Latest posts
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Ashley Dunn’s ‘we don’t get ulcers, we give ulcers’ memo — a 2011 LAT layoff snapshot
By Maya Trent · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer (2011) · Wayback archive → In late July 2011 the LA Times went through another round of layoffs. California editor Ashley Dunn sent his Metro desk a pep-talk memo that has, in retrospect, become one of the small canonical artifacts of how working editors held their…
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Nikki Finke partners with Paramount on a Deadline Hollywood game
By Sasha Park · Republished 2026-05-20 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, 2011 In July 2011 FishbowlLA reported one of the more unexpected line extensions in entertainment-news history: Nikki Finke’s Deadline.com was getting a Facebook game. Then Deadline.com, in partnership with Paramount Digital Entertainment and Liquid Entertainment, announced a Facebook game — one…
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When Tribune’s 2011 consolidation skipped the LA Times — the seven-year-long sale signal
By Maya Trent · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer (2011) · Wayback archive → In mid-July 2011 Tribune Company announced a major consolidation of its publishing division — folding the Sun Sentinel, Orlando Sentinel, Baltimore Sun, Hartford Courant, The Morning Call, and the Virginia Daily Press under a single new CEO based in Chicago. Conspicuously…
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September 2011: LAPD’s Internet Unit watching Twitter for flash-mob signals — Carmageddon’s 405 ride
By Jordan Vega · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer on FishbowlLA, September 2011 In late September 2011, FishbowlLA picked up a PoliceOne.com story about the LAPD’s Internet Unit and Sheriff’s Department officers monitoring Twitter for flash-mob and large-gathering signals. The most concrete example: the multiple Carmageddon-related freeway-flashmob plans — including a “pretty…
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The Grim Sleeper photo trove and the four missing-persons cases LAPD opened — January 2011
By Jordan Vega · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer on FishbowlLA, January 2011 In early January 2011, the LAPD announced it had opened four new missing-persons inquiries after releasing 180 photos found in the possession of suspected serial killer Lonnie Franklin Jr. — the “Grim Sleeper” defendant. The photos had been published…
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LAPD Chief Charlie Beck’s 2011 critique of LA media gang-coverage — the shallow-coverage thesis
By Jordan Vega · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer on FishbowlLA, October 2011 In early October 2011, at a panel discussion featuring criminologist David M. Kennedy and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, Beck delivered a sharp critique of LA media’s coverage of gang violence. His thesis was direct: “The coverage here in Los…
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Guy Crowder, photographer of Black Los Angeles, dies at 72 — and the LA-press history he documented
By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Matthew Fleischer on FishbowlLA, November 2011 In late October 2011, photojournalist Guy Crowder died of pneumonia at 72, days after suffering a stroke. Crowder had photographed Black Los Angeles across decades starting in the early 1960s; despite his work, the LA Times, the Herald Examiner,…
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Ed Chernoff’s January 2011 profile — life as Dr. Conrad Murray’s defense lawyer in the Michael Jackson trial media bubble
By Jordan Vega · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Richard Horgan on FishbowlLA, January 2011 In late January 2011, TexasLawyer.com staff reporter Miriam Rozen published a profile of Ed Chernoff — the Houston-based defense lawyer hired within 48 hours of Michael Jackson’s June 2009 death to represent Dr. Conrad Murray. The piece captured Chernoff’s…
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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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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…