Four in the evening

1. Russia and Nigeria launch what is perhaps the most poorly named business venture in history. BBC (via TPM)

2. Jill Stewart launches another volley at Los Angeles Times media critic James Rainey in response to his critical column about the LA Weekly editor. Once again, she cites awards at the LA Press Club as evidence that she's on the right track. LAT

3. Ann Arbor is about to lose its only daily newspaper. Poynter

4. Scott Martelle on Michael Jackson, Marshal McLuhan and the evolution of new media. Scott Martelle

Four in the morning*

1. Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina wasn't hiking the Appalachian Trail on Father's Day weekend, as his office staff claimed. Instead, he was caught in Atlanta by a reporter from The State getting off a plane from Argentina. Sanford told the reporter he'd wanted to do something "exotic." Needless to say, there's still plenty of skepticism about the governor's story. He's scheduled to hold a press conference at 2 p.m. Eastern today. The State

*Updated: In his presser, Sanford admits to having an affair with an Argentinian woman, says he'll resign as head of the Republican Governors Association. Calls for his resignation as governor will inevitably follow.

2. Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez has some more bad news for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Lopez writes:

I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but I've been gathering up the results of polling at the 10 schools that for the last year have been under the mayor's wing, and there's no way to sugarcoat this.

At eight of the 10 campuses, the mayor's Partnership for Los Angeles Schools got a resounding thumbs down from teachers.

3. First Lady Michelle Obama makes her first visit to California since becoming First Lady... again. LA Observed

4. Rainey vs. Stewart, round 3. LA Weekly (via LA Observed)

Aggro LA Weekly*

James Rainey, media critic at the Los Angeles Times, argues that the news gets skewed - and not in a good way - by an overly aggressive and indignant LA Weekly.

Rainey writes:

When the LA Weekly wrote a lengthy story last September about how little Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa attended to his official duties, it wasn't plowing fresh soil.

-snip-

The media, rightly, should do whatever it can to determine if a politician is already measuring the drapes for his next office while sitting in his current one.

But as it has with several stories in recent times, the Weekly didn't let the facts speak for themselves in its Villaraigosa takedown.

Instead, it employed more semantic spin than Kobe Bryant puts on a jump shot, along with a prosecutorial methodology that proved much more about the declining quality of our city's dominant alternative newspaper than it did about our attention-grasping mayor.

Rainey pins most of the blame on the editorial judgment of news editor Jill Stewart.

I'm reminded that the LA Weekly just took home a slew of awards from the LA Press Club, including one for political writing.

*UPDATE: Jill Stewart responds to the Rainey column in an email to fishbowlLA and asserts the awards defense:

Hi there,

I wanted to tell my colleagues and friends in journalism and blogging that James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times did not contact me for his take-down attempt column about me today, published during the very same week in which news-side stories I assigned and edited blew the Times out of the water at the Los Angeles Press Club awards. These awards, announced five days ago, were judged entirely by journalists in other major cities around the nation to avoid local favoritism. And then yesterday, a young reporter who won a major award for a piece that I assigned and edited beat The New York Times and was in Washington, D.C. collecting his award...

It goes on from there here. The best part might be the graphic atop the fisbowlLA post.