Journos

As if having the New York Times pick up on their reporting wasn’t great enough, the student reporters at Claremont McKenna College’s Claremont Port Side newsmagazine are drawing national praise for their role in reporting the manipulation of student SAT scores by administrators at their college. Port Side editor-in-chief Alyssa Roberts and senior reporter Jeremy B. Merrill spoke with USA Today about their big scoop.

Roberts: I guess we knew it would be as big as it has become.  (Last) Tuesday, when our campus was flooded with national reporters, some of the evening newscasts, TV cameras, they wanted student perspectives.  People love a good scandal.  And [a scandal at a] very selective liberal arts college makes for an interesting story.  People like to follow that.  I’ve definitely been surprised and also been pleased with the credit the Port Side’s been given– especially by the New York Times.  They’ve been very, very good saying that we first broke a few of the stories we were able to break.  That was very exciting for us.

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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.

The formula for the weekly REELZCHANNEL program Hollywood Uncensored with Sam Rubin is similar to that of Real Time with Bill Maher and no longer on-air The Best Damn Sports Show Period. Bring together a colorful panel of celebrity guests to address a grab-bag of juicy topics.

Here’s a recent clip featuring actors Adrianne Curry, Sam Jaeger and Alan Thicke. This particular panel does not exactly give a ringing endorsement to the basic premise of de facto 2011 Best Picture Oscar winner The Artist:

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As a journalist who has done a Q & A or two in his career, this Fishie hates to say it, but we’re pretty sure the traditional journalistic Q & A is nearing its demise. Because Reddit’s Ask Me Anything question sessions tend to be so much better these days. Yes, that goes for the Woody Harrelson debacle too, which made for great theater.

The Atlantic‘s James Fallows did a great AMA today where he answered questions on everything from home brews to China to the Gawkerization of his magazine. His answer to the latter we found particularly interesting.

Obviously this is a question we take very seriously here, and think about every day.

I have worked for the Atlantic longer, probably, than most people asking questions here have been alive. I started when I left the Carter Administration (when I was in my 20s) in 1979. What I’ve learned over that time is the balance between, on the one hand, the way the magazine HAS to keep changing, continually — and on the other, the crucial importance of its standards, intelligence, judgment, and so on. If you look back through our bound volumes, you see how dramatically the magazine has changed, and how often, through its existence. While still having some sensibility that makes us think: here is an Atlantic treatment, and not one from (name your other mag).

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As he was getting ready to graduate from USC last spring, Andre Khatchaturian started interning with the gargantuan San Francisco-based website bleacherreport.com. He has since moved up to contributor status and is currently on the road with the Lakers as they swing through Philadelphia, Boston, New York and Toronto.

In part one of his series about the experience of traveling up the east coast with the NBA team, Khatchaturian shared a goofy bit of video shot outside Philly’s Wells Fargo Center. Check it out; it involves Luke Walton and has the potential to go viral (at least here in SoCal):

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The New Yorker‘s Dana Goodyear just gave a nice interview to San Diego Magazine about her recent piece on Chef Javier Plascencia and Tijuana’s efforts to land on the international foodie map. (The piece is  well worth the read if you missed it).

A choice tidbit:

We are outright fans of Plascencia in San Diego. Do you sense Angelenos clamoring to “claim him,” too? Did you end up rooting for him and the BajaMed movement by the end of your trip/reporting? How could you not root for Plascencia and his fellow Baja chefs! I do think that people in L.A.–and certainly the food-obsessed–are increasingly aware of him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he opened a place here. My sense is that he fields offers all the time.

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After Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey was gunned down in 2007 on the orders of Yusuf Bey IV, a former colleague at the Oakland Tribune, Thomas Peele, was appointed lead reporter for the Chauncey Bailey Project. This unique investigative coalition played a major part in helping bring Bey to justice for trying to stop the publication of an unflattering story about the You Black Muslim Bakery.

Tomorrow, Peele takes it a step further with the release of the book Killing the Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism’s Backlash and the Assassination of a Journalist. Over the weekend, Tribune reporter Tammerline Drummond previewed this new work:

Peele takes us to Chicago and Detroit to the heart of the Nation of Islam and to Los Angeles where a police shooting at a mosque convinced Santa Barbara hairdresser Joseph Stephens to join the Black Muslim movement. Stephens who would later rename himself Yusuf Bey, opened Your Black Muslim Bakery in 1971.

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The Missouri School of Journalism’s Missourian newspaper has a nice profile of Class of 1998 supestar Nischelle Turner. After stints with the NFL on Fox, various major-market TV stations and an almost-talk show on OWN, Turner joined HLN’s Showbiz Tonight in December as west coast correspondent.

The MSJ article was written by school junior Margaux Henquinet, who spoke with a number of Turner’s former teachers. The HLN reporter’s high school volleyball coach suggested one of the reasons her former pupil has been so successful is due to the ability to remain “real and genuine.” Turner seconded that notion:

When she started working at Good Day LA during her time at KTTV, “I figured out it was OK to be yourself on television, and that’s when it all changed for me,” she said.

After the jump, you can watch Turner hug it out at her first Sundance Film Festival with Arbitrage star Richard Gere (also at the Park City event for the first time).

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Ashley Powers, Nevada bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, is used to covering the news, not making it. Yesterday however, she garnered personal headlines after being mistakenly expelled from Republican caucus location Precinct 1721 in the Vegas suburb of Sun City Anthem. Before she was shown the door, one elderly attendee screamed out that she was a spy.

Powers tweeted and reported about the incident. The story was quickly picked up by AP and, of course, her Twitter feed became the repository for all kinds of intriguing follow-up.

David Montero, a reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune, commiserated that the same sort of thing had happened to him in 2008. Other journalist reactions re-tweeted by Powers were more lighthearted:

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If nothing else, former New York Post Page Six gatekeeper Richard Johnson (pictured) has a great sense of timing. A year into his new job as west coast editor of The Daily, he finally got around to checking out a Clippers game.

“I went to my first game Monday night,” he tells FishbowlLA via email. “They killed the Thunder, and Blake Griffin had a monster dunk that has already been re-played a hundred times. Being a lifelong Knicks fan, I have a hard time liking the Lakers. So I am a Clippers fan… I just wish it was easier to get to downtown.”

Today marks the official one-year anniversary of The Daily. The west coast bureau is made up of Johnson and one other reporter, with plans underway to add a third staffer shortly in the wake of Hunter Walker‘s departure last fall for the New York Observer.

We were curious how the A-lister culture of LA compares to that of Manhattan. Johnson says there are some key differences. “The flow of celebrity “gossip” is more tightly managed in Los Angeles,” he notes. “There are more controlled red carpets, more junkets where stars give Q&As, more conference calls. Stars often don’t even stop to talk to the press on the red carpet, whereas in New York you see them out at parties–it’s more open.”

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When nationally syndicated columnist and ESPN poker personality Norman Chad was selected to jury duty, he did what any person in 2012 would do — gave play-by-play on Twitter.

Chad, AKA “Juror #7,” was rebuked by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Laura Foland Priver Wednesday for tweeting during a burglary trial.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Chad tweeted two dozen times between Jan. 11-12. The judge was eventually tipped off that Chad was tweeting and he was dismissed from the case.

“He made a mockery of our system,” Priver told Chad’s attorney. “I’m disturbed by this behavior. Once the information is out there, it’s out there forever. The public who sees these tweets is going to think this behavior is OK.”

Chad received a warning despite the fact that communicating during a trial is a misdemeanor in the state of California.