Sam Zell

Los Angeles Times Gets $1 Million Grant to Cover ... L.A.

The Los Angeles Times coverage of its own backyard is now officially a charity case. The paper today announced proudly that it has received a $1 million grant from the Ford Foundation to "expand its coverage of key beats, including immigration and ethnic communities in Southern California ... " The ... More >>

Eli Broad Wants to Buy Los Angeles Times (Again)

First Magic Johnson and Guggenheim Baseball purchase the Dodgers from the dreaded Frank McCourt. Now local billionaire Eli Broad is once again teasing us with the possibility that he could buy the Los Angeles Times and kick its loathed ownership -- the Tribune Co. and its tard of a chairman, Sam Ze ... More >>

5 Stages of Grief: The Jonathan Gold Model

A. ScattergoodJitlada's tom yum soup​5. Denial: In which you refuse to read news blogs and Twitter feeds, and instead have lunch at Jitlada, preferring the comfort of ghost chiles to anything looming on the horizon. Windstorms. Sigalerts. More Republican debates. You feel fine. You like anesth ... More >>

Los Angeles Times For Sale? Speculation Spikes After Parent Company Isolates Paper's Leadership

Buy it now.​Extra, extra, read all about it. Buy your Los Angeles Times here. No, really. Buy the Times: the whole paper, the offices, printing presses -- everything. That's the longtime fantasy of many an editorial employee at one of the nation's finest news operations. Especially after the ... More >>

Los Angeles, a Major Global City Owned And Run by Outsiders?

Mark Luethi / LA Weekly Flickr poolLooking in.​Is this worldly town -- America's gateway to Asia, the second-largest media market in America, the Latino capital of the United States -- really owned and controlled by outsiders? It's a question posed by local expert and author D.J. Waldie at Zo ... More >>

New York Times' Arthur Brisbane Questions Paper's Past Criticism of Los Angeles Times in Wake of L.A. Paper's Pulitzer Wins

robertjlopez / YouTubeRuben Vives celebrates his L.A. Times Pulitzer co-win.​Updated after the jump: Slate media critic Jack Shafer weighs in, saying it's possible for the L.A. Times to both win Pulitzers and be "in steep decline." Earlier this year we noted how the Los Angeles Times was "bec ... More >>

Tribune Deal Never Should Have Happened, Bankruptcy Court Finds

Tribune headquarters.​The Chicago Tribune reports that A new trove of documents in the Tribune Co. bankruptcy case shows former and current executives used overly optimistic projections and an investment's bank's stamp of approval to allow a group led by Sam Zell to buy the company even though ... More >>

Los Angeles Times Parent Company Proposes Golden Parachutes To Top Executives

​Chicago-based Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times and KTLA News, is trying to hand out hefty severance packages to its top executives. While more and more reporters are being cut from its payroll, Tribune Co. filed a new plan Thursday that would give its top 43 executives hefty seve ... More >>

L.A. County Supervisors Slam Los Angeles Times For Front Page Ad

​Calling it a "distasteful practice to the people of Los Angeles County," the county Board of Supervisors signed a letter to Los Angeles Times corporate head Sam Zell decrying its Thursday front-page ad for the King Kong ride at Universal Studios. It was designed to look like a late-breaking " ... More >>

L.A. Times Loses Nation's Top Automotive Journalist

EsquireDan Neil.​It seemed like the right fit -- the nation's top automotive journalist pairing up with the newspaper of record in the car culture capital of the country if not the world. And for much of the time it worked: Dan Neil won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism during his tenure at the L ... More >>

Leno Prime-Time Show Done; NBC To Go Back To 'Scripted' TV

NBCJay Leno.​NBC over the weekend copped to its retirement of the short-lived Jay Leno Show at 10 p.m. weeknights, officially announcing that its hoped-for lineup shuffle was a proposal that would have Leno and Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien squeeze into late-night together at 11:35 p.m. and ... More >>

Map Your Favorite Farmer: LA Times Launches Online Farmers Market Map

Like colorful buoys across a vast ocean of bad food choices, farmers markets are what many Angelenos cling to between obligatory visits to chain grocery stores. Regardless of how well-organized the chef or home cook is--those Lima beans from McGrath Family Farm and heirloom tomatoes from Harry's Be ... More >>

"You have the right to remain glazed," says Clare City's Cops and Doughnuts

"Fighting Crime One Doughnut at a Time" might not evoke images of police officers going above and beyond the call of duty. That is, unless you happened to catch NPR's 28-second piece on Morning Sixpack: A News Roundup

Catalina Boaters Missing The Coast Guard is searching for two men who set sail on a 27-foot boat Friday from Santa Catalina Island to Santa Cruz. Associated PressThe Cardinal Makes an Offer Cardinal Roger Mahony will announce today that the L.A. Archdiocese will invite LAUSD Students to participate ... More >>

Attention, L.A. Times Shoppers!

Jon Regardie does not like the L.A. Times online mall, store.latimes.com. The Downtown News editor complains that the Times seems to be plugging its revenue holes with such Times-identified tchotchkes as coffee mugs and T-shirts. Regardie notes the national spike in these kind of items following the ... More >>

WSJ: Cubs Win Freedom As Zell Sells

A late Wall Street Journal report claims that Sam Zell, the CEO of Tribune Company, which owns the Los Angeles Times, plans to sell the Chicago Cubs baseball team to the Ricketts family, whose "bid, led by Chicago financier Tom Ricketts, son of J. Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade Holding C ... More >>

Day of a Locust: Sam Zell Speaks at UCLA

Today Kevin Roderick blows the whistle on Tribune Company CEO Sam Zell's lunchtime visit to UCLA this Thursday. An early morning L.A. Observed item posts an email from the Anderson School of Management, inviting all its students to sit at the master's feet while he regales them with "his perspectiv ... More >>

Bernard Madoff & White-Wing Blogs

The answer to the question, Is Bernard Madoff good for the Jews? has become painfully obvious during the past week as Jewish charities and individuals take stock of the $50 billion damage allegedly wrought by the investment titan. Their misfortune has kicked off an anti-Semitic Oktoberfest of gloati ... More >>

Zellout! Tribune Co.'s Bankruptcy Stokes Anti-Semitic Bloggers

Among other things, the Tribune Company's announcement that it is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection has reliably sparked a chorus of anti-Semitic comments in the far-right blogosphere. (Sam Zell photo via Gawker)

Young Turks Purge at CAA, Sleazy Bribe at WGA, Sour Grapes at ABC

When upheaval at the L.A. Times is the good news

Jay Babcock Responds to his "Psychic Death Hole" Interview, and LA Weekly's Reaction to It

Earlier today I posted a response to Arthur Magazine founder Jay Babcock's interview with August Brown on the LA Times Soundboard blog. In the interest of fairness, I am reprinting, with Babcock's permission, an email he sent to me in response. (He addresses my post point by point, with excerpts fr ... More >>

Goodbye Los Angeles Times Magazine

Sure, the paper's Sunday magazine has sucked for much of its existence, and erupted in scandal after getting caught cutting a sleazy business deal with Staples Center (a big, ugly national story broken by my fab ex-boss, Rick Barrs, at the now-defunct New Times Los Angeles). But from time to time, ... More >>

Sam Zell Gets out the Ruler at Los Angeles Times

I ran into some friends from the Los Angeles Times at a party this weekend at the home of my predecessor at the Weekly, Al Mittelstadt (he was celebrating his recent, unplanned departure from the downsizing CityBeat). The Times folks were commiserating over Sam Zell's huge upcoming cuts, in which he ... More >>

When Hollywood Goes After White Whales

Thar she blows

The Chandlers' Last Gasp

Their L.A. Times era ends not with a bang, but a trust-fund transaction

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid

The Sopranos-like takeover of Tribune Co. could mean cement shoes for employees

Dangerous Liaisons

More hanky-panky than a whorehouse in LAT opinion section

Hearts and Minds -and Hard Cash

Can the owners afford the janitors’ demands? (Hell, yes.) Can the janitors spur organizing in low-wage L.A? (Well, maybe.)

Street vs. Suite

Why L.A.’s janitors will win their strike