Latest posts
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Ashton Kutcher’s July 2011 pressure campaign on Village Voice Media advertisers — and the Backpage backstory
By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer on FishbowlLA, July 2011 In early July 2011, Ashton Kutcher publicly pressured Village Voice Media’s national advertisers — naming Disney, Domino’s, Columbia University, and American Airlines on Twitter — to drop their advertising relationships with the company. The proximate cause was a Village…
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R. Scott Moxley’s annotated takedown of the LA Times Donald Bren profile — February 2011
By Owen Reyes · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, February 2011 In late February 2011, OC Weekly reporter R. Scott Moxley published a cover story that took apart, paragraph by paragraph, the LA Times Business section’s February 13 profile of Irvine Company chairman and Orange County’s richest man, Donald Bren.…
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Dennis Romero on the 2011 ASNE diversity survey — and what fifteen years of newsroom-diversity tracking shows
By Sasha Park · Originally reported by Richard Horgan (2011) · Wayback archive → In early April 2011, LA Weekly Informer blogger Dennis Romero — known publicly as The Informer — broke down the American Society of News Editors’ third annual newsroom-diversity survey. The headline finding: minority numbers were plunging for the third year in…
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Zachary Pincus-Roth takes over LA Weekly arts and culture — a 2011 masthead transition
By Jordan Vega · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer (2011) · Wayback archive → In late February 2011 LA Weekly EIC Drex Heikes named Zachary Pincus-Roth the alt-weekly’s new arts and culture editor — filling the role opened by Tom Christie’s November 2010 exit. Pincus-Roth came from Variety with substantial freelance bylines at the LA…
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The LA Weekly’s web editor steps down, 2011
By Sasha Park · Republished 2026-05-21 · Originally reported by Pandora Young on FishbowlLA, 2011 Staff departures at the LA Weekly were routine newsroom news in 2011. In hindsight, they were also early tremors. Then In February 2011, FishbowlLA noted that Erin Broadley was leaving the LA Weekly after two and a half years as…
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Daniel Hernandez’s Mexico City book lands — and the decade-long path of LA journos south
By Maya Trent · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer (2011) · Wayback archive → In late January 2011, former LA Weekly staff writer Daniel Hernandez announced the impending release of his Scribner book Down and Delirious in Mexico City: The Aztec Metropolis in the 21st Century. Three years of fieldwork in the Distrito Federal had…
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When LA Weekly’s Mike Penner / Christine Daniels story was on the GLAAD list
By Maya Trent · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer (2011) · Wayback archive → Every January the GLAAD Media Awards nominations roll out, and every January most outlets cover the film and TV slates and skip the print ones. The 2011 list is worth revisiting because the Los Angeles entries on it are a small…
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Gustavo Turner vs the LA Times on Echo Park — gentrification, anachronism, and a 2010 dust-up
By Maya Trent · Originally reported by Pandora Young (2010) · Wayback archive → In early December 2010, LA Weekly music editor Gustavo Turner — a Los Feliz resident who knew the territory — published a sharp critique of a recent LA Times piece on Echo Park’s gentrification. He called the Times piece “an epically…
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Tom Christie’s 2010 exit from LA Weekly — and the last of the old guard
By Maya Trent · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer (2010) · Wayback archive → In mid-November 2010, Tom Christie spent his last day at LA Weekly, ending a 15-year tenure as senior features editor. The original FishbowlLA framing — “the last true stalwart of the old LA Weekly editorial guard is moving on” — is…
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Alan Rich dies at 85 — the migratory music critic of LA Weekly, Newsweek, and Variety
By Maya Trent · Originally reported by Richard Horgan (2010) · Wayback archive → In late April 2010, Alan Rich — one of the most-bylined American classical-music critics of the post-1960 era — died at 85 of natural causes. His career had taken him across the NY Times, Variety, LA Daily News, California magazine, the…