Richard Horgan

Mission & State, the much anticipated content operation headed by former Slake Media founder and LA Weekly editor Joe Donnelly, promises “narrative journalism from the heart of Santa Barbara.” Among the articles dotting today’s official website launch is a shining freelance example by Jervey Tervalon of that motto.

The New Orleans born, LA raised Tervalon was very much an African-American anomaly when he decided to study at UCSB in the 1970s. He frames the city’s homogeneous demographics with various anecdotes and reminiscences, including this ugly and embarrassing SBPD episode:

Not that Santa Barbara was immune from the sort of de rigueur profiling we were used to back in Los Angeles. I speak, of course, of the infamous Harlem Globetrotters arrests in 1984 when Santa Barbara’s finest, in a desperate search for black men of average height who had pulled a jewelry heist on State Street, apprehended at gunpoint three Globetrotters who happened to average 6 feet, 5 inches.

Read more

The headline for this particular TIME op-ed asks a great question: “What’s Next for Hollywood’s Most Feared Reporter?” Unfortunately, there’s not much in the article itself about where Nikki Finke might ostensibly Toldja! from next.

Article author Gary Susman, a veteran entertainment journalist who has written for Moviefone, Entertainment Weekly and People, winds his way to a tacit conclusion drawn by several others since Sharon Waxman fired a shot across the bow of HMS Deadline on Sunday night. Namely, that Finke could opt out of her Penske contract any day now and re-incorporate as a standalone blogger.

One place Finke will definitely not be going is Manka Bros. Studios, an entirely fictitious operation overseen by Warner Bros. business development executive John Perry. But that didn’t stop Perry from alter-ego blogging a June 3 job offer.

Read more

A pair of very powerful strands of history anchor the Orange County Register‘s re-launch today of the Santa Ana Register as a weekly community newspaper.

One is the fact this 108-year-old publication, rolled out in the fall of 1905 as the Santa Ana Daily Register when Orange County had only about 20,000 residents, marked the beginning of the newspaper that now contains it. The other is the idea that Santa Ana city editor Theresa Cisneros’ immigrant roots date back to the same location, a few decades later. From her front-page introduction:

In the 1920s, all four branches of my family tree fled central Mexico after the revolution, seeking better opportunities for their offspring. After traversing mountains and deserts, most of them settled in Santa Anita – a small Mexican enclave on the outskirts of Santa Ana…

Read more

Once in a while, we like to toot the Mediabistro horn. Especially when a local LA event doubles as a testimonial for the value of our educational offerings.

This Friday at Book Soup, Tiffany Hawk – an alumnus of Mediabistro’s Travel Writing Bootcamp (pictured) – will be reading from her new novel Love Me Anyway and doing a Q&A. She’s not serving coffee, tea or soda anymore, but she will be more than happy to sign your copy of her darkly comedic look at what it’s like to work for a commercial airline. From Friday’s event description:

Get a behind-the-scenes look at the airline industry, with all its glamour, loneliness and ever-present temptations. We’ll talk books, airplanes and travel. Come armed with every question you’ve ever wanted to ask your flight attendant. Enjoy wine and airline-style snacks while supplies last.

Read more

At today’s S.I. Newhouse School Mirror Awards luncheon at Cipriani 42 in New York City, one of the Syracuse University winners was SF Weekly staff writer Joe Eskenazi. He took home the impressive sounding prize of Best Single Article/Digital Media for his October 2012 feature “Top 5 Ways Bleacher Report Rules the World!”

Eskenazi’s look at the evolution The Huffington Post of sports was and remains a great cover story. It starts off with a couple of peripheral references framing the company’s 2012 efforts to add full-time salaries and respectability to the unpaid blogger mix:

During a meeting in New York City, an executive at one of the nation’s largest sports media companies quipped that Bleacher Report’s new strategy was akin to spritzing a little room deodorizer after leaving a steaming deposit in the toilet and failing to flush. An attendee recalls everyone laughing uproariously.

Read more

When we spoke last fall with WEHOville.com founder-publisher Henry Scott, he outlined his intention to follow the 2012 website with a companion print publication in 2013. That time has now officially arrived – with a twist.

Scott confirmed this morning that a free weekly print edition of WEHOville is planned for late summer, publishing every Thursday. He estimates that he will need three months to break even and is hoping local news consumers will help fund the expansion to the tune of $35,000 on Kickstarter:

Why print, you ask? Because many people still prefer to get their news that way. So we will reach a bigger audience with both print and online editions. In West Hollywood, with our embarrassingly small voter turnout, we need to engage as many residents as possible in the discussion of important civic issues.

Read more

A few days ago, Mark Burnett told Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil that he thought Ricky Gervais would be a perfect Golden Globes crossover candidate for 2014 Oscar show hosting duties. He even went so far as to make his Webcam case directly to Gervais.

That kind of thing is too good an opportunity for most journalists to pass up and, sure enough, this morning O’Neil has an exclusive update. Gervais says he would be completely open to dishing from the Dolby Theatre stage. With one proviso:

“On the one hand I would be incredibly flattered and whatever you think of those sort of things, it would be a thrill and an honor to be asked,” Gervais said. “On the other hand I doubt the job offer would come without some strings attached. The worst string being, handing in my credentials as a comedian in favor of a family entertainer. We have to be able to poke fun at society without favoring any part of it because we are beholden to someone…”

Read more

Nonny de la Peña is no stranger to heady praise. Last holiday season for example, she was singled out by Fast Company as one of “The 13 People Who Made the World More Creative in 2012.”

Now, thanks to an AP-Google $20,000 scholarship, the former Newsweek correspondent, documentary filmmaker and USC Annenberg Fellow doctoral candidate will be well-positioned during the 2013-14 school year to make journalism even more “immersive.” From this week’s announcement:

De la Peña’s focus is on pioneering immersive journalism, a groundbreaking way for first person experiences of the news using virtual reality and gaming platforms. A graduate of Harvard University, her award-winning documentary films have screened in more than 50 cities globally and she also co-founded the Knight News Challenge winner Stroome.

Read more

That’s how potential 2013 Primetime Emmy nominee Jane Fonda described Leona Lansing, her character in The Newsroom, during a recent Google+ hangout with Gold Derby head prognosticator Tom O’Neil:

“By that, what I mean is – That I am a ferocious businesswoman who looks very, very closely and primarily at the bottom line. But I’m not ruthless. I don’t try to hurt people by telling “not truths.” I think Ted Turner is that way.”

“And that’s why I say Rupert Murdoch, in the sense that she is ruthless in defending her company and in watching the bottom line. But she doesn’t want to tell lies. And that’s Ted Turner.”

Read more

If you’re into acronyms, as we are, then you’ll understand why one of the first things we did upon learning that Laura E. Davis (pictured) has been appointed to the new LA Times position of deputy mobile editor was to look up what else the abbreviation DME stands for. Besides deputy managing editor.

Turns out DME has a breadth and depth as wide as the purview Davis, a former Yahoo News manager, is now tasked with overseeing. In no particular order, DME has also been known to stand for the 2010-12 TV series Drinking Made Easy, digital media edition (via Microsoft), direct marketing expense and doctorate of music education.

Davis, a USC grad, began her journalism career with AP stints in LA and New York. During her time at Yahoo, the company’s Facebook news-feed presence grew to more than two million fans and the Twitter page @YahooNews added 300,000+ followers.

Read more