This is from our tip box:

"Sober Day USA"
(proclaimed by Governor Schwarzenegger, celebrated by Mothers Against
Drunk Driving and celebrity events in LA, www.soberdayusa.com).

"Sober Day USA" is tomorrow and your chance to live like you're not a celebrity! Hooray!

According to Jossip: "In Touch just removed David Thompson, their West Coast bureau chief, who was described to us as 'very strange' and one with 'no people skills,' and simply wasn't up to the task at hand."

Sounds like he'd make a great blogger for Jossip. (We kid. We kid. Kinda.)

The Neiman Foundation for Journalism announced its 2008-2009 Neiman fellowship class and one local (kinda) reporter was on the list:

Ching-Ching Ni, Beijing correspondent, Los Angeles Times, will study the intersection among religion, politics and immigration, with a focus on the changing spiritual landscape of America.

Congratulations!

Really?

Isn't that kind of like Lindsay Lohan being your AA sponsor?

An Item That Will Make To-Be Brides Wish They Were Famous: Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz have sold the exclusive rights to their wedding photos to People magazine for over $1 million. That'll buy you a lot of Jordan almonds.

Better Than Bad: Forget the best of Cannes, John Horn delights in bringing you the worst. Horn horns in on B-movies debuting in France that star bold faced names in shame-faced productions.

Hot On A Cold Trail: Lynn Smith showcases the casualties of the possible SAG strike with the tale of Austin Highsmith, an unknown actress whose Big Breaks have been big letdowns thanks to the changing climate in Hollywood.

Anita Busch, the former L.A. Times reporter whose receiving of a dead fish and threatening note set off the Anthony Pellicano investigation says current L.A. Times employees remain too cozy with the investigator and should be the target of inquiry themselves. She specifically names Chuck Philips and Jim Newton, saying of Philips:

The Pellicano case coverage in the L.A. Times as reported by Chuck Philips (who told the NY Times that Pellicano was his longtime news source) should be examined. It's a case study of how Pellicano worked his media relationships to try to destroy his adversaries.

Newton responded here.

In today's Morning Call Time podcast, FOX takes J.J. Abrams' cows to the fringe, Anthony Pellicano heads up the creek, and Carl Icahn stakes his claim in Yahoo.

Click here to subscribe to mediabistro.com's Morning Call Time... or check us out on iTunes!

For sponsorship opportunities, please contact Brie O'Reilly or Anthony Ferrara.

From our Tip Jar:

Blogging friends and comrades,

Just wanted to give you a heads up that today we launched a pretty cool new mini-site called Hollywood Backlot. Check out exclusive, behind the scenes photos from upcoming films and TV shows at latimes.com/HollywoodBacklot. Hopefully Hollywood Backlot will become a weekly destination for film fans and media to get the scoop on upcoming features, with a behind-the-scenes view of life on set.

Each Monday from here forward, we will launch a new gallery containing never before seen candid set photos, taken by veteran Hollywood photographer David Strick, with a new movie, commercial or show featured each week. New shots from Strick's current set visits will be featured alongside his full photo gallery and keyword searchable archive of 500+ exclusive images.

Starting off with a bang, Hollywood Backlot launches today with exclusive photos of one of the year's most buzzed about releases: the vampire/teen flick Twilight! Based on the hugely popular bestselling books, and directed by Catherine Hardwicke, the exclusive set photos will be the first in a line of weekly galleries, highlighting the backstage, backlot world of Hollywood.

So drop on by and take a look at the full Twilight gallery, or browse through the archives for some classic behind-the-scenes set photos.

And please share your thoughts, concerns or questions about this new feature. Would love to hear any reaction you have.

Very best,

Richard Rushfield

Unclear on the Concept: A note to the latimes.com headline writers. You can't say "Spoiler Alert" and then follow that up with a colon and the actual spoiler. That's not an alert. That's a headline that tells you exactly what's going to happen on American Idol before you've had a chance to watch it. Sheesh.

New Deal Catapults CBS To One Of The Top 10 Internet Companies: CBS Corp. agreed to buy CNET Networks Inc., the Internet news and entertainment company, for $11.50 per share, or about $1.8-billion in cash.

This Never Woulda Happened On Friendster: A federal grand jury in L.A. indicted a 49-year-old woman of fraudulently using a MySpace account to "cyber-bully" a Missouri teenager "who later hanged herself because she believed she was being rejected by a 16-year-old boy she met on the social networking website." Yeah. Try living with that.

Yep, LA's infamous private dick is going to have to tap behind bars for the next 8-10.

LAT has the full story.

From LAT:

SAN FRANCISCO -- The California Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory.

Jim Weixel, San Francisco attorney who's name is on the friend-of-the-court brief filed with the court reacted to the news with FBLA seconds after the decision was announced and said,"Holy shit Dude - we won!"

That's right - not those snotty New York 'weaklies' or anything near DC - the LA Weekly blew them out of the water in AltWeekly Award nominees.

We're going to toss away the chip on our shoulder left by the Pulitzers and congratulate our little home town alternative paper LA Weekly. Seriously, this is the last post mentioning the Pulitzers for at least a year. We've sat down, had a little chat and realized that we've beaten this tired punchline to a bloody pulp. Fish. Barrel. Bazooka. We're moving on.

Among those nominated at the Weekly for writing are are Scott Foundas, Jeffery Anderson in two categories, David Zahniser and almost a given Nikki Finke. And another two for staff.

Editor Laurie Ochoa gave FBLA this note,"The Alt-Weekly Awards, though, are especially gratifying because we're competing with our peers. I can't help pointing out that we're not only up for eight writing and design awards, we also have two cartoonists -- Mr.Fish (aka Dwayne Booth) and Max Kornell -- who appear exclusively in our paper, up for awards as well. I'm proud that over the years LA Weekly has won more AAN Awards than any other paper, and happy that with Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism now overseeing the awards, we're still competitive."

And editor Jill Stewart had this to say to us, "We did so well because L.A. is like a city-state filled with noir tales and amazingly inept leaders -- and not nearly enough newspapers in this huge town to tell it all."

Here. Here.

The full list of results are here. The winners will be announced June 5-7 in Philadelphia.

After his n-word peppered tirade about a girl his son was dating aired, Dog Chapman was dropped by his network. But now the Dog will be back on A&E this summer in his regular Glam Rock Cops (not to be confused with The Fashion Police) type bounty hunter show.

AP is reporting that Dog has been photographed with a number of black people and has said he's sorry.

New episodes will air in July trying to answer the question,"How hard could it possibly be to find fugitives on an island?"

When we first suggested that new LAT vid-journo Katy Newton was hired to be a peeping tom, she sent an e-mail to some higher-ups suggesting that, just maybe, their press release was "sending the wrong message."

But after we saw the new feature, ICU, (and especially after we fell in love with it) Katy kindly agreed to tell FBLA how she came up with the idea:

1. What is the overall idea behind the feature? Basically, the idea is to meet the people behind the posts of Craigslist's "missed connections," open up that dialogue to our readers and learn a bit about the different ways Angelenos are trying to connect with each other.

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