Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Dodgers announced Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully would get his own bobblehead during the 2012 season.

Well, here it is — Scully’s bobblehead night is Aug. 30 when the Dodgers host the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Television executive and TMZ founder Jim Paratore died Tuesday of a heart attack during a cycling trip in France.

Paratore, 58, spent most of his professional career working for Warner Bros. He was responsible for not only starting the wildly popular entertainment website and TV show, but was the mastermind behind The Rosie O’Donnell Show, The Bachelor and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

“The Warner Bros. Television family has lost an incredibly talented and creative friend and colleague in Jim,” said Bruce Rosenblum, president, Warner Bros. Television Group.  “He has left an indelible mark not only on our company’s success but on each of us who worked with him during the past 26 years. Jim had a passion for life, both inside and outside the entertainment industry, and he will truly be missed.” Read more

The Los Angeles Times has a great article examining the media’s new willingness to use the correct name for female genitalia. The conservative advocacy group Parents Television Council went so far as to count vaginas, and found that the V-word is used in TV shows eight times more often than it was a decade ago.

While the PTC isn’t happy about the trend towards frank discussion of female anatomy, it’s arguably a direct result of women having more influence in the media, both as viewers and producers of content. From the LAT:

“Fifty percent of the people in this country have vaginas,” said “Grey’s Anatomy” executive producer Shonda Rhimes, 42, whose medical drama is widely credited with popularizing one of the decade’s most fashionable euphemisms for vagina, “vajayjay,” to work around nervous ABC executives. “The idea that we’re afraid to talk about them or call them by their proper name feels really silly to me…. It’s great that some progress is being made and it’s not such an issue anymore.”

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Here’s a familiar-sounding scenario: the Los Angeles Lakers are quickly eliminated from the NBA playoffs; the Kings keep going through to the Stanley Cup finals; reporters board bandwagons full of new fans to cover the ride.

It’s a summary line LA Times sportswriter Helene Elliott is living this spring just like she did back in 1993. At that time, after three years of covering the Angels and a season on the Lakers beat, she was tasked with chronicling Gretzy’s exploits once the purple and gold were bounced in the first round by the Phoenix Suns. As the Brooklyn native recently told Montreal Gazette sports editor Stu Cowan, things have changed dramatically since she first began covering hockey for Newsday:

“When I started, there were not the kind of equal-access rules that there are now,” she said. “There were times you would have to wait outside the locker room and a PR person would have to bring somebody out for me to interview… Just different scenarios. I’m glad those days are long gone…”

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Have you caught up to Drew Barrymore’s Pinot Grigio yet? The 2011 vintage recently won a gold medal at France’s prestigious Challenge International du Vin and continues to generate a healthy pour of media coverage, most recently in the LA Times and Angeleno magazine.

The Golden Globe winning actress engaged in a familiar development curve for this project, but gets to attach a price tag that is higher than a 3D movie ticket. From Barrymore’s Angeleno Q&A with Lesley McKenzie:

“I’ve always loved Pinot Grigio when I’m drinking white [and] I’ve always loved Italian wines. When I came across this one, I was thoughtful about the process, but I really fell in love with it. And I really want to be in love with things or I’m terrible at explaining why I want anything to do with them.”

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Former LA Times crime reporter Miles Corwin gets a nice write-up in the Orange County Register today about his latest novel Midnight Alley, released April 16. It’s the second in an ongoing series about the adventures of LAPD Felony Special Squad detective Ash Levine.

Corwin, who freelances for various publications and teaches in the English department at UC Irvine, got to spend a lot of time during his LAT days with city police officers. His follow-up to 2010′s Kind of Blue is once again heavily derived from that privileged journalistic access:

The novel’s fast-paced plot is heavily based on Corwin’s own experiences and observations from the time he spent shadowing Homicide Special and working as a crime reporter. Corwin followed the detective unit to crime scenes, interrogations, autopsies, and arrests. He says that it was getting to see Los Angeles crime so close and personal that inspired his fiction.

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LA Times environmental reporter Tony Barboza was just named one of five Ted Scripps fellows at the University of Colorado’s Center for Environmental Journalism. The nine-month academic program aims to provide journalists with the research tools to “deepen their understanding of environmental issues.” The fellowship comes with a $50,000 stipend and tuition to UC-Boulder.

Interesting sideline project from Ben Welsh, a database producer at the LA Times. It’s called PastPages and has been set up to record hourly snapshots of the home pages of various newspaper websites.

There are currently about 80 publications being tracked, everything from the LAT and TMZ to Le Monde and The Guardian. Welsh has managed to quickly exceed a Kickstarter fundraising goal of $5,000 and tells journalism.co.uk he’s looking forward to building out his non-profit venture:

Currently, the site just takes an image snapshot of the front pages but in the future PastPages will scrape and host all the HTML, images and code running on the website. This will create an archive which is searchable by keyword and there are also plans to create an API which would allow other programmers to create new projects and mash-ups with the site’s data…

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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 personal manager 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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The porn legend was arrested early this morning in Orange County on suspicion of drunk driving after crashing her car into a light pole.

The predictable jokes about how Jameson ought to know her way around a pole by now ensued.

TMZ has obtained the 911 call by a witness to the crash, which occurred around 12:45 a.m. The caller said, “I was actually getting ready to call you guys because she was drunk. Next thing I know, she went into the pole.”

Jameson was taken into custody on the scene after flunking a field sobriety test. She reportedly refused medical treatment, and was cited and released hours later. She is at home and doing well, according to a statement released by her website.