Latest posts
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Anita Busch confronts Anthony Pellicano at his December 2008 sentencing — the wiretapping case in court
By Jordan Vega · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Dan Cox on FishbowlLA, December 2008 In mid-December 2008, former LA Times journalist Anita Busch addressed Anthony Pellicano at his federal sentencing for wiretapping, wire fraud, and racketeering. Busch had been a primary target of Pellicano’s surveillance operation, including the notorious 2002 fish-and-bullet-hole-in-windshield episode at…
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The November 2008 Feline Butcher trial — holistic-health practice and the celebrity-clientele angle
By Jordan Vega · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Dan Cox on FishbowlLA, November 2008 In mid-November 2008, the jury in the trial of holistic-health practitioner Feline Butcher — whose celebrity clientele included Tom Cruise, Lisa Marie Presley, and Queen Latifah — was still deliberating after she faced 17 counts of practicing medicine without…
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John Montorio’s 2008 LA Times exit — and what Russ Stanton’s first weeks signaled
By Jordan Vega · Originally reported by Kate Coe (2008) · Wayback archive → In mid-February 2008, with Russ Stanton newly installed as LA Times editor after James O’Shea’s firing, John Montorio — the last of what FishbowlLA had been calling the Baquet boys — got pushed out. Montorio told the paper it was “my…
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Eric Mika’s 2007 plan to take The Hollywood Reporter global — print ‘defying gravity
By Owen Reyes · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Greg on FishbowlLA, November 2007 In early November 2007, FishbowlLA interviewed Eric Mika — The Hollywood Reporter’s senior vice president and publishing director — about the trade’s ambitious global-expansion push. Mika told FBLA that “the Hollywood Reporter for the last several months is defying gravity,”…
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I’d like to thank the Academy, and NPR’ — a 2007 Oscar-week thought experiment
By Sasha Park · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Greg on FishbowlLA, January 2007 In late January 2007, ahead of that year’s Academy Awards, FishbowlLA ran a light Oscar-week thought experiment imagining what an ordinary person might say given the acceptance-speech limelight. The piece was a piece of FBLA-NPR-collaboration whimsy. Then The piece was…
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July 2007: Jacob Bernstein’s WWD profile of Nikki Finke, and the synchronized blog pickup
By Owen Reyes · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Kate Coe on FishbowlLA, July 2007 In mid-July 2007, FishbowlLA noticed something curious: a Jacob Bernstein profile of Nikki Finke in Women’s Wear Daily was suddenly being discussed across multiple LA-media blogs the same weekend. FBLA had received an email from a “high-powered PR type”…
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Andrew Horan rises from cub reporter to A1 editor at the Orange County Register
By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-21 · Originally reported by Greg on FishbowlLA, 2007 In 2007, the Orange County Register was reshuffling its newsroom — and one promotion captured both a career and a paper in flux. Then FishbowlLA reported that Andrew Horan had been named A1 editor of the Orange County Register — the…
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Doug Frantz exits the LA Times — and the Baquet generation continues to thin out
By Jordan Vega · Originally reported by Kate Coe (2007) · Wayback archive → In late June 2007, Doug Frantz announced he was leaving the Los Angeles Times, where he had served as managing editor under Dean Baquet. He had taken the job at Baquet’s request and was widely understood to be a Baquet loyalist.…
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When Brian Grazer guest-edited the LA Times’ Current section — a 2007 experiment
By Maya Trent · Originally reported by Kate Coe (2007) · Wayback archive → In March 2007 the LA Times announced that Brian Grazer would guest-edit the Sunday Op-Ed section, Current, for the March 25 issue. The pitch in the paper’s press release was that the Imagine Entertainment chairman’s “endless curiosity” would produce something unconventional.…
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Luke Thompson on Jim Rainey covering the LA Times — the recursive-reporting era
By Maya Trent · Originally reported by Kate Coe (2007) · Wayback archive → In mid-February 2007 LA Weekly freelancer Luke Thompson took a hard look at the LA Times’ Jim Rainey, the paper’s media reporter who had drawn the unenviable assignment of covering Tribune Company’s ongoing woes — including, awkwardly, its impact on his…