people in Altadena and South Pasadena (Altadena launched yesterday).

Some of the listing are wrong - not sure if that's the fault of Patch or the job site. Hawaii Gardens should be Hawaiin Gardens, and Folsom, Fair Oaks, Elk Grove, Citrus, El Dorado Hills and Cameron Park are Sacramento-area cities, not San Francisco. Similarly, Banning-Beaumont, Yucaipa, Redlands, Mission Viejo, Murrieta and Temecula are all well outside of Los Angeles County.

Details such as these matter a great deal if you're going to cast your networks as hyperaware of hyperlocal issues.

AOL wants Yahoo

The Wall Street Journal reports that AOL and two private-equity firms have joined together to make an offer to Yahoo. The idea is to merge the two Internet companies into something better able to compete with Google. AOL and Yahoo both have invested in online news operations recently as well.

Lee Abrams suspended, but not for the right reasons

Tribune Co. innovation officer Lee Abrams got suspended today for emailing around a memo with links to "inappropriate" videos, including a parody video from the Onion labeled "Sluts." It's likely he'll be fired.

However stupid this memo was, it's really not the reason Abrams should be suspended. How about all of the other memos Abrams sent out that simultaneously failed to innovate and succeeded at breaking every rule of effective communication? Indeed, is an Onion video really more harmful to the Tribune Co. than having its Chief Innovation Officer say this (blanket sic):

I was in Los Angeles, sitting in this casual little meeting waiting for someone to show up, and there was this lady who had just got back from four years in Iraq, I forgot her name, I met 300 people in two days, and she was telling me about security problems, bullets in the background and all that, and it really struck me that there should be pictures of her with Iraqi children in the newspaper to show she was there. Whereas in the newspaper, it just says, “Times Staff Reporter.” I really never thought about it, that there was really a person over there going through hell to get this.

Or write this:

Think like your reader. Were does the paper intersect you reader's life? If you had a real job what stories could we collect that would make your live easier or make you smarter..

Or any of this:

Historically, TV kills newspapers in NOTICABILITY because it's while its BETTER CONTENT in print, it's usually not packaged very well and doesn't get the traction it deserves. A little of what CNN and FOX do ala "Historic Election 2008" with big logo, intro music and always at a reliable time are components we can all do better...or hopefully BEST ... or we'll be handing it over to other media...and that would be tragic.

Frankly, I'm more offended at his punctuation choices and his gratuitous use of the caps lock to MAKE HIS POINTS than his latest memo.

Having heard Abrams speak to the LA Press Club, I'd say he's a perfectly nice man who has had some interesting thoughts about broadcasting, especially radio. His rambling memos, however, show a contempt for the care and thought most reporters put into their writing, as well as a willful ignorance about what journalists actually do. They are mind purges that, even when they get right what newspapers do wrong turn, are not insightful or useful. He did more to help blogs like mine than he ever did for media outlets that were supposed to benefit. He should have been let go long before he hit send on the latest memo - his bosses owed him, and every other Tribune employee, that kind of good judgment.

(h/t LA Observed)

KPCC news staff could grow by leaps and bounds

Bill Kling, the soon-to-be retired president and CEO of American Public Media, wants big boosts in reporting staff at four APM stations, including KPCC in Pasadena. If his fund-raising dreams come true, he'd flood the L.A. market with as many as 100 reporters, each with salaries that will make most journalists in Southern California drool.

This could all be pie in the sky, of course. But even if he's only half successful, this could be a major shift in how L.A. gets covered. Ken Doctor at Newsonomics has the story, and here's an excerpt:

The initial four stations involved in the alliance planning are WNYC in New York, WBEZ in Chicago, KPCC in Los Angeles and Minnesota Public Radio, in the Twin Cities, says Bill Kling, current (and now retiring, ”MPR’s Bill Kling Steps Down — and Up — From Public Radio“) president and CEO of the American Public Media Group (APMG), the parent of the L.A. and Twin Cities stations, as well as a major syndicator of public radio programming.

One hundred “public media” reporters and editors in a market is a huge increase. Among those four stations, the news staff now ranges from 12 to 30 each. It’s tough to count precisely because these are legacy radio operations, and radio requires different job descriptions than digital news. Still, at those numbers, the alliance members are aiming at adding more than 300 reporters and editors in four markets, if the plans succeed. Kling says the positions created “would be a very good job for people who love journalism,” in the six figures with full benefits.

Kling and his colleagues are strategizing their plans and foundation asks — and his hope is that funding can be locked down by next June, when he formally steps from his APMG post. He says his post-retirement plan is to focus on the building out of public media. If it is, hiring could commence by mid-2011.
How much funding?

The plan will cost about $5 million per market per year, says Kling, or $25 million for a five-year funding plan, which is what the group aims to obtain. So that’s $100 million if four markets can be launched; $150 million, it it’s six markets. After the first four markets, Kling says, “we’d go on to five, six, seven, eight.”

Comings and goings: Hurley goes Greenwire, Iafolla back to DJ*

Today is Lawrence Hurley's final day as U.S. Supreme Court reporter for the Los Angeles Daily Journal. Hurley starts Monday as a legal affairs writer for the online trade publication Greenwire, which focuses on energy and the environment.

Robert Iafolla, who previously covered Congress for the Daily Journal, until the position was eliminated, will take over the Supreme Court beat. In between DJ gigs, Iafolla wrote a column for the online journal True/Slant, which got gobbled up by Forbes a few months ago.

For those who wonder, Greenwire is is operated by Environment and Energy Publishing. EEP bought the trade pub from the National Journal in 2000 and has continued to expand original reporting on the site.

*Update: Hurley's goodbye email to the DJ troops:

Today is my last day at the Daily Journal after five years in the Washington bureau. They say a week is a long time in politics, so five years is a Washington lifetime. I've been in D.C. so long, I can remember when Republicans were to blame for everything. I am grateful to the DJ for giving me the opportunity to cover important issues in a serious way. Highlights include five Supreme Court nominations (don't forget Harriet Miers!), the U.S. attorney firing scandal and, in my Supreme Court years, the Citizens United case and its aftermath.

Although I'm leaving the DJ, I'm not leaving legal journalism. On Monday, I start a new legal beat at Greenwire here in Washington, focusing on energy & environment issues. I'll still be covering some Supreme Court cases, but will also be dipping into other courts. I'm looking forward to it.

AOL Patch finds another leafy town

AOL's Patch has added South Pasadena to its growing network. Sonia Narang, who's worked as an online producer for PBS Frontline and NBC News, will cover the leafy city known for its parks, virulent opposition to the 710 Freeway extension, and public schools that attract discouraged couples from Pasadena.

Indeed, Patch sites are springing up with greater frequency across the Southland, and mostly in towns with that single-family, real-estate rich, suburban feel. (You can find the list here.) Whether the Patch network ever earns a reputation for digging or watchdog reporting, it increasingly seems to me to be a stable model for a form of hometown news.

By hopscotching over cities that are too big to be covered by one person, or present challenges with low readership or lack of business (cities that deserve and need to be covered, by the way), Patch can avoid "wasting" resources. By paying a better wage than most area newspaper chains, it will earn a reputation among reporters as a step up, even if the coverage is softer and less newsy. And, most importantly, it has the ability to become the local newspaper, for lack of a better term, in cities with populations that have the time and inclination to read and talk about hometown news. Indeed, many of these places once had city papers before the chains came in to gobble them up.

The drawback - and the biggest challenge - is the mission. Single editors are being asked to do a lot with a little, including that fancy multi-platform journalism, which requires video and sound and images and words all neatly and compellingly sewn together by one person. Additionally, hometown papers often thrive because they are owned by a local with a deep investment in journalistic standards and civic life. For Patch, some editors will get it and others won't.

And as someone who started at a twice weekly in a leafy town (Claremont), I know how easy it is to beat the bigger guys and earn local respect. If AOL encourages this kind of journalism to flourish (and I have my doubts, having read some of the Patch work produced in West Hollywood, for example) this could be a useful service. If AOL sees Patch as a series of straws to siphon local ad dollars into a national bank account, it will only add to the misery visited upon local journalism by newspaper-chain gangs.

Of course, I still lament the loss of tough city reporting, whether it be South Pasadena or South Gate. Patch isn't a solution to this, but it can be something more than over-the-fence gossip and the latest senior center press release.

Tribune might soon emerge from bankruptcy

Bankruptcy proceeding rarely lend themselves to gripping narrative; and so it goes with the Tribune Co. bankruptcy case, as the media conglomerate slouches toward the exit door with senior and unsecured creditors, but not junior creditor groups, in tow. From the LA Times:

Tribune Co. and several of its most important creditor groups announced a broad new settlement Tuesday that brings the company closer to resolving its nearly 2-year-old bankruptcy case.

-snip-

Still absent from the settlement, however, are several key junior creditor groups, including major bondholder Aurelius Capital Management, a litigious New York hedge fund known for disrupting large bankruptcy cases. Sources close to Aurelius have said the fund plans to file its own plan by the court-imposed Oct. 15 deadline.

So we'll have a clearer picture by late Friday as to how this drama is going to end.

Rose Bowl renovation approved, stadium dominoes fall

It only took 10 years to get it done, but the Pasadena City Council on Monday approved a $152 million bond package to renovate the 88-year-old Rose Bowl stadium. From the LA Times:

The renovations include widened tunnels and added aisles for smoother entering and exiting. A modern version of a 1940s-style scoreboard will replace the existing one on the south end, and a video board will be installed on the north side. Premium seating will be bumped from 600 to 2,500 following the expansion of the press box building.

 The financing plan will have repercussions far beyond "smoother entering and exiting" through the vomitoria. For one, this all but locks out any future deal to bring the NFL to Pasadena, leaving Industry and the Coliseum as the two remaining bidders for a professional football team in L.A. Everyone knows the NFL does not like the Coliseum as its currently configured - too big, too old - and so the Rose Bowl renovations would seem to give the Industry bid a boost.

But the Rose Bowl deal also extends UCLA's lease there until 2043, robbing Industry of a potential tenant and much-needed source of revenue. This could make it harder for Industry's backers to finance a new stadium, unless they can convince the USC Trojans to break ties with the Coliseum. The Industry stadium's design has already been altered for soccer play as a way to attract off-season tenants, but here again they'll have to compete with the renovated Rose Bowl, which has a storied history of World Cup play.

All of which puts added pressure on the Coliseum to pay for upgrades and possible redesign. Public financing for such a project will be hard to come by in this economy and the NFL has no appetite to get behind an expensive deal when they dictate to Industry just what kind of comfy accommodations the league would prefer. Big downtown developers have shown no interest in a public-private partnership to improve the Coliseum, choosing instead to explore building a brand new stadium near Staples.

NY magazine can think of 13 reasons to dislike the Zell/Michaels era

Some are new (to me), some are old. The list includes radio stunts:

Radio stunts, like CA$H GRABS ("in which a viewer was led into a bank vault and allowed to scoop up dollar bills," sometimes cheered on by Hooters waitresses) were inserted into evening news broadcasts at member TV stations.

 And bonuses:

...the top level cronies of Zell and CEO Randy Michaels (he hired about twenty top managers from his former days as a radio manager and shock jock) received a total of $57.3 million in bonuses going into 2010. The previous year they only made $5.9 million in bonuses. 

There are 11 more, as you might have guessed.

22 journalitsts for every trapped miner

More than 750 journalists have received permission to watch Wednesday as rescuers begin to raise 33 trapped Chilean miners out of the collapsed mine, the Associated Press reports.

That's 22 journalists for every trapped miner. Rounding down.

If they'd given them all shovels when the mine collapsed, the miners would probably have been freed already.

From AP:

...there are so many journalists on the story that the trapped men's relatives largely stay away except for on weekends. The few families that have zealously maintained a vigil at the mine since the Aug. 5 collapse are swarmed by the swelling media here.

Tipster in the Bell salary scandal was a cop

The Los Angeles Times was the first news outlet to report publicly the ridiculously high salaries being paid to city administrators and council members in the city of Bell, but it wasn't the paper's stories that prompted the District Attorney's Office to look into the mess. Indeed, the Times got the story after receiving a tip from the DA's office.

So who first brought the corruption to light? Former Bell police sergeant James Corcoran was the original tipster, according to a May, 2009 letter obtained by California Watch. In the letter, Corcoran described a pattern of corruption that served as the underpinning of the charges filed against 8 current and former Bell officials. Corcoran convinced then-Bell City Councilman Victor Bello to sign the letter as a way to attract more attention from prosecutors - ironically, Bello was one of the eight people charged in the case.

From California Watch:

Among other things, the ... letter from 2009 directly accuses [former City Manager Robert] Rizzo of corruption, bribery, "underhanded real estate deals," "unethical retirement arrangements," and facilitating police misconduct. From the letter:

The city, however, has been victimized by mismanagement, illegal activity, and corruption. THe City Manager, Mr. Robert Rizzo, has continuously and consistently abused the power entrusted to him. I have witnessed: 

• Public corruption
• Bribery
• Underhanded real estate deals
• Unethical retirement arrangements
• Police misconduct, including civil rights violations

-snip-

Although the letters were signed by Bello, they were written by a former Bell police sergeant, James Corcoran, who was investigating corruption issues in the city. Corcoran was forced out of the department earlier this year and has since filed a civil suit alleging that he was dismissed in retaliation for his investigation.

Corcoran said he presented the district attorney’s office with evidence of corruption in Bell about two weeks before the May 6, 2009, letter was filed, and an investigator told him that having an elected official sign a formal complaint would lend more weight to the allegations.

KCET goes its own way

KCET has cut ties with the national Public Broadcasting System, turning the affiliate into an independent public television station. From the LA Times blog:

Starting in January, station officials intend to replace such iconic PBS fare as "Charlie Rose," "NewsHour," "Sesame Street" and "Masterpiece" with news and documentaries from Japan, Canada and elsewhere, along with old feature films. (KCET will continue to carry PBS programming through the end of December.)

The drastic move comes after a months-long battle over the dues KCET must pay the national organization. Last year, the dues totaled nearly $7 million, or almost one-fifth of the station's $37-million net operating revenue. Station officials say that amount is far too high. PBS, fearing that a reduction in the sum could lead to demands for similar discounts from other member stations, refused to budge.

"After four decades as the West Coast flagship PBS station, this is not a decision we made lightly," said Al Jerome, KCET's president and chief executive, in a news release. "We have been in discussions with PBS for over three years about the need to address challenges that are unique to our market as well as our station."

"As an independent public television station, KCET will be committed to investing in Southern California by developing, acquiring, producing and distributing content across all media platforms," he added. "We will continue to offer the KCET audience programming from leading national and international sources. Some of these series are currently on our air."

Study: NPR is a party that you're not invited to

A new study says that National Public Radio needs to shed "perceptions that its programs are elitist and stuffy" if it wants to grow its audience. From a Current report on the study:

When encountering public radio, news consumers from various demographic groups share a common problem: They feel excluded. “It is really important that people hear themselves in the programming,” said Margaret Low Smith, v.p. of programming. “We’re talking about a private party, versus a party where everyone’s included and planning the same party,” she said. 

Quoted in a presentation on the study is a young adult Latino user of new media: “NPR, I feel, is mostly for educated adults from middle class and up. That is my impression.”

Some objections to the traits of NPR News are sure to prompt pushback from listeners and producers who value complexity and ambiguity, and don’t mind lots of words. Wordiness is a problem for one white woman who spoke to researchers about NPR: “I think it can be clever and quirky, and smart and insightful. But I don’t choose to listen to it because it’s too much talking for me.”

Smith believes there are ways to welcome more people to the audience without sacrificing quality. “It’s not about being not as smart or not as deep,” she said. It’s about telling stories with an ear that detects exclusion. NPR hosts do that now, she said, by quickly interrupting interviews with an identifying phrase when someone drops a name that would be unfamiliar to many people. 

To be consistent in catching off-putting insider assumptions, “it’s critical that people at the editorial table reflect a range of economic positions in life, a range of political views and a range of color,” Smith added.

The study was conducted by the Los Angeles-based firm SmithGeiger.

Facebook and private conversations

Facebook users will now be able to create closed groups within their social networks that should allow them to share information that is too private, political, racy, or whatever for the group as a whole. The change gets at a problem raised yesterday by Judith Donath on "To The Point" about the inability of people on social networks to create nuanced relationships for different contexts - how does one share information with a close friend without offending or "oversharing" with a professional acquaintance? Is a political or religious discussion appropriate to have in front of everyone on your friends' list? What if you want to share party photos with a small group without letting someone who wasn't invited to the party know you attended? Etc. There is an interesting tension here with the idea of being your honest self with everyone, an idea some social media proponents would prefer we pursue - to blow up things like cliques, exclusivity and class hierarchy.

Christine O'Donnell getting trounced

A couple new polls in Delaware put Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell way behind her Democratic rival, Chris Coons.

Two more leave Newsweek

Investigative reporter Mark Hosenball is leaving Newsweek to join Reuters as "money and politics" reporter. Adam Kushner, senior editor for foreign coverage for Newsweek, is headed to the National Journal Group, where he'll be deputy magazine editor-in-chief. Both moves reported by Gorkana.

Being good makes you a bad choice at Tribune

Another passage from David Carr's story about the Tribune Co. offers a glimpse into the company's future. It doesn't include experience, which taints the creative mind in the eyes of Tribune managers (and requires more compensation in the eyes of the Tribune accountants):

And management still is confident that the new thinking has Tribune on the right track. The company recently announced the creation of a new local news format in which there would be no on-air anchors and few live reports. The newscasts will rely on narration over a stream of clips, a Web-centric approach that has the added benefit of requiring fewer bodies to produce.

“The TV revolution is upon us — and the new Tribune Company is leading the resistance,” the announcement read. And judging from the job posting for “anti-establishment producer/editors,” the company has some very strong ideas about who those revolutionaries should be: “Don’t sell us on your solid newsroom experience. We don’t care. Or your exclusive, breaking news coverage. We’ll pass.”

The social and the anti-social networks

Why go to an entertaining movie when you can listen to an informative radio program? On today's "To The Point," we discuss the rise of online social networks, starting with Facebook, and consider the ways our logged-on lives are changing society and culture. With Judith Donath of Harvard's Berkman Center, Walker Smith of The Futures Company, Fred Vogelstein of Wired, and Michael Kaiser of the National Cyber Security Alliance. Listen to the show here.

Randy Michaels denies Tribune-turned-frat house story

David Carr at the New York Times writes about a "rugged ride" at the bankrupted Tribune Co. under the management of owner Sam Zell and chief executive Randy Michaels. The story describes a frat-house executive suite that reined over a crumbling empire.

From the NYT story:

Mr. Zell and Mr. Michaels, who was promoted to chief executive of the Tribune Company in December 2009, arrived with much fanfare, suggesting they were going to breathe innovation and reinvention into the conservative company. 

By all accounts, the reinvention did not go well. At a time when the media industry has struggled, the debt-ridden Tribune Company has done even worse. Less than a year after Mr. Zell bought the company, it tipped into bankruptcy, listing $7.6 billion in assets against a debt of $13 billion, making it the largest bankruptcy in the history of the American media industry. More than 4,200 people have lost jobs since the purchase, while resources for the Tribune newspapers and television stations have been slashed. 

The new management did transform the work culture, however. Based on interviews with more than 20 employees and former employees of Tribune, Mr. Michaels’s and his executives’ use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company. Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk.

Michaels has pushed back against the story. In a memo posted by LA Observe, he says Carr dug up old, discredited allegations and describes the company culture as "creative" and "fun." From the Michaels memo:

Mr. Carr has made clear that he is digging up these old allegations because he believes that decisions about the company’s management are about to be made, and he wants to influence those decisions. Mr. Carr knows that an outside firm investigated the most substantial of these allegations, and that they were found to be without substance. Mr. Carr intends to use them anyway.

(Found via LA Observed)

Five to go from Sac Bee newsroom

The Sacramento Bee has instituted another round of layoffs. Twenty-nine people will be cut, either through layoffs or buyouts, including five newsroom employees. Sports editor Bill Bradley is one of those losing his job, the Sacramento Business Journal reports.

Christine O'Donnell posts are not a hit in Delaware

Since Christine O'Donnell is running for the Senate in Delaware, I wondered how many people from the state had clicked on my posts about her falsified educational background. I didn't expect large numbers - the state is small, this isn't a place people come for news about national politics, and bigger media picked up the post, making it less necessary for people to stop here for the scoop. But the total is still smaller than I expected.

The day after the story broke, this site saw a fairly large spike in readers, with 1,463 page views. Of those, 87 percent were new visitors. The majority of new visits came, not surprisingly, from New York and California. Only 16 clicks originated in Delaware, and those came over a three-day period that included the initial scoop and several follow up posts.

NYT skips over Claremont

The New York Times picked up the story about Christine O'Donnell's errant educational background - sort of. The profile, written by Mark Leibovich, mentions the false claim she'd attended England's Oxford University but not the false claim that she'd attended Claremont Graduate University. East Coast bias? Here's the relevant passage:

Ms. O’Donnell has faced charges this week that she lied about her educational record — a claim on two online business networking sites that she had attended Oxford University when in fact she participated in a summer program from the Phoenix Institute, which was housed at the elite British university. “I was never dishonest about my education,” she said. “Whether someone put it there to call me a liar, whatever

California targets paparazzi

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former movie star, signed a bill into law that makes it a crime for paparazzi to drive recklessly to get a shot of a celebrity. The California Newspaper Publishers Association protested the legislation, saying it subjects photojournalists to special prosecution for what is already an illegal act.

CNPA general counsel Tom Newston explain in an interview with The Wrap:

We don't deny there’s a big problem, we just think that this particular bill is overly inclusive. I don't represent paparazzi, I represent photojournalists and these folks drive cars. Under this law though, if you harbor an intent to capture an image then it appears to us you could be subjected to enhanced criminal prosecution.

(h/t fishbowlLA)

Another politician might live outside his district

The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office has alleged that L.A. City Councilman Richard Alarcon and state Sen. Roderick Wright live outside their respective districts, and lied about it, and now the Union-Tribune reports that the DA in San Diego County is looking into an allegation that Vista City Councilman Bob Campbell lives outside the city he represents, in nearby San Marcos.

The Christine O'Donnell kerfuffle

If you are a candidate for U.S. Senate who's made some misleading statements about your educational background and then someone finds more false claims in a profile posted on a popular social networking site, you probably need to craft a serious response. And if you respond that someone else created the profile to embarrass or entrap you, you need to do more than shrug it off an annoying hoax. (Especially when new evidence comes to light.)

Which basically brings us up to date with Christine O'Donnell, the Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, and the mysterious LinkedIn profile that got yanked offline yesterday. After the Washington Post and this blog pointed out inaccuracies in the profile, she called the profile a sham. Who planted this alleged educational time bomb? No one knows, and the O'Donnell campaign doesn't seem that interested in finding out.

For those who'd rather dismiss this as a liberal media witch hunt, conservative blogger Patterico offers some wisdom:

I am amazed (and yet I’m not) by the people who want me to ignore this.  Joe Biden misrepresented his own academic record and I mocked him unmercifully for it.  Why would O’Donnell deserve different treatment?

Had she simply padded the resume and then fessed up, mockery would probably be all that O'Donnell had to contend with. If it turns out she lied about constructing the LinkedIn profile page, the political repercussions could be much worse.

NPR: It's getting tougher to cover Iraq

The Iraqi government is rousting journalists from their lodgings and denying them access to sensitive stories, NPR reports. The government recently started asserting more control over the media, first by forcing them to sign a pledge not to incite sectarian tensions and then by keeping them away from areas where there's fighting or terrorist attacks on the notion that the journalists won't be safe.

Of course, access is as vital as ever as Iraq works to form a federal government and as U.S. forces withdraw.

As NPR reports:

Nearly 200 journalists, most of them Iraqis, have died in Iraq since the American invasion, and scores more have been kidnapped, beaten, jailed, sued and fined for doing their jobs.