FishbowlLA

Cal Poly Stages Another Successful ‘Com Day’

Richard Horgan — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:00:31 +0000

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 talent agent 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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Jenna Jameson Busted for Drunk Driving in the OC

Pandora Young — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:39:12 +0000

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.

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Casting Assistant Happy to Have Escaped LA

Richard Horgan — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:30:27 +0000

In lieu of another LA Lakers-Boston Celtics NBA final, we give you our fair city vs. “JP.” Those initials are the local colloquial for Jamaica Plain, a four-and-a-half square mile historic section of Boston.

With our beaches, healthy salads and top-down winter weather, you’d figure we’ve got JP handily beat, right? Wrong, according to recent Disney casting assistant Brittany Shapiro. She tells the Jamaica Plain Gazette why she is so thrilled to have relocated there:

“LA is such a tough city,” Shapiro said. “I love the community feel of JP. I found that lacking in LA. No one knew their neighbor. No one cared to know their neighbor.”

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LA Press Club Releases Full List of Award Finalists

Matthew Fleischer — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:33:37 +0000

The categories are almost too numerous to keep track of. But the ever-expanding LA Press Club Awards released their complete list of finalists for their 2012 journalism awards yesterday.

In the interest of shameless self-promotion, your not-so-humble Fishie would like to note that he’s up for three awards this year in the Advocacy, Online Investigative and Best Group Blog categories for his LA Justice Report investigations into the LA Sheriff’s Department and abuse in its county jails.

Winners will be announced June 24th. Sadly, we’ll be out of town for a wedding. So if any of you out there plan on attending the award ceremony, please keep your fingers crossed on our behalf.

See the finalist list here.

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Hook Editors with a Travel Angle

Ji Hyun Park — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:46:11 +0000

Under-the-radar locales make for great stories in any travel mag, but, add a Hollywood hook, and editors at this Airtran mag can’t help but hop on board.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the iconic movie Deliverance , a freelancer pitched and published a story to GO showcasing Georgia’s Tallulah Gorge, where the movie was filmed. The location (about an hour and a half outside of Atlanta) is a popular tourist destination not just because of its place in American pop culture, but also due to the richness of the region and wealth of activities for nature lovers, from whitewater rafting to hiking.

“We’re always looking for new writers with great stories,” said Jaime Lowe, GO‘s executive editor. “A great idea always wins. If there’s an excellent travel narrative, we’ll assign it.” Get more details in How To Pitch: GO.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55 a year and get access to these articles, discounts on seminars and workshops, and more.

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Anonymous Hollywood Assistant Hits Tumblr Bull’s Eye

Richard Horgan — Fri, 25 May 2012 09:30:00 +0000

To mark the recent Cinco de Mayo holiday, it would have made sense for this particular show business aspirant to drown their overworked and underpaid sorrows with straight rows of Tequila shots. Instead, they opted for the cheaper and longer-lasting buzz of Tumblr blog HollywoodAssistants.

What’s great about this excellent new diversion is that it does not swim with the snark. Rather, the author uses a drier, droll sense of humor to meme-capture the highs and lows of an overworked Hollywood assistant’s daily rote.

“I was formerly an agency assistant at one of the big four,” the operator of HollywoodAssistants tells FishbowlLA via email. “Now I am an assistant elsewhere in the industry, but I can’t reveal where in order to remain anonymous.” Although this person also refused to tell us if they are male, female or transgender, we’re guessing – based on this, and this – that HollywoodAssistants is a her.

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Putting Samuel L. Jackson’s Siri Ad to the Test

Richard Horgan — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:00:02 +0000

Boston-based comedian Paul Kafasis has shared a very funny post on his blog One Foot Tsunami. After endlessly watching the “Date Night” TV ad in which Samuel L. Jackson works with Siri to prepare a romantic evening of gazpacho consumption, he decided to cook up a real-world test.

It was bad enough when Kafasis articulated to Siri the words, “Remind me to put the gazpacho on ice in an hour.” But things got really dicey when he then used a recording of Jackson mouthing the dialogue. Kafasis’ Siri responded with:

- Call Mirium Booksbaum
- Call Anna-Genelle Harev
- Call Ron Ridenhour

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Patti Stanger’s Website Gets a Full Makeover

Richard Horgan — Fri, 25 May 2012 04:00:31 +0000

Millionaire Matchmaker Patti Stanger has built her reputation on the ability to recognize a good thing when she sees it. In the case of sheknows.com, her new website partner, no doubt the latest traffic stats helped do the trick. In April, an astonishing 55 million-plus unique visitors clicked into Evolve Media’s female-centric hub.

Now added to that mix is pattiknows.com, a revamped version of Stanger’s previous official website pattistanger.net. Weekly features include a video advice column from Stanger, a column by her spousal staff members Destin Jude Pfaff and Rachel Federoff, and recipes using aphrodisiac ingredients. From today’s official announcement:

“Based on the size of their audience and their digital expertise, SheKnows was the obvious choice for me to partner with as part of building out my brand,” says Stanger. “I’m able to build a stronger, more loyal fan base online.”

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Jillian Reynolds Apologizes to Dorothy Lucey

Marcus Vanderberg — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:41:48 +0000

Get ready for at least one more day of tears on Fox 11′s Good Day LA.

On Thursday, Jillian Reynolds apologized to the departing Dorothy Lucey for all of the mean things she’s said about her during their 17-year run together.

The real winner in this segment was Steve Edwards, who received a Dorothy-Jillian sandwich hug.

I’m on to you, Steve.

[H/T LA Observed]

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Palm Springs Unveils Massive Marilyn Monroe Statue

Richard Horgan — Thu, 24 May 2012 17:00:38 +0000

This particular Marilyn Monroe is 26 feet tall and weighs 34,000 pounds. Tonight, beginning at 6 p.m., the statue will be officially unveiled in Palm Springs during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the corner of Tahquitz Canyon Way and Palm Canyon Drive.

About a thousand people are expected to attend tonight’s ceremony, which is roughly the same amount of bystanders who looked on the night Monroe shot the famous subway grate scene from The Seven Year Itch outside the Trans-Lux Theatre on Lexington Avenue in New York.

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Lola Ogunnaike on Using Twitter as a Journalist

Marcus Vanderberg — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:06:46 +0000

Entertainment freelance journalist Lola Ogunnaike has found the way to make the most out of Twitter when it comes to getting instant reactions from celebrities.

“Twitter has made my job a bit easier because you no longer have to wait for a publicist to give you a quote about an incident or not give you a quote about an incident,” said Ogunnaike in this week’s, “So What Do You Do?” interview. “You can actually go to the celebrity’s Twitter page and usually find the answer right there.

The former New York Times and CNN reporter also found that Twitter can be a great reporting asset when out in the field.

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Susan Orlean Set to Keynote Mediabistro’s Summer Literary Intensive

Richard Horgan — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:55:19 +0000

Last summer, we reported about the temporary move from New York to Los Angeles of New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean. A snappy Twitter exchange (or two) later, we are now happy to herald her participation in Mediabistro’s upcoming online Literary Festival & Workshops, running July 16 through August 1.

Orlean is one of several high-profile speakers set to provide literary wisdom and guidance:

Susan Orlean

Author
Journalist, The New Yorker

Constance Hale

Author, Sin & Syntax

Opening Keynote

5 Secrets for Wicked Good Prose

Rebecca Skloot

Author, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Jason Boog

Publishing Editor GalleyCat, Mediabistro

Unconventional Publicity: How She Made Her Debut Science Book Into a Best-Seller

How to Build a Social Media Platform for
Your Book

Sarah Fine

Author and Child Psychologist

Jason Allen Ashlock

Literary Agent and President Movable Type Management

Overcome Obstacles to Become the Writer
You Want to Be

The Literary Agent’s Wishlist: Multimedia
Ideas for Print, Digital, Film & TV

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Elevator Pitch: Fondu is Yelp Meets Twitter

Andrew Gauthier — Thu, 24 May 2012 12:37:55 +0000

In the latest episode of mediabistroTV’s Elevator Pitch, host Alan Meckler chats with Gauri Manglik, the co-founder and CEO of Fondu.

Fondu is an iPhone app that allows users to share bite-size restaurant reviews with their friends (sort of like Yelp meets Twitter).

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

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Working Towards a PhD in Hollywood Rom-Coms

Richard Horgan — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:30:24 +0000

As New York-based media studies student and feministing.com editor Chloe Angyal (pictured) readily admits, pouring over Hollywood romantic comedies for a doctoral dissertation “sure beats poking at a petri dish.” The 2009 Princeton grad is currently working towards this very unusual PhD through the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, where she is originally from.

The trends Angyal is focused on include the well-noted move in recent years to expose more of the studio film genre’s male stars. Think Jason Segel, Jake Gyllenhaal, Justin Long, Ashton Kutcher, Ryan Reynolds, Justin Timberlake and several others. But what does this all mean?

They’re all white. They’re all lean and broad-shouldered. They’re all rather muscular. Some of them are toned and sculpted in accordance with superhero standards: Chris Evans was fresh off filming Captain America when he made What’s Your Number? and Reynolds made The Proposal right after he wrapped Wolverine. And, uh, it shows…

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Swiss Journalist Claudia Laffranchi Dies at Age 49

Richard Horgan — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:00:56 +0000

Some very sad news from the ranks of LA’s international entertainment journalist community. Per a report in Screen International, Swiss-born journalist Claudia Laffranchi was found dead in her LA apartment Tuesday by a friend. She was just 49.

Laffranchi was intricately involved with several film festivals, including a brand new one in Cancun that she attended in March. Like many LA-based foreign showbiz journalists, she contributed to a variety of outlets including the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, Swiss magazine Il Caffe, Swiss Italian TV and Radio RSI. From her website bio:

For Swiss television, Laffranchi produced a series of profiles of descendants of Swiss-Italian immigrants who moved to California at the beginning of the 20th century. She also produced and directed, together with Alberto Engeli, two 26-minute documentaries: Los Angeles, Switzerland, about young Swiss artists living in LA; and Hollywood, CH, a profile of three very successful personalities of Swiss heritage (businessman Fred Hayman, actor Vincent Perez and production designer Eugenio Zanetti).

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