How’s this for a super-cool field trip? As part of the festivities at the Anatolian Cultures and Food Festival 2013, taking place today through Sunday in Costa Mesa, area students grades K through 12 will be getting to meet the world’s tallest man.

Sultan Kosen is a staggering eight feet, three inches tall. He hails from the Turkish town of Mardin and, as part of the weekend festival, will be installed at an exhibit celebrating his city and its famous hillside stone houses. Event organizers have created a replica of one such a home for attendees to check out and pose at.

Kosen swung through San Diego on his way up to the OC, accompanied by interpreter Atilla Kahveci of LA’s Pacifica Institute. From a Channel 10 report:

Kosen told San Diego mayor Bob Filner he realized at the age of 10 that he would be very tall, since he was already six feet. He said a tumor in his pituitary gland fueled his growth and limited his vision, which he said is 90 percent in one eye and 60 percent in the other. It took multiple surgeries to remove the tumor, he said.

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Environmentally savvy freelancers can snag bylines at one of the oldest continuously published mags in the country: Audubon. The pub gets 90 percent of its content from freelancers, and editors are very open to working with new writers.

The advocacy magazine promotes the mission of saving birds, wildlife and habitat and serves as the flagship publication of the National Audubon Society, one of the oldest environmental groups in the country. Audubon is the only pure nature magazine on the market, but it aspires to the reach and commercial success of National Geographic, while still maintaining its commitment to the thought-provoking, long-form type journalism of The Atlantic and The New Yorker.

For more, read How To Pitch: Audubon.

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Criticized on Seizure of Records, White House Pushes News Media Shield Law (NYT)
Under fire over the Justice Department’s use of a broad subpoena to obtain calling records of Associated Press reporters in connection with a leak investigation, the Obama administration sought on Wednesday to revive legislation that would provide greater protections to reporters in keeping their sources and communications confidential. Capital New York The administration opposed an initial draft of the Free Flow of Information Act, but eventually supported a compromise version that would allow federal judges to protect reporters from subpoenas for information, if the judge determined that the news value of the reports exceeded the government’s interest in uncovering the sources of a leak. HuffPost / The Backstory New York Times reporter Charlie Savage asked Attorney General Eric Holder, who had just announced he’d recused himself from the AP leak investigation, “Are you also recused from the Stuxnet investigation out of Maryland?” The New York Times has reason to be concerned about whether investigators are using similar tactics on them. The Maryland case is believed to be focused on Times chief Washington correspondent David Sanger’s reporting on how the U.S. and Israel helped derail Iran’s nuclear program through cyberattacks. Sanger’s June scoop, along with the Times’ front-page article on Obama’s terrorist “kill list,” spurred Congressional calls to investigate the leaks of classified information. The Washington Post / Erik Wemple Media Matters for America, a group that monitors the country’s conservative media for distortions and inaccuracies, fell in for criticism Wednesday over the Justice Department’s secret subpoena of the Associated Press’s phone records. Evidence of this Media Matters-Obama administration mindmeld? This piece here, which says: “If the press compromised active counter-terror operations for a story that only tipped off the terrorists, that sounds like it should be investigated.” The Daily Beast / Politics Beast David Brock explained all in a statement. “Media Matters for America monitors, analyzes, and corrects conservative misinformation in the media and was not involved with the production of the document focusing on the DOJs investigation,” he said. “That document was issued by ‘Message Matters,’ a project of the Media Matters Action Network, which posts, through a different editorial process and to a different website, a wide range of potential messaging products for progressive talkers to win public debates with conservatives.”

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Here’s a new twist on the age-old SoCal commute. Big Time PR owner Sylvia Desrochers has traveled some 7,000 miles, by way of New York stopover for a wedding, to wind up in the south of France sharing this picture via Facebook:

“The address is 21 rue Pasteur, near the Carlton Hotel,” Desrochers tells FishbowlLA. “I have no idea why the building is called Los Angeles, but the one next door is called Santa Monica!”

“The rental agent couldn’t really enlighten me on the reasoning. The building is a typical Cannes apartment building: older, probably pre-war, with the original elevator with the gate and everything. So not very LA in the sense of history. But I do always feel like the weather here is similar to LA, especially Santa Monica or Venice. It’s warm when the sun is out but can turn chilly very easily – especially when it’s foggy or rainy, like this [Wednesday] evening.”

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Is this really necessary? Today in Cannes, Dave McNary of Variety confirms that a Bollywood film company will soon be remaking Sylvester Stallone’s 2008 offering Rambo. This plan was originally outlined at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, but it is only now – a year later – that full funding is in place:

Daljit Parmar, nephew of the late Bollywood multi-hyphenate Mehmood, said the Rambo and Expendables remakes should be in production by the end of the year.

“I am extremely excited to announce the launch of our slate to remake titles from some of the most successful action franchises in Hollywood on this historic 100-year anniversary celebration of Indian cinema at Cannes,” he said.

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Those were the days. At the top of his reminiscence piece about covering the Cannes Film Festival, LA Times film critic Kenneth Turan paints a delightful, junk-the-junket picture:

Cannes was more casual back in 1971, of course. You could hang out with Italian director Luchino Visconti without much planning or go see Jack Nicholson in his hotel room and spend the afternoon discussing his first directorial effort, Drive, He Said, with no more preamble than running into a friend of his on the street.

There were 800 credentialed journalists back then; today, there are around 4,000. Turan cites the 1999 Greek sci-fi parody Attack of the Giant Moussaka as one of his all-time favorites from the less carpeted Marché side of the annual event.

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It’s hard to argue with the selection of Janice Min for this week’s LA Weekly issue celebrating “the most interesting people” in Los Angeles. The name-brand editorial director has completely re-invigorated a moribund Hollywood trade, showed Jay Penske the way with her weekly glossy print edition and essentially steered clear of Nikki Finke‘s core beat.

So much so that a New York Post story today about the contract renewal status of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter mentions Min as a logical successor. Here’s a taste from Gendy Alimurung‘s LA Weekly profile of the “tiny, friendly” 43-year-old:

The new Hollywood Reporter launched in November 2010, a scant four months after Min took charge. The compressed schedule forced her to think clearly, she believes. Sometimes too much time muddles your thinking. The proof is in the numbers: Online traffic is up 800 percent. More importantly, revenue is up 50 percent.

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Approximately 300 union members, activists, and Los Angeles Times readers rallied downtown yesterday to protest the potential sale of the paper to right-wing billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

The protest was held at noon outside the downtown office of the investment firm Oaktree Capital Management, which holds the largest share of the Tribune Co. Musician Ry Cooder performed for the crowd, singing “I Don’t Want Your Millions, Mister” with special anti-Koch lyrics added.

From the LA Times coverage:

The protesters targeted Oaktree because the firm manages pension investments on behalf of unionized government employees, including those in the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.

“We don’t want that kind of thing going on with our money,” said Maria Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. “That’s like us selling you a car so you can run us over.”

The rumor of a Tribune Co. sale to Koch Industries has already inspired multiple online petitions and vocal opposition from unions and politicians.

The LA Weekly also covered the protest, and took some great photos.

You may have seen her on the cable clip show The Soup as the woman who puts up with co-anchor Greg Kelly‘s antics.

Rosanna Scotto, morning anchor for FOX owned station WNYW, sat down with the mediabistroTV crew to talk about how St. Patrick’s Day and the antics of world-famous director Woody Allen are what lead to her first big break.

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Justice Dept. Defends Seizure of AP Phone Records (NYT)
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Tuesday defended the Justice Department’s sweeping seizure of telephone records of Associated Press journalists, describing the article by the AP that prompted a criminal investigation as among “the top two or three most serious leaks that I’ve ever seen” in a 35-year career. “It put the American people at risk, and that is not hyperbole,” he said in an apparent reference to an article on May 7, 2012, that disclosed the foiling of a terrorist plot by Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen to bomb an airliner. The Washington Post / Opinions The usual reason for keeping a subpoena secret is that the target would otherwise try to destroy documents. In this case, the AP could not have done so even if it wanted to, since the relevant records were in the possession of its phone service providers. Without even giving AP a chance to weigh in, we don’t see how the department could intelligently weigh its prosecutorial needs against this broad subpoena’s chilling effect on reporters and their sources. HuffPost / The Backstory Associated Press Washington bureau chief Sally Buzbee was among the journalists targeted in the Justice Department’s sweeping seizure of phone records that has drawn widespread condemnation from members of the media and free speech advocates, an AP spokeswoman confirmed to The Huffington Post. FishbowlNY The Department of Justice is trying to brush off the secret accessing of AP editors’ and reporters’ phone records. The agency already sent one bland letter to the AP about the incident, and Tuesday, it sent another. According to AP CEO and president Gary Pruitt, both letters from the DOJ basically said “Meh,” and not much else about the scary over-extension of the government. B&C Society of Professional Journalists president Sonny Albarado has condemned the Justice Department’s alleged secret collection of AP reporter and editor phone records and said it highlights the need for a federal shield law. Politico / Dylan Byers on Media The Associated Press Media Editors Association has joined other journalists in condemning the Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press phone records, calling it part of the Obama administration’s “continuing witch hunt for leaks and whistleblowers.” TVNewser Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said this may be the least of President Obama’s worries. “I don’t think that’s going to amount to much,” O’Reilly said of the phone taps. “It looks like they went through the warrant process and they had authorization to look at these records — the Justice Department did. But President Obama, he’s got some problems now. He better start to get control of the situation because there’s a lot of stuff going on.”

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