You can add the name Eric Charbonneau to the parade of photo-credit names gracing images on The Hollywood Reporter website and weekly print magazine. He’s the latest photographer to sign with Invision, the multimedia entertainment agency owned by The Associated Press in partnership with its member photographers.

Charbonneau, a native of Montreal, was discovered at age 16 by Alan Berliner after coming down from Canada to attend college. The rest is Berliner Photography, WireImage and now, Invision history:

Charbonneau’s addition builds on Invision’s growing line-up of top-tier photographers, which includes John Shearer, Jon Furniss, Jordan Strauss, Matt Sayles, Todd Williamson, Casey Rodgers, Victoria Will, Evan Agostini and Chris Pizzello.

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Our friend Phillip Zonkel has let us know about a Saturday March 2 event that he will be taking part in. Zonkel, along with CNN’s Miguel Marquez, LA Times reporter Bettina Boxall, NBC LA’s Mekahlo Medina and LAT assistant travel editor Jane Engle will talk about what it’s like to be an openly gay reporter.

“Out in the Newsroom: A Look at LGBT Coverage and Careers in Journalism” is being sponsored by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) and Los Angeles Press Club. It will take place at the latter organization’s 4773 Hollywood Blvd. HQ from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and is to be moderated by Variety political editor Ted Johnson. The suggested donation is $5.

By the way, Zonkel is nominated this year at the GLAAD Media Awards for his Long Beach Press-Telegram two-part investigation of bullying of LGBT high school youth and the willful disregard by certain school districts of state measures designed to mitigate this very ugly phenomenon.

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As LA Times columnist Steve Lopez acknowledges, Randy Newman‘s “I Love LA” is going to be impossible really to equal. Still, both at the Oscars and on the geo-hit parade, there is some honor to being a runner up.

Lopez has blogged an update to his column earlier in the week asking for people’s favorite “odes to LA,” informing that reader response has been overwhelming. He lists a baker’s dozen of Vox Populi second-place frontrunners. For FishbowlLA’s cover-charge money, this is the one that might have to win:

Guns N’ Roses – “Welcome to the Jungle”

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Today is D-Day at BuzzMedia. However, company CEO Stephen Hansen (pictured) wants to be very clear about something within the context of the layoff of approximately 50 employees (two thirds in New York, the other third in LA).

“One of the things I was committed to when I took over as CEO was making sure we had the capital to make the changes that would really add a lot of value,” Hansen tells FishbowlLA via telephone. “We received a tremendous amount of support from our existing investors and there is $15 million of additional capital that came into the business in the first part of 2013. We’ll be profitable in 2013, so I think we’re in really good shape.”

“For what it’s worth, there are a lot of reasons why people make hard decisions like the ones we’re making now,” he adds. “I’ve been through ups and downs, and crashes, and bubbles bursting, and all that sort of thing. The good news is that’s not the case here.”

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In this morning’s press release from Earbits, a Venice, CA company whose backers include WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, CEO Joey Flores clearly highlights the marketplace need for something like Groovies:

“Over 70% of streaming music listeners are non-paying, most of whom also recognize the need to support artists and labels,” said Flores. “Groovies create a social economy that maximizes the potential of this demographic by putting a real value on the actions they take to support their favorite bands. Groovies empower fans to earn rewards, recognition and unlock access to our growing music catalog.”

Here’s a quick example of how the Earbits product works. Each streaming song costs 10 Groovies. If a listener joins a Facebook fan page for a particular or musician, they earn 50 Groovies (thereby unlocking five songs). According to Earbits, the value of a Facebook fan is around $3.60, e.g. a much higher revenue stream than the 0.5-2.5 cents typically paid by streaming services for single audio tracks.

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Who would have expected this a few years ago, when he was posting crotch shots of a then-teenage Miley Cyrus‘ on his site? Perez Hilton is a daddy.

Writes Hilton on his site:

I am ready to announce that earlier this month I was blessed with the birth of my first child, a beautiful and healthy baby boy – with lots of hair on his tiny head!

My family is overjoyed at this newest and most cherished addition.

Hilton told the LA Times a few years ago he wanted to have a child by the age of 35. Today’s announcement made no mention of his son’s surrogate mother or if he plans to raise the child alone.

Photo: Perezhilton.com

NBCLA anchor Michael Brownlee spent some time recently at KJLH 102.3 FM, the Inglewood radio station that has been owned since 1977 by Stevie Wonder. It’s one of only two African-American owned commercial radio stations in all of California.

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All manner of LA and Santa Barbara media are sharing the concerning news this afternoon that KEYT-TV 11 p.m. news anchor Paula Lopez has been reported missing. A statement shared by her employers is being widely circulated:

“It is clearly a difficult time for her family and our own family at KEYT. All of us at KEYT stand ready to assist in any way we can.”

“For now, on behalf of KEYT and NPG of California, our thoughts and prayers are extended to Paula as well as her family and those searching to find her. We hope for her safe and speedy return.”

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Before Tessa Stuart joined BuzzFeed, she worked at LA Weekly. Today, that publication’s editor-in-chief Sarah Fenske has done what very few elsewhere in the media have dared to up to this point: firmly take Stuart’s side.

The crux of Fenske’s argument is that she feels there’s no way, under any circumstances (logged by the CPB or not logged), that Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat could have been detained for the amount of time Michael Moore first claimed (1.5 hours). From her op ed:

The Atlantic revealed that Burnat’s plane arrived at LAX at 4:59 p.m. , fourteen minutes behind schedule. Even if the plane was blessed with a relatively quick deboarding, it’s hard to imagine that Burnat could have possibly first encountered federal agents any earlier than 5:20 p.m.

Weirdly, The Atlantic lets Moore suggest otherwise: “In the half-hour between Burnat’s arrival and the first log entry cited in BuzzFeed’s post, Moore says Burnat and his family had already been taken to two other holding areas.” Oh really? So the plane landed at 4:59, and somehow magically everyone was ushered into various holding areas within just a few minutes, only to be detained and shuffled to room after room in just 29 minutes?

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Actor John Cusack has teamed up with Pentagon Paper whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, writers Glenn Greenwald and Xeni Jardin, documentarian Laura Poitras and Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow to launch a new First Amendment and investigative journalism advocacy foundation called Freedom of the Press. He’s currently fielding an AMA on Reddit about the endeavor… and his new film Rampart.

Plenty of info on Freedom of the Press (whose website appears to be slow/down under the traffic burden) but Cusack also had some interesting things to say about his friendship with the late Hunter S. Thompson:

I spent many many late nights on phone with Hunter through Clinton and Bush years…

Here were his thoughts on the Iraq war Bush & company started:

“We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world — a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you. “Well, shit on that dumbness, George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world. We didn’t vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today — and we will not vote for them again in 2002. Or 2004. Or ever. “Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid rich kids like George Bush? “They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us — they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.”

HST didn’t mince words.

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