About

If you haven’t been there yet, head over to mediabistro.com to check out our all new — but not yet finished — homepage. We’ve decluttered the place after years of adding links, more links and even some more links.

It’s got a much cleaner look featuring the four main features behind the brand: Jobs, Courses, Events and News, with mega drop-down menus to take you further into the site.

There are more prominent sharing buttons for our Facebook and Google+ pages, our Twitter stream and our YouTube Channel. We’ve enhanced the search bar and simplified the overall experience.

We say it’s not quite finished because this is just phase one. Stay tuned for phase two in the New Year, with even more functionality with the same great content you’ve come to expect.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

On this, Columbus Day 2010, it gives me great pleasure to be able to introduce myself as FishbowlLA’s newest blogger.

When I moved from Toronto to Los Angeles in the late fall of 1993, I did what any self-respecting Canadian would: I drove around at night with the convertible top down, marveling at the balmy low-50′s temperatures. As winter season approaches, a new wave of Canadian and Scandinavian west coast transplants will no doubt soon be cruising down Sunset Boulevard in similar fashion.

Since my arrival in L.A., I have hung out at the House of Blues Foundation Room with Jimi Hendrix Jr.; helped filmmaker Brian Herzlinger land a date with Drew Barrymore; felt the wrath of Mel Gibson after authoring an article about video piracy; and become fascinated with North Korea as a result of starting a grassroots Twitter and WordPress campaign in 2009 on behalf of detained Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee.

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mediabistro.com founder Laurel Touby is in Long Beach this week for TED2009. She’s been Twittering all week, so we thought we’d share the feed here on FishbowlLA. Click here to follow Laurel…

The lunatics are officially running the asylum. But don’t let their inviting exteriors hide their ruffian sensibilities. Kate Coe and Mayrav Saar know where to find you.

A hearty, and belated, welcome to both of our new (no-longer-guest) editors of FishbowlLA.

Since you’ve been nice enough to read my posts, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mayrav Saar, and I’ve been guest-blogging this week.

I’m a humor columnist with a piss-poor blog, a yippy dog and a cute kid. I like dark chocolate, giant underpants and juicy news tips. So if you have any of those things, stick them in that little Tips Box in the corner there, and send them my way!

As I mentioned a few days ago, I am headed off to bastion of vox pop, TMZ.com starting on Monday, where I’ll be writing the City of Industry column – essentially, all about Hollywood’s foibles in business.

After today, I am handing off the vaunted FishbowlLA to a variety of guest bloggers over the next week or two, until our vast international search comittee secures the services of a permanent media and culture business scrutinizer-in-chief.

It was great fun blogging for you here, and most of you were very patient as I learned the ropes of blogging. As a reporter, I have mixed emotions about blogs: They can be the most insightful, inventive and open areas of discussion and discoure on the web, though some are simply places that indulge the lazier, sloppier aspects of journalism. We’ve always tried to be the former and not the latter. Hopefully, you’ll continue to check back in the coming weeks to keep the ‘bowl honest with your engaged, thoughtful criticism – and, of course, your helpful tips.

So, as they say in the movie business, “That’s a wrap… print it!”

With best regards,

Claude Brodesser-Akner

Yes, it’s true, folks: Yours truly has sold out. I’m going to go work for The Man. Or rather, The Men: Time Warner and Telepictures‘ newest venture, TMZ.com, as their industry columnist.

This means that we’re looking for my replacement. Might it be you?

Well…Can you, potential blogger, do 6-10 posts/day every business day? Can you write for an intelligent, professional audience and break news while also injecting clever opinion or piercing analysis? Do you have great Hollywood contacts? Do you own a Members Only jacket?

OK, forget the jacket: Do you also want to have a lot of fun, gain entree to the inner sanctum of entertainment and media, and write for a relentlessly obsessive, smart audience?

Then write 2-3 posts of up to 250 words each and send them with your qualifications (perhaps even a resume) to jobs AT mediabistro DOT com with “FishbowlLA tryout” in the subject line.

And, may the Fish be with you.

as our DayQuil just finally kicked in and we’re feeling mammalian again.

We should be up to full speed within the half hour.

-CB

Note to readers: It’s a slow Tuesday, thanks to the Easter / Passover break.

We’re taking off now to to visit the relatives in Brooklyn for the final two days of Pasover, but you’ll be in the able mitts of Ben Fritz for the next 48 hours.

Until Friday, tah!

Claude Brodesser

As you might have guessed, I am not Claude, who is apparently back east and unplugged for the holidays, though if pictures surface of him Jell-O wrestling in Lake Havasu, I for one would not be shocked.

Like yesterday’s guest blogger, I also have the horrifying distinction of having shared desk time with Claude at Variety, though that was during a far off time known as the 20th Century. While I have been writing about the entertainment industry for too many outlets to for nigh on a decade, this morning is my first time bloging — as I am sure most of you can tell.

Up until Tuesday, I thought blogging was what you do with the Scientologists while you are holding tin cans on the Hollywood Blvd — though apparently I wasn’t as far off as some people.

What’s my name? I would tell you, but I am convinced that you would extort me for my entire collection of vintage Washington Bullets trading cards. You people have become so hard to trust ever since you all started wearing a monocle.

So call me Bones — and I shall play the cynical and overworked McCoy to Claude’s chest-puffed Kirk. Only I’m slightly less hemorrhoidal.

I said slightly.