Exclusive Interview

To mark the recent Cinco de Mayo holiday, it would have made sense for this particular show business aspirant to drown their overworked and underpaid sorrows with straight rows of Tequila shots. Instead, they opted for the cheaper and longer-lasting buzz of Tumblr blog HollywoodAssistants.

What’s great about this excellent new diversion is that it does not swim with the snark. Rather, the author uses a drier, droll sense of humor to meme-capture the highs and lows of an overworked Hollywood assistant’s daily rote.

“I was formerly an agency assistant at one of the big four,” the operator of HollywoodAssistants tells FishbowlLA via email. “Now I am an assistant elsewhere in the industry, but I can’t reveal where in order to remain anonymous.” Although this person also refused to tell us if they are male, female or transgender, we’re guessing – based on this, and this – that HollywoodAssistants is a her.

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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.

Entertainment freelance journalist Lola Ogunnaike has found the way to make the most out of Twitter when it comes to getting instant reactions from celebrities.

“Twitter has made my job a bit easier because you no longer have to wait for a publicist to give you a quote about an incident or not give you a quote about an incident,” said Ogunnaike in this week’s, “So What Do You Do?” interview. “You can actually go to the celebrity’s Twitter page and usually find the answer right there.

The former New York Times and CNN reporter also found that Twitter can be a great reporting asset when out in the field.

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If and when that Lifetime TV movie being developed by Johnny Depp’s company about William R. Wilkerson, founder of The Hollywood Reporter, comes to fruition, a whole new generation will be introduced to Tinseltown’s original trade reporter. For now, Wilkerson’s pioneering publishing work stands as something of a footnote to his LA nightclub and Las Vegas Strip legacies.

To understand the power of Wilkerson’s front-page “Tradeviews” THR op-eds, which he began writing immediately upon launching the paper in 1930, his son William Wilkerson III (pictured, left) tells FishbowlLA one need look no further than an actor who famously went on to not give a damn. “ I personally like the editorials he wrote about someone that made them instant celebrities or movie stars,” Wilkerson says. “Clark Gable was a nobody. On July 13, 1931, my dad wrote about him and it instantaneously made him famous.”

Wilkerson’s column ran for 33 years and tackled issues that in some cases would still be inflammatory today. The original THR office was located a few blocks above Sunset on Highland, and by the end of year number two (1931), the ten-page-or-so newspaper had a national circulation of 25,000. Wilkerson was quickly banned from Hollywood studio lots because of his hardball tactics and battled the moguls, hard, for several decades before finally breaking down their monopolistic ways in 1947.

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Nearly three years after the LA Times Magazine was removed from advertorial status control of the business end of the paper and put back under the LA Times‘ editorial umbrella, the monthly pub is being shut down. FishbowlLA spoke with the mag’s editor, Nancie Clare, who told us that the upcoming June issue will be the magazine’s last.

“I think it’s fair to say there were revenue issues,” she tells us. “It’s still a tough economic climate, especially for print. I don’t think they got rid of us because they don’t like us.”

The mag’s staff of seven will be let go. There’s no indication if positions will be available for them in other sections of the paper.

“I think the jury is still out. Part of what’s going on is a contraction. They’re contracting in the newsroom too. There’s nowhere to absorb us.”

Clare says the staff is handling the news stoically.

“There was no animosity or screaming. We’re professionals in a very small media market. Print is in a tough place right now. [The Times] is doing what they think is best. I obviously disagree. But I really appreciate that Russ Stanton gave us the opportunity to do this. When the previous editor was let go, he went out on a limb for us. And I think we’ve done some great stuff.”

The mag’s staff was only recently made aware of the imminent closure. Future plans are still up in the air. But Clare is confident everyone will land on their feet.

“I’m going to be working. And so will all of my people. I can’t sing the praises of my staff enough. Helene Goldsen is the best managing editor on Earth. [Design and Culture Editor] Mayer Rus is amazing. Rip Georges is a multi-award-winning designer. The young ones too…Raha Lewis with music…There’s only seven of us. We’ve been on a shoestring and the product we’ve produced is excellent.”

A compelling name and some equally compelling audio content. That’s the FishbowlLA boxscore for the first two innings of The Halo Effect, a brand new Los Angels Angels-focused podcast hosted by SoCal native Marty Keegan.

It starts with Keegan’s voice, a regal rasp that is one part Crispin Glover and many parts hubby of Rebecca, film writer for the Los Angeles Times. Then there’s Keegan’s wry sense of humor, fed by his experience as a stand-up comedian and one-time host of nowlive.com pop culture talk show Hollywood Babble-On.

In this week’s The Halo Effect episode, Keegan continues his conversation with former Angels pitching great Jim Abbott, author of the new book Imperfect. Among the topics covered are Abbott’s memories of late Angels owner Gene Autry:

“Mr. Autry was a sweet man, completely different from some of the other owners I’ve played for… He’d come down into the clubhouse and he’d look around. And no matter if we’d won or lost, he was always immaculately dressed in a western cowboy suit and hat, and a fresh pair of cowboy boots that were monogrammed with a G.A. Every single one of them. He always had a kind word and loved his ballplayers.”

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In the mid-2000s, Alabama single mom Katie Rogers was living in Mar Vista and commuting to a job at the Coldwater Canyon offices of TreePeople. Despite the challenges of making this 30-mile round trip without a car, that’s just what she did for about three months, with a cameraman in tow.

She wound up with 80 hours of raw footage and is now editing it down into the feature documentary CarLess in LA. At the time, she used the $2500 earned from the sale of a Toyota minivan to purchase a Sony HD camera.

“There are no buses that go over Coldwater Canyon, so I either had to hike or “mountain bike” ride on the last leg of the daily journey to get to work,” Rogers tells FishbowlLA. “It was truly “trekking” LA! I would ride my bike home though because it was mostly downhill and actually a nice ride. But not on Coldwater itself, that would have been too dangerous. I found other routes.”

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The title of the book is Assassins… Serial Killers… Corrupt Cops… Chasing the News in a Skirt and High Heels. The recalled contents are to SoCal journalism what On the Waterfront was to Hollywood.

Author Mary Neiswender began her trailblazing, twice-Pulitzer Prize nominated reporting career at the Long Beach Press-Telegram just a few years before Brando’s Terry Malloy eviscerated the big screen. She quickly established herself as a journalistic contender, becoming later that decade the first female member of San Pedro’s Harbor Press Room. The booze-soaked, cigarette-stenched den was located above the Harbor Division police station and directly below court chambers and the local jail.

Here’s how Neiswender recalls her first day, alongside ten waterfront-beat reporters for all the major LA newspapers:

As I pushed open the door, the room quieted. There were a lot of throat-clearing noises. I saw my desk top was clean, except for a lone, plastic geranium in a broken pot. I smiled. I could handle that.

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The latest article is up at reallatimes.com, a modest parody website launched April 1, 2012. With a headline that makes the destination’s Onion-esque intent perfectly clear: “Local Resident Contemplating Adding Avocado To Sandwich For $1.”

The wishes-to-remain-anonymous (for now) owner tells FishbowlLA via email that all it cost to start the online joke sheet was a $7.99 payment to godaddy.com. “For the most part, it’s a one-person operation,” Mr. X says. “Though on some days, it’s a zero-person operation.”

Along with the fact that an Internet publication can be launched today for the same price as a real-world avocado enhanced sandwich, there’s also this dagger. “I have absolutely no prior professional experience as a journalist,” our mystery man reveals. “But that’s what makes this country great… Look at Arianna Huffington.”

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Local media junkies might remember Jim Lampley‘s stint as the co-anchor of the KCBS nightly news in the late ’80s. During that same time, Lampley accepted a job with HBO to call boxing and Wimbledon for the cable network.

Little did anyone know that the 63-year-old would go on to become the voice of boxing for today’s generation.

“My boxing career is my most significant broadcasting accomplishment,” Lampley said prior to this Saturday’s HBO pay-per-view fight between Floyd Mayweather and Miguel Cotto. That’s saying something considering he’s called a record 14 Olympics and the first ever college football sideline reporter.

We will have more from Lampley about his time in Los Angeles during an interview for FishbowlLA next month, but in the meantime, you can check out my exclusive “So What Do You Do?” interview.

From the UK, Tom Scott last Friday afternoon launched his delightful goof klouchebag.com, a send-up of San Francisco-based Twitter influence meter klout.com. Within a few hours, media types in LA were tweeting out their “Klouchebag” rating.

“I had the idea the day before [Thursday], after reading this article in Wired,” Scott tells FishbowlLA via email. “I’d been annoyed with the idea of Klout for a while, and that crystalized it. The site was built in a couple of hours of spare time.”

There is no real science behind Scott’s latest project, taglined “The Standard for Asshattery.” Or, as the 27-year-old Brit puts it in his front-page FAQ , his service ‘is about as scientific as Klout’s own measurements — which is to say, it’s pretty much a crapshoot.’

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