Journos

A whole lot of media shaking took place Thursday on the campus of Cal Poly Pomona.

During the school’s annual “Com Day,” students got to listen to blogger-turned-author Julie Powell (Julie and Julia), Pulitzer Prize winning LA Times photographer Barbara Davison, Los Angeles Angels vp of communications Tim Mead and talent agent Danny Sussman. Then it was time for the school to honor a well-known local news personality.

Laura Diaz, until recently a fixture at CBS LA, was the guest of honor at the Hilda L. Solis Scholarship dinner and reception. She was there to accept the 2012 Nopal Award.

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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.

Within the insular confines of SoCal food journalism, a big deal this past week or so has involved the efforts of website Eater LA to expose the identity of incoming LA Weekly food critic Besha Rodell.

The first post by Eater LA editor Kat Odell was on-target, to an extent, as it featured a blown up photo of Rodell moderating a panel discussion at the recent Atlanta Food & Wine Festival. But the picture is no longer there, quickly taken down after its photographer cried copyright.

And so, Odell came back this week with a second reader-provided snap. One that Rodell is actually perfectly OK with:

Thus far, the photographer of this photo has not demanded it be removed. Probably because the photographer may have a vested interest in people thinking that photo looks exactly like me. You’d think Eater, with all its smarty-pants Internet savvy, would know the difference between a credit and a caption. But whatever. Chefs of LA – I look just like that! I haven’t aged a day!

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Several Bay Area Patch sites received a total of nine San Francisco Peninsula Press Club Awards over the weekend, prompting Chief Content Officer Rachel Feddersen to triumphantly declare via email that Patch.com was “the most significant media organization in the nation, bar none.”

Jim Romenesko then published Feddersen’s email, prompting the rest of us to wonder what she’s been smoking.

That isn’t to say that AOL’s network of hyperlocal websites hasn’t produced good work, or that its Bay Area journalists didn’t deserve those press club awards. We’re happy for our NorCal colleagues. But we’re pretty sure they’d rather have Pulitzers. And work for the New York Times.

Full memo at JimRomenesko.com

Get ready for some new faces on Fox 11′s Good Day LA.

Dorothy Lucey is leaving the morning show and Jillian Reynolds is transitioning from a full time employee to a freelancer, according to Deadline.com:

I hear Lucey’s contract was not renewed and her last day will be later this week, possibly on Friday. Additionally, Lucey’s co-anchor Jillian Reynolds will switch from a full-time KTTV employee to freelance status. She will continue in her current duties on Good Morning LA but not always five days a week.

The show will hold on-air auditions in the coming weeks in hopes of finding a replacement for Lucey. This is a huge departure for KTTV as the Good Day LA co-anchor has worked alongside Reynolds and Steve Edwards since 1995.

The enlightening Scientific American Q&A series “The SA Incubator” continues today with a look at the professional trajectory of LA based freelance journalist Casey Rentz.

Her science writing career began in Chicago, where she launched her own zine and contributed to 2006-08 underground free monthly The Skeleton. Then, thanks to someone handing her a book by K.C. Cole and Rentz cold-introducing herself to the author via email, it was on to USC’s Specialized Journalism program. While on campus earning her master’s, Rentz began laying the freelance groundwork:

“After I joined USC’s master’s program, I started blogging a bit, I wrote for Sandra Tsing Loh’s radio program Loh Down on Science, and I started writing a column for the newsletter at the Page Museum (An archaeological site in the middle of a huge city? Nothing better!) Post-graduation, I landed a job as Associate Communications Director at a non-profit startup called Informed by Nature. It’s a catch-all job: I do some writing for the website, program development, and creative development for the company. We’ll be launching in late 2012.”

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Although Mike Fleming’s deadline.com duties keep him very busy, he still finds the time to continue one longstanding freelance tradition. The Playboy interview.

Beginning with Robert Downey Jr. in the 1990s, Fleming has contributed around two dozen centerpiece Q&As to the publication, chatting with everyone from Denzel Washington to Harrison Ford to Quentin Tarantino. For the June issue, the A-lister across the tape recorder is Tom Cruise. Towards the end of the conversation, Fleming asks Cruise what he learned from that whole Matt Lauer-Oprah Winfrey train wreck:

“When I go back and look at it, I find myself thinking, I don’t feel that way. I get how it came across, but I don’t feel that way, and I never have. Telling people how to live their lives? I saw how that came across and how pieces were edited.”

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A remarkable essay has been published on the Village Voice website. Under the headline “Tupac Shakur, the Los Angeles Times, and Why I’m Still Unemployed: A Personal History by Chuck Philips,” the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist details for the first time his version of the events leading up to, and following, March 26, 2008.

That’s the day The Smoking Gun exposed as fake court documents referenced in a Calendar front-page story by Philips about a 1994 assault in Queens, NY on rapper Tupac Shakur. He says it was not his idea to web-publish and liberally source the FBI-302 documents, but rather that of his LAT editor and the paper’s lawyer. Philips also accuses the paper of failing to properly support one of their own by refusing to litigate against the target of his piece (and subsequent accuser) James “Jimmy Henchman” Rosemond:

Lawyers and editors rejected my recommendations, arguing it would be foolhardy to fight the case. The Times refused to defend the story in court. Instead, the paper crafted a retraction that sounded as if I had made up the entire story and sneaked it into print behind management’s back, without the knowledge, consent or guidance of senior editors and lawyers directly involved in its publication.

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Eat your heart out, Jonathan Gold.

Los Angeles Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke shared a great story before ESPN’s Around the Horn Friday about the time he ate penis in China.

Don’t believe him? Watch the video.

Happy Friday, folks.

The trailer above is from a rough cut of the film Fit to Print–produced by a team of journalists that includes former New York Times staffer Adam Chadwick, former Baltimore Sun reporter Al Foreman, former Detroit Free-Press photo journalist Daymon Hartley and Murray Waas of Reuters.

“We’re hoping to give voice to the thousands of newsroom employees laid-off over the past several years,” Chadwick tells us, “while also examining the light at the end of the tunnel for the industry.”

Chadwick says he’s got plenty of behind-the-scenes footage of the LA Times. His team is currently searching for completion funds to finish the film.

Orange County Register media reporter Gary Lycan went public with his battle with advanced prostate cancer in his most recent column. He gave a nice shout-out to the team treating him at St. Joseph Cancer Pavillion in Orange and told of an interesting run-in he had while getting treatment.

I want to give a high-five this week to a reader, Joyce Lawson, whom I met this past week at the Medical Oncology Care Associates in the St. Joseph Cancer Pavillion in Orange. Lawson is one of a large staff of amazing caregivers there who assist patients like me.

I am being treated there for anemia and advanced prostate cancer by the remarkable team of Dr. Sam Huang. I’m getting blood infusions and chemotherapy and at this writing everything is going well.

But back to Lawson, a remarkably upbeat, positive woman who has been with Dr. Huang since 1998. When she heard my name, she looked and said “I recognize you.” When I asked her last name and she said “Lawson,” I entered a time tunnel back to 1962-63 when both of us were at Santa Ana High School.

“You wrote all about me,” she reminded me, and, indeed, I had. She was a rising track star and I profiled her for our high school paper The Generator.

Fast forward 50 years and we re-connected. It reminded me the state of wellness depends not only on good medicine, but wonderful people who touch your lives through all these years. Thank you, Joyce.

Nice story.

Here’s hoping for a swift treatment and recovery.