Late Morning Addenda

JM, Riverside, 2.25.08


Joseph Mailander a guy in la • elsewhere • email

Every day, every night, a few dozen RVs, campers, and vans call Riverside Drive between Glendale and the 2 home. Homeless? In need of help? In need of ticketing? No. In need of nada. Displacing these would cost the City more than the effort is worth. But they do make for a sorry case, and speak to the need for market-driven, rather than government-driven, affordable housing in the City.

The government has already had over a decade to install a missing rung or two on the housing ladder, and it has failed, even despite two precipitous home price drops. Find a planning chief with the talent to give the market a chance to supply the missing rungs, rather than one who throws up her hands and says she's powerless to do anything but issues permits for anything that comes along.

He remains our friend, and he remains a beacon: Zuma comes up big with a story that sounds eerily like another Prop S in the incubator. The kleptomanic City has tried to clip its own Department, the DWP, for an extra $63 million. An adjudicant (not sure what kind---Zuma says "a Court") has said, Let's have a real trial about this. If the past is prelude, this ongoing battle won't see much print, so stay tuned here and there.

And bookmark Zuma while you're there, especially because...

Russ Stanton's new regime's decision to put the Times' content-free blogs above news on pages like this one is awful. It's just plain awful. The Times is apparently so scared of local news-aggregator and publicity-driven blogs that they're now apparently going to do their own aggregating, using bloggers to lead in to their own stories---which of course does nothing but create an extra layer between you and content, one of the biggest of Internet no-nos. Has Russ ever been sold a bag of goods!

If this is Tony's idea, well, it's the first time I've known him to falter badly on an Internet matter.

The reason people read aggregator blogs is not because they like having a filter. It's because they cotton to a particular narrative voice. They may like or hate the voice, but it's the voice that's really what's getting read. The voice makes its own narrative interesting by stitching in the stories of others; and the voice gets easier and easier to tune out when it is obliged to hype. A good aggregator's voice is typically a writer's, not a publicist's---and that's why it's sad to see a writer like Veronique de Turenne subordinated to a publicist's role at the Times.

Speaking of subordinate publicist voices: the paper also wants to get more bloggy about books, so, rather than find an actual literary voice, it hired someone who sometimes links to people who sometimes read them.

A blog on all cylinders

Andrea Mohn, NYTimes



Joseph Mailander a guy in la • elsewhere • email

Readers of the nation's fishwrap of record were treated this morning to an inside look at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall's award-winning blog from the left. "I think of us as journalists; the medium we work in is blogging," he tells the Times.

But what caught my eye was the photo on the jump page of the blog's NY office. That's a room with damn few amenities other than cool flatscreens; crammed, dormitorial, trivial windows, with what looks to be both a swamp cooler and a thermostat that's always left unhinged, it looks a lot like a boilerroom operation.

Marshall says he "makes in the neighborhood of what successful political journalists make" without disclosing figures. And the rest?

The article, btw, is in the paper's business section, but doesn't get too much into the business end of the blog.

#46?

I guess it shouldn't matter to me what a blog I've never heard of thinks of our blog or any others and though I SHOULD be honored I had to laugh when I saw LA Snark's list of the "top 50" blogs in LA.

First off we're at #46. Now back in the day that would be awesome. But when you regularly rank in BlogNetNews' Top 20 Political Blogs, you're getting thousands of visitors a month, you've been on CNN, you've been an LA Magazine Website of the Month, its kind of different. The bigger crime is marking Don Garza's Central City East Blog lower than us; Don is one of the most relevant bloggers in LA; whether I agree with him or not.

I don't even understand their ranking system. Of course, every one loves to kiss butt to the Westside White Guy and put him near the top. (But I am sure old Kev is fuming that LAist is ahead of him) where. But to put some of the self obsessed "what did I wear today or did he ask me out yet" blogs ahead of significant, entrenched go to blogs like Franklin Avenue or Curbed LA is unbelievable.

And where is Boi from Troy? Mainbrace? Flap? Zuma Dogg? Walter Moore? Or even Here in Van Nuys? Not on the list!

The most incredible thing is that they put LA Voice at #6. Number six?!?! Since Mack Reed left months ago that blog has been dead; the only thing keeping it alive for the most part is press releases posted by my pal Edward Headington.

You can't always trust lists.

Now I leave it to you to post how this is because of 1) Zuma Dogg 2) My weight 3) Red Spot's spelling 4) Valley Doll's cookie post or 5) all of the above.

Number six? Ha ha ha ha!

Saturday Hotsheet at 3 a.m.

JM, Franklin Av. Dusk, 1.2.08


Joseph Mailander a guy in la • elsewhere • email

Nikki Finke all by her lonesome broke at her site last night that the Writer's Guild has settled independently with Tom Cruise's United Artists. This is just the kind of side deal yours truly said a week ago that the Mayor should be calling for publically. Instead he was adding value to your urban experience by cutting out to Io-wayy and campaigning for the show horse.

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Cops come up for air: narc and gang unit cops have made a big media radio buy, the Daily News says. They'll tell the snooze alarmers that as many as 500 officers would rather leave their beats than disclose financial info, and suggest that this would hurt LA bigtime. Sounds like a threat to public safety; from cops, that's inappropriate, even if their position is the right one. Listen to the spot yourself and decide here.

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80 in '08 is a Downtown News special on who's rockin' downtown. Including blogs, and we're so there. Thank you Anna. Other good lists are five residential projects and five key corridors.

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Hey, there's a novel set in San Pedro and it wasn't written by John Shannon. The Daily Breeze says that readers of Andrew Rafkin's first novel Creating Madness will "see references to Trani's Restaurant, the Port of Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners, "Hurricane Gulch" (the nickname for Cabrillo Beach), Catalina Island, the Vincent Thomas Bridge, the Trump National Golf Club and other familiar local landmarks."

Good for him. Hard to beat Shannon's Terminal Island, though.

Blogs and the Hyperreality

Our own Joseph Mailander has an excellent piece in Sunday's Daily News about the state of the local blogosphere. Joe makes an interesting point that one of the downsides to blogs and other online media is the "hyperreality" they create, that is, we need to pull away from the keyboard and get out more.

Get out more but first click read more


Indeed, this old, dead Republican mayor blogger sat cloistered in a Sherman Oaks hovel not getting out much. Now for about the last year and with a move to the heart of the NoHo Arts District I'm haunting the coffeehouses and gathering spaces of this urban village and even taken to some mobile blogging (and more to come as I acquire more "gadgets" soon). This indeed has led to want to blog more at my local blog than at the Sister City (as many might wish I would). For now, the focus is here.

Joe also gives a thumbnail rundown of the big local blogs.