Latest posts
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Denise Cramsey, the Extreme Makeover producer who died at 41 — and a Variety obit that aged well
By Cassidy Lee · Originally reported by Richard Horgan (2010) · Wayback archive → In late November 2010, reality TV producer Denise Cramsey — the Emmy-winning executive producer of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Trading Spaces, and School Pride — died at 41 of a brain aneurysm. Variety’s Stuart Levine wrote the kind of obit that…
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The LA Press Club’s 2009 National Entertainment Journalism Awards call for entries
By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Tina Dupuy on FishbowlLA, January 2009 In late January 2009, FishbowlLA flagged the approaching deadline for the LA Press Club’s National Entertainment Journalism Awards — with a wry note that FBLA had found the call for entries on Craigslist rather than receiving it directly. Then…
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The Huffington Post Investigative Fund’s May 2009 launch — Lawrence Roberts, Nick Penniman, and the nonprofit-investigative model
By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Tina Dupuy on FishbowlLA, May 2009 In late May 2009, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund announced that Lawrence Roberts — the Washington Post’s Investigations Editor — would join as the Fund’s Executive Editor. Arianna Huffington chaired the Fund’s Advisory Board; Nick Penniman was the Executive…
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Kit Rachlis quits LA Magazine in 2009 — and the Mary Melton era that followed
By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Kate Coe on FishbowlLA, May 2009 In mid-May 2009, Kit Rachlis resigned as editor-in-chief of Los Angeles magazine. Executive editor Mary Melton was elevated to the top job. Folio reported that Rachlis’ exit had nothing to do with the controversial June cover story the magazine…
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Laurie Ochoa exits LA Weekly in 2009 — and the trajectory she landed on instead
By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-16 · Originally reported by Kate Coe on FishbowlLA, June 2009 In early June 2009, LA Weekly editor-in-chief Laurie Ochoa announced she was leaving the paper. The FishbowlLA framing was characteristically blunt — “no idea if she was fired or finally just lost patience with the tomfoolery of the paper’s…
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Don LaFontaine’s final illness, the family letter, and what ‘in a world…’ came to mean
By Owen Reyes · Originally reported by Tina Dupuy (2008) · Wayback archive → In late August 2008, the original FishbowlLA post relayed a letter from Don LaFontaine’s family. He had been admitted to Cedars-Sinai with shortness of breath, then deteriorated rapidly the next day with a blood clot in his lung. The letter asked…
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The L.A. Press Club’s entertainment-journalism awards, circa 2009
By Maya Trent · Republished 2026-05-20 · Originally reported by Tina Dupuy on FishbowlLA, 2009 A short, characteristically wry FishbowlLA post from January 2009 flagged a closing entry deadline — and gently needled the Los Angeles Press Club for leaving the blog off its mailing list. Then The notice was a public-service item with an…
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When Fox’s ‘Mike and Juliet’ tried replacing the bleep with a kitten photo
By Cassidy Lee · Originally reported by Tina Dupuy (2008) · Wayback archive → For about a week in 2008, Fox’s syndicated morning chat show The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet experimented with replacing on-air bleeps with a still photograph of a kitten eating spaghetti. The Soup put the clip on television and treated…
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Fox Searchlight sent cease-and-desists over leaked Jennifer’s Body script reviews. The movie got reappraised anyway.
By Owen Reyes · Originally reported by Kate Coe (2008) · Wayback archive → Fox Searchlight’s legal department spent early 2008 firing cease-and-desist letters at blogs running unauthorized reviews of Diablo Cody’s then-unfilmed Jennifer’s Body script. The strategy worked at suppressing pre-release commentary. It didn’t help the movie when it actually came out. And the…