Earlier this year, we wrote about LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s surprising and shocking admission during an interview with CBS LA reporter Stephanie Abrams. In connection with a city initiative addressing domestic violence, he recalled some deeply personal memories of growing up with an abusive father.

Though not quite as earth shattering, Villaraigosa on Wednesday made another candid revelation during a Q&A at Loyola Marymount. Per a report by KPCC senior online reporter Alice Walton, he admitted that his biggest regret is the way he handled the break-up of his marriage after his affair with a Telemundo reporter became public knowledge:

In an interview with KPCC after the event, the mayor said he believes it is possible to succeed politically while maintaining a strong marriage and family life.

“I think there are a lot of people who have done that a lot better than me. My staff would like me not to answer those questions, but I do it anyway because I think it’s important to be real, and I do think that was the one thing that I looked at and I just didn’t do it right,” Villaraigosa said.

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Tony Pierce at KPCC posted the blog equivalent last night of a screeching high school hallway alarm bell. Let’s hope the LA Times soon takes notice.

Pierce notes that reporter Howard Blume completely bungled a story about the Los Angeles Unified School District. Although Blume wrote that the district was planning to change the student passing grade from a “C” to “D,” the truth is that D is the current benchmark. What the LAUSD in fact wants to do is bump that up – by 2017 – to the C level.  Per Pierce:

Not only did the Blume article allow Matt Drudge of the powerful Drudge Report to write an eyebrow-raising headline and tweet (“LA Schools May Lower Graduation Standards To Curb Dropouts”), but it inspired the LA Times’ beloved columnist Steve Lopez to blast an angry blog mini-column on LA Now.

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The next time SoCal audiences have a chance to watch former CBS2/KCAL reporter Stephanie Abrams (pictured), it will be on the YouTube channel of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Per a report in the Los Angeles Daily News by education reporter Barbara Jones, Abrams is the district’s new social media coordinator and will be taping weekly news updates for dissemination on the Internet as well as via the District’s in-house channel KLCS.

Abrams is already busy tweeting out good news @LASchools, such as Granada Hills Charter High’s repeat victory at California’s Academic Decathlon. Ditto for the Internet’s other leading social media platform:

One of Abrams’ first tasks was relaunching the district’s Facebook page, which on Monday featured a photo of students from 186th Elementary School hanging out at The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

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Score one for CBS Channel 2 reporter Stephanie Abrams and her team. In an interview broadcast last night and posted today to the station website as well as Yahoo!’s hyperlocal news beta, she got Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to speak publicly for the first time about memories of an abusive, alcoholic father.

It’s powerful stuff, regardless of how you feel about the city official’s politics. Villaraigosa, whose dad split when he was five, says he retains vivid memories of cowering under a bed with his younger sister as his mother was beaten by his father:

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