LA Times publisher David Hiller is trying to laugh off the LA Observed post about the lack of heavy bidding to be his lunch date , by posting on the LAT internal blog:

My epal Kevin Roderick who plainly has a lot of time on his hands, is making fun that lunch with the publisher didn't garner many bids here in our United Way silent auction. I was wondering how much lunch with Kevin would go for, so i decided to make it easy for him and me--how about we take each other to lunch and each kick in an extra $1,000 cash to United Way? (You guys do support United Way at laobserved.com, right?).

LA Observed's traffic might not support that kind of lunch.