By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Pandora Young on FishbowlLA, May 2011
In late May 2011, LA Times reporter Robin Abcarian appeared on NBC’s Today Show with Matt Lauer to discuss how the LA Times had broken the news that former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had fathered a child with the family’s longtime housekeeper. Toward the end of the interview, Lauer asked whether the LA Times had timed the story’s release with respect to the Maria Shriver separation announcement.
Then
The Schwarzenegger affair story had been one of the most-cited American political-and-celebrity disclosures of 2011. The LA Times’s reporting had documented that Schwarzenegger had fathered a child with Mildred Baena, a housekeeper who had worked at the Schwarzenegger-Shriver home for two decades.
Robin Abcarian had been one of the LA Times reporters working on the broader Schwarzenegger-affair-and-separation coverage. Her appearance on the Today Show was structurally a substantive cross-network promotion of the LA Times’s investigative work.
The scoop-timing question Lauer raised was substantively interesting. The LA Times had been working on the affair story for an extended period prior to publication; the Maria Shriver separation announcement had created a news context that made the disclosure unavoidable.
Now
Robin Abcarian has continued at the LA Times across the years since 2011. Her broader career has expanded substantially across the post-2011 interval — she has produced columnist work, political reporting, and cultural commentary at the paper.
Matt Lauer was fired by NBC News in November 2017 following sexual-misconduct allegations. The post-2017 broader reckoning with his Today Show tenure has substantially reshaped the public memory of his on-air career.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has continued in occasional acting and political-commentary work since 2011. Maria Shriver finalized the divorce; she has continued in journalism, advocacy, and book work across the post-2011 interval.
The LA Times’s investigative infrastructure has continued through multiple subsequent ownership and staffing transitions. The 2011 piece reads now as a documented moment when LA Times investigative work was getting substantial cross-network promotional support.
Original report archived on the Wayback Machine.