The LA Weekly held a party for new editor-in-chief Drex Heikes at the Hotel Figueroa this past Saturday. For an event with a no-host bar, the turnout was impressive. Here are a few of the people we blinded with the flash from our camera:

Photographer Shannon Cottrell and journalist Sophia Kercher

FBLA editor Tina Dupuy and LAW editor Drex Heikes

Read more

It’s going to cost the house of Mickey Mouse $4 billion to acquire Marvel Entertainment, but they get Spider Man, Captain America, the X-Men, the Incredible Hulk, and hundreds of other heroes as part of the deal. It’s like a fantasy football team on acid. From the Los Angeles Times:

Analyst David Joyce of Miller Tabak & Co. said the acquisition will help Disney appeal to young men who have flocked to theaters to see Marvel’s superhero fare in recent years. That contrasts with Disney’s recent successes among young women with such fare as “Hannah Montana” and the Jonas Brothers.

“It helps Disney add exposure to a young male demographic it had sort of lost some balance with,” Joyce said, noting the $4 billion offer was at “full price.”

KPCC just sent this email out:

As you may know, 89.3 KPCC’s transmitter on Mount Wilson is under threat by the Station Fire. We have several backup plans in the works, so if the transmitter goes down, we are prepared to be back on the air as quickly as possible. In the meantime, there are plenty of additional ways for you to stay up to date on the fire’s course and impact on our communities:

Listen to KPCC’s online stream, easily accessible from the home page at kpcc.org.

Read the latest news updates, field reports and blog posts at kpcc.org.

Join our Facebook page and follow KPCC on Twitter.

Our stations in the Inland Empire (89.1 KUOR) and Coachella Valley (90.3 KPCV) will not be affected by an outage at Mount Wilson.

We’ll bring you extended wildfire coverage throughout the day today, including a special extended edition of AirTalk from 9am to noon. KPCC reporters are on the scene in La Crescenta and at the command center near Hansen Dam, as well as at the Oak Glen Fire near Yucaipa. We’ll be hearing from them this morning.

KPCC has done a great job covering the fire. The local television stations yesterday were mute. Er – moot. Pick one. Ironically if the television transmitters do go, the coverage of the disaster will remain the same.

We watched CNN yesterday to get information about the fires. Of course, Fredricka Whitfield pronounced La Canada, like the country to the north of the US. Ahem.

TVB has more on the transmitters here.

Photo credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

We met Craig Gaines at the LA Weekly cocktail party over the weekend. Gaines writes a blog about grammar called The Writing Guide. Gaines is not as nearly as embarrassed about this as he should be. Not that he’s not embarrassed by it, just not as much as he should be.

His site is a grammar geek’s delight. Topics range from improperly capitalizing nouns to prepositions to punctuation. You know, but interesting.

Watch out Strunk and White!

Kevin Baron at Stars and Stripes writes:

The U.S. military is canceling its contract with a controversial private firm that was producing background profiles of journalists seeking to cover the war that graded their past work as “positive,” “negative” or “neutral,” Stars and Stripes has learned.

“The Bagram Regional Contracting Center intends to execute a termination of the Media Analyst contract,” belonging to The Rendon Group, said Col. Wayne Shanks, chief of public affairs for International Security Assistance Forces-Afghanistan.

But Jason Chupick from our sister blog, PRNewser points out:

Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, military spokesperson for U.S. forces in Afghanistan said the practice of denying reporters embed positions is “flat out incorrect,” on NPR’s On the Media today.

That interview is here:

Previously on FBLA:

YouTube to the rescue!

The massive fire in the Angeles National Forest took two lives on Sunday afternoon. The Los Angeles Country firefighters were among the more than 2,000 fire personnel currently battling the blaze. More from the Los Angeles Times on the tragedy:

The two firefighters were killed when they drove off the side of a treacherous road in the Mt. Gleason area, south of Acton, around 2:30 p.m., said Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief Mike Bryant. They were later identified as Arnaldo Quinones, 35, of Palmdale and Tedmund Hall, 47, of San Bernardino County.

“This accident is tragic,” Bryant said, choking up as he spoke Sunday evening. “This is a very difficult time for L.A. County Fire Department and the men and women that serve day in, day out.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, Irvine-based Freedom Communications Inc. is going to declare bankruptcy sometime this week. Freedom Comm is the parent company of the Orange Country Register and 32 other daily newspapers, as well as 77 weeklies and 8 television stations. From the WSJ:

Freedom was founded in the 1930s by R. C. Hoiles, a former printer’s apprentice who used his publications in part to spread his libertarian views. The Orange County Register continues the libertarian approach but, like other newspapers across the country, has had to confront the question of its survival.

“We are continuing to work with our lenders to address our balance sheet,” said a Freedom spokesman.