Megan Ellison, 26-year-old daughter of the third-richest man in America, has so far refused all interview requests. Nevertheless, LA Times reporters Ben Fritz and Steven Zeitchik have managed to put together a solid profile of the moneyed indie producer, beginning with these fabulous first two paragraphs:
She’s a 26-year-old former party girl with social anxiety issues, a motorcycle-riding iconoclast who dropped out of USC and attends meetings in Led Zeppelin T-shirts.
Megan Ellison is also the most powerful new producer in Hollywood, running a burgeoning movie company from her $33 million compound in the hills above the Sunset Strip — and giving a critical boost to the kinds of adult dramas the major studios have all but abandoned.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.
Ouch. Although KCET board chairman Channing D. JohnsontellsLA Times media columnist James Rainey that financial problems at Eyetronics Media & Studios are immaterial as long as the Encino company delivers programming, an installment of the station’s Saturday-night-at-the-movies series appears destined for infamy.
Sam Schoemann, a former vp for visual effects sales at Eyetronics, tells Rainey that he was forced out of Dominique Bigle’s firm in April after trying to collect unpaid salary. He also alleges that at least one installment of Classic Cool Theater – a two-hour show featuring a cartoon, newsreel, musical short and main attraction – added some fabricated manpower:
Credits on a recent episode - anchored by Fred Astaire’s Royal Wedding – include “Music Supervisor John Funke” and “Sound Mixer Artie Moeller.” Those names were made up and added to the credits by an Eyetronics employee to make the production look more substantial than it was, said Schoemann and two others.
Kane has found work imitating celebrity voices so ad agencies can use his impersonation to sell clients on the idea of using the real actor for a commercial. “I’ve actually gotten Morgan Freeman a number of jobs,” he said.
It’s almost too good to be true. On the same day that Magic Johnson and his Guggenheim partners took official media ownership of the Dodgers in Chavez Ravine, the bankrupt paper a few miles down the 110 freeway has hinted at the possibility of its own three-comma savior group.
In an advance excerpt from an interview conducted to promote Eli Broad’s new book The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking, the billionaire philanthropist indicated he still has his eye on the LA Times:
Broad said in an interview that he would like to “partner with others … maybe foundations or wealthy families” to take control of the newspaper [out of bankruptcy]. He said he has spoken to others about such an arrangement, but declined to name them.
The Los Angeles Times reporter trio of Walter Hamilton, Andrew Tangel and Stuart Pfeifer discovered that Lehman Brothers awarded nearly $700 million to 50 of its highest-paid employees before their 2008 collapse as detailed in an exclusive article Friday:
The documents, which were among the millions of pages submitted in Lehman’s bankruptcy, show the list of top earners each were pledged $8 million to $51 million in cash, stock and other compensation. How much, if any, of the stock was cashed in before the bankruptcy wiped out its value couldn’t be determined.
Tony Pierce at KPCC posted the blog equivalent last night of a screeching high school hallway alarm bell. Let’s hope the LA Times soon takes notice.
Pierce notes that reporter Howard Blumecompletely bungled a story about the Los Angeles Unified School District. Although Blume wrote that the district was planning to change the student passing grade from a “C” to “D,” the truth is that D is the current benchmark. What the LAUSD in fact wants to do is bump that up – by 2017 – to the C level. Per Pierce:
Not only did the Blume article allow Matt Drudge of the powerful Drudge Report to write an eyebrow-raising headline and tweet (“LA Schools May Lower Graduation Standards To Curb Dropouts”), but it inspired the LA Times’ beloved columnist Steve Lopez to blast an angry blog mini-column on LA Now.
It’s entirely logical for LA Times media critic James Rainey to take a look at the fortunes of KCET on the occasion of the independent TV station’s move to shiny new facilities in Burbank. But talk about putting a damper on the new-office euphoria.
The headline writer soft-pedals the piece somewhat, framing it with the neutral tag “The Future of KCET.” Six paragraphs in however, that future begins to sound pretty grim:
“There is no way, absolutely no way, that KCET can survive as a television station,” said Jack Shakely, former head of the giant California Community Foundation, which once contributed to KCET programs and pledge drives. “They are like the bookstore that opens just when all other bookstores are awash in red ink, a bookstore that cannot sell bestsellers, can’t sell popular classics, sells books you’ve never heard of and then asks you to contribute to the bookstore anyway.”
The reality star said on a new clip from E!’s Khloe & Lamar that she has decided to run for mayor of the Armenian suburb in five years.
The Los Angeles Times saved Kardashian the headache of finding out the requirements by speaking with a Glendale city official, who explains that the city doesn’t have traditional mayor:
City Clerk Ardashes Kassakhian clarified that a candidate must be a registered voter in Glendale, residing in the city 90 days prior to the election. He said there was no requirement on a candidate’s length of residency and said anyone seeking elected office must collect 100 endorsement signatures.
Here’s one way to inspire readers to pay for a paywall: unleash your brand new, returning Pulitzer Prize winning food critic on a buffet of 420-laced delicacies.
Under the headline “A Marijuana-Infused Meal? Well…,” Jonathan Gold details the sampling of nine different weed-tastic culinary offerings. FishbowlLA’s favorite detail has to be the way the esteemed restaurant critic connected with his pot luck (sorry) host:
The first time I met [Nguyen] Tran, on a social-media panel somewhere, he happened to be wearing a banana suit, and he has been known to show up to food events dressed as a tauntaun from The Empire Strikes Back. I like his Starry Kitchen, a pan-Asian lunchroom in a downtown office-building food court, and I admire the running pop-up restaurant he mounts with chef Laurent Quenioux. But the notion of an “herb” dinner wasn’t especially my thing.
So reads the fifth paragraph of Big League Stew Yahoo blogger David Brown’s summary report about a scary incident Wednesday involving Los Angeles Angels outfielder Torii Hunter and a pair of OC police officers responding to a tripped burglar alarm. But that sentence really should be the lede; it succinctly and cleverly frames the seriousness of the encounter.
As first reported last night by LA Times writer Lance Pugmire, the nine-time Golden Glove winner was getting ready to watch a movie at his Newport Beach home after a morning workout at Dodger Stadium when he heard noises at the front door:
“I grabbed a knife and was about to start Bruce Lee-ing on whoever was there,” Hunter said. Good thing Hunter didn’t take the steak knife outside, where police were waiting with guns drawn after the outfielder’s home alarm had accidentally been activated by a door that was opened in the house.
Megan Ellison, 26-year-old daughter of the third-richest man in America, has so far refused all interview requests. Nevertheless, LA Times reporters Ben Fritz and Steven Zeitchik have managed to put together a solid profile of the moneyed indie producer, beginning with these fabulous first two paragraphs:
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