L.A. Councilman Eric Garcetti has a pretty funny Twitter impostor. It might not be up to Ruth Bourdain standards, but it’s not “Santorum” either. Garcetti’s staff seems to be taking the whole thing in stride. “The tweets are harmless,”  Garcetti spokesman Yusef Robb told the LA Times. “But we would hope people follow the authentic Eric Garcetti, so they’re getting accurate and helpful information.”

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Who says your first-person essays have to be limited to print? We’re ending our four-part series on personal essays with a nod to the growing digital outlet, with 15 sites all eager to publish your piece.

Salon.com is hungry for unique stories only you can tell, while three parenting pubs want to read “click-y content” that’ll bring the laughs. You can even tweet “tiny truths” to CreativeNonfiction.org in 130 characters or less.

Find out more on word count and submission etiquette at Personal Essay Markets, Part IV [sub req'd]. And don’t forget to revisit our Parts I, II and III for advice on tackling the oldie-but-goodie print pubs.

The Tribune Company, (abusive) parent company of the LA Times, has spent $212.9 million on lawyers fees and another $17.8 million on additional legal expenses since they filed for bankruptcy in December of 2008, according to a report in Crain’s.

And the river of wasted money isn’t drying up anytime soon. U.S. bankruptcy judge Kevin Carey recently said he wouldn’t hold hearings to end Tribune Co’s bankruptcy until May, at the earliest. Which, sadly, will most likely mean more layoffs, despite the company’s supposedly improving cash flow.

Vanity Fair‘s 18th annual Hollywood Issue hasn’t even hit newsstands yet and it’s already drawing heat. At issue, once again, is the three-panel fold-out cover, which, this year, features 11 actresses dressed in 20′s glam. The four actresses who made the actual cover–Rooney Mara, Mia Wasikowska, Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain–are all white. Adepero Oduye and Paula Patton, the only non-white women to take part in the shoot, are pictured in the fold-up panels to the right.

Not a big deal? Well, this is about the twelfth time this has happened. Jezebel has a rundown of the various Hollywood Issue covers, and just how many times actors and actresses of color were pushed to the side, off the cover. After about the fourth or fifth time it’s clearly no longer an accident or coincidence.

Fandango and Movies.com Chief Marketing Officer Ted Hong is moving to the app market. He’s just signed on as the new CMO of M-GO–a new multi-media content app set to launch this Spring.

“Today more than ever, the media landscape is changing and evolving, and M-GO is at the precipice of the shift in consumer behavior,” says Hong. “With that in mind, an exciting opportunity lies ahead for M-GO and I am thrilled to be a part of a company that is so dedicated, experienced, and committed to bringing this vision to life.”

Press release after the jump:

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Frying Pan News’ Steven Mikulan just posted quite the exit interview with recently fired LA Times blogging pressman Ed Padgett. The Times cited Padgett for “suspicion of sabotage” among other reasons for letting him go. Which sounds absolutely insane. Mikulan delves a little deeper.

Shortly after Padgett’s firing there was a “Christmas purge” of workers, followed by a “New Years Purge.”

“Those folks each got $20,000 in severance,” Padgett claims. “Two of the fellows were let go two weeks early because they were worried about sabotage. They’re so paranoid, because it’s not just my department — it includes editorial.”

Padgett believes it’s possible there’s some reality behind the company’s fears. A Teamster email he posted on his blog in December warned members against engaging in sabotage — while denying such behavior. But what does that ultimately say about a company that its employees would harm the source of their livelihoods?

Padgett also says that two recently fired Times employees have committed suicide in the past few months–an operations plant worker and a company truck driver. Terrible, terrible news. Especially in the context of Tribune Company’s plans to give management big, fat, out-of-the-blue bonuses.

This week, the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) announced the ten producers around the country that it will be working with for its latest “demonstration project” Localore. The goal is to foster new strands of 21st century reporting, with three of the host stations located in California.

Erica Mu at San Francisco’s KALW will oversee “Pop-Up Radio,” a crowd-sourced roving storytelling project tapping into schools, libraries, youth media programs and even barbershops. Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson, a.k.a. “the Kitchen Sisters,” will work at KQED radio and TV on “The Making of…,” a year-long look at various forms of craftsmanship.

And here in LA, it will be up to Anayansi Diaz-Cortes, via KCRW, to examine California immigrants’ shifting ideas of self and place:

Multiplatform documentary “Sonic Trace” will explore the relationship of Latin American immigrants to their home communities. Diaz-Cortes will gather stories from both sides of the border, with a focus on three evocative places (“Tres Puntos”) in LA: a church in South Central, Koreatown kitchens where Oaxacan cooks are rising in popularity, and a mobile recording booth in local food trucks.

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Patrick Goldstein has an interesting take on the current media fascination with the astronomical free agent salary deals landed by Major League Baseball stars Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols.

He suggests that just as the DVD boom once fueled the headline-grabbing paydays of Hollywood A-listers, billion-dollar media rights deals for MLB teams are now powering a similar inflationary curve on the baseball diamond. This shift has also taken out a once common top-tier talent agency tactic:

CAA was famous for leaking its star salary numbers in the ’90s, and every dazzling new salary breakthrough sent a telling message to stars signed to a rival agency–why isn’t your agent raking in all that moolah for you? When salaries are in decline, as they are now, you rarely see the likes of Kevin Huvane or Ari Emanuel feeding any information to the press, as today’s salary news only offers another instance of the scaling down of A-list actors’ earning power.

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Jon Weisman‘s blog on the Los Angeles Dodgers is on the move … again.

Dodger Thoughts is leaving ESPNLosAngeles.com and moving to www.dodgerthoughts.com. The Variety features editor wrote a brief farewell Monday:

I would very much like to thank everyone at ESPNLosAngeles for giving me the opportunity to be part of their team for two years. It’s been a great addition to the Los Angeles sports landscape, and I was proud to be part of it. (In fact, you might still see me over at ESPNLosAngeles on a freelance basis.)

Weisman’s blog is my favorite by far when it comes to thoughts and musings on the Dodgers. Let’s hope this move is his last one for good.

Badge of honor or badge of shame?

That’s the mock Twitter debate going this afternoon between Star magazine senior executive editor Dylan Howard and editor-in-chief David Perel after the pair discovered they have been blocked on Twitter by Ashton Kutcher:

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