Journos

This is a pretty stunning interview with the recently fired/retired Lou Dobbs.

"Your views however abhorrent and wrong have always been consistent," says Jon Stewart through a smile.

The other clips are here.

Michael Shermer author and publisher of Skeptic Magazine is now at True/Slant. He was gracious enough to give us a moment of his time to ask him about it:

FBLA: Does this mean we can call you a blogger? As in, "we're interviewing a blogger right now"?

MS: Yup, I'm officially a blogger now, so I can use colloquialisms, like "yup."

FBLA: Are you skeptical about this whole old media thing now that you're a blogger?

MS: I've always been skeptical of the media, ever since I saw a story on the news on a topic that I actually knew something about, and I could see exactly where and how the reporting was wrong, and that made me wonder what I was being told (and accepting uncritically) about subjects I knew next to nothing about, which is most of the news.

FBLA: Who's your favorite True/Slant blogger (save Matt Taibbi)?

MS: Tina Dupuy is my favorite True/Slant blogger, because she speaks truthiness/slantiness to power.

FBLA: Good pick. We also would have accepted Matt Fleischer as an answer. What can we look forward to on your page?

MS: Science and politics, science and economics, science and society, and science and sex (the latter thrown in so I can get more followers).

FBLA: Oh you bloggers are all alike.

Thanks Michael! Check out his page here.

Writer Bill Barol, who is one of the more interesting people on Twitter, has launched a project on Kickstarter "a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers..." Think Spot.Us for things other than investigative journalism. The founders are "from all around the country" just none in LA.

His pilot video is freaking hilarious. "Laughs aren't cheap and either is video equipment so here we are," says Barol on the video.

He tells FBLA,"Honestly, I'm shy about cadging dough. but I like the idea of doing something to my own specs, and if this is the way I can get that done, then, well, there you go."

Go here to donate to Barol's project.

Los Angeles is losing film critic Scott Foundas - he is moving to New York to become associate program director for The Film Society of Lincoln Center. Foundas currently works as the film editor of the LA Weekly. Variety has more details:

Foundas, who reviewed hundreds of films for Variety between 2000 and 2005, will begin in his new post at the start of the year with responsibilities for series and event programs including the New York Film Festival.

"Scott's writing is an exhilarating dialogue with artists and audiences alike," said exec director Mara Manus. "It is this vibrancy, along with Scott's deep film knowledge, that will contribute greatly to our growing organization, ensuring we continue to offer (audiences) a vital place of serious film culture."

Veronica De La Cruz, a reporter and former television anchor for CNN news, has written a story for the Huffington Post on her fight for health care reform, and why it is such a personal battle:

On July 4, 2009, I lost my brother and my only sibling Eric Alexander De La Cruz. He passed away while awaiting a heart transplant. Five years ago, he was diagnosed with severe dilated cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the heart that prevents it from pumping normally. Since then, we had tried to get Eric insurance coverage that would allow him to get the treatment he needed, but no private insurer would offer him insurance because of this preexisting condition.

Read the full story here.

Photo via CNN

This is our former colleague at FishbowlDC current POLITICO reporter Patrick Gavin boxing with Congressman Peter King. The congressman seems to land a couple on Gavin's face. This is every politicians wet dream.

Via FishbowlDC

Politico Pillages Mediabistro For Staff

Richard Rushfield quit his job as an editor at LAT to be a blogger. Not just any blog but Gawker. He's the West Coast editor. But its still a blog. Lateral move? Upgrade? Downshift?

He sat down with us for a little Q & A about his career move and his new book:

FBLA: So how is the switch from traditional media to new media?

RR: Ah yes. The switch is invigorating. This is where the conversation is.

FBLA: New media is where the conversation is?

RR: There were so many times when you'd write a wonderful article for the LATimes, or break some news and it would just be met by the sound of crickets. When you are at the LAT you're at a place where even the website isn't in the central flow of the nation's cultural conversation. But at Gawker one is very much in and a part of that conversation and as one who is writing, in part at least to communicate, that's where you want to be.

FBLA: Do you think the struggle is with reporters who enjoy the sound of crickets?

RR: Yes, I mean, you are writing not just for the fun of hearing your own voice - although that's at least 2/3 the thrill, but because you want to be read and to make some sort of impression...

FBLA: Way to make blogging sound sexy.

RR: I'll be considered a supermodel in 700 years.

FBLA: So you wrote this book...advising people to not follow you, as you are strangely, the first few in what is sure to be a larger trend in newspapers - reporters becoming pro-bloggers.

RR: Come again?

continued...

Pasadena, that super quaint 'burb home to that "little old lady" song muse, has their own magazine. For real. And it's not available on the Internet. It is, however, available at our dentist's office. And what better place to read about food than a den of dentistry?

Anyway, Jonathan Gold is now writing about food in Pasadena. Former LA Weekly staffer Linda Immediato now managing editor of Pasadena Magazine scored the Pulitzer winner.

Sounds like he's not bailing to New York anytime soon.

Previously on FBLA:

The New Yorker has a profile on our awesome local Pulitzer winner Jonathan Gold. So if you have a subscription you'll have to tell us all about it. We're sure it's great. He's great. We read his book.

Previously on FBLA:

Yesterday would have been Dominick Dunne's 84th birthday. Friends of the recently deceased journalist gathered last night at the at the Chateau Marmont to celebrate his remarkable life. Steven Mikulan was in attendance, and writes about the memorial on his blog L.A. Noir:

Thursday night's toast to Dunne was attended by a mix of the people he knew from Hollywood and the courts, and also by the street reporters he met and befriended during the first Phil Spector trial - Ciaran McEvoy, Peter Hong, Harriet Ryan and the court blogger Betsy Ross, aka "Sprocket."

Dunne's actor son, Griffin, recalling that as a child his parents would visit friends in this very same suite, related how Dominick gave his kids firecrackers to toss at the police down on Sunset Boulevard during the curfew riots of 1966.

Author Lawrence Schiller praised Dunne for raising social issues usually kept out of polite conversation, while former Los Angeles D.A. Ira Reiner spoke of Dunne's uncanny ability to attract sources of information during O.J. Simpson's first trial.

TMZ founder Harvey Levin recounted how Dunne's righteous indignation over the judicial miscarriage following the murder of his daughter, Dominique, inspired Levin, then a KNBC reporter, to relentlessly delve into the trial, while keynote speaker Linda Deutsch of Associated Press described Dunne's unshakable personal loyalty to colleagues.

Photo from William Morris Endeavor