there was a lot of job cuts today at the LA Times

i was one of the fortunate ones that gets to stay. one of the ones who wont be around going forward is our publisher David Hiller. i havent been around all that long and i am the last person who would know what sort of publisher he was, but i will say this – he knew my name on the beginning of my very first day. he took this picture with me at the end of my first day. any time he saw me in the halls he’d say, “hi tony, how are the blogs? one of these days you will have to help me out on mine.” thats pretty impressive to me, especially since we have hundreds and hundreds of people who work here, many of whom have been here for ages.

Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller resigned today after a 21-month tenure that included the departure of two Times editors and plans for the sharpest staff and production cuts in the newspaper’s history amid a continuing slide in advertising revenue.

Tribune Co. — which owns The Times and other media assets, including the Chicago Tribune and KTLA-TV Channel 5, and the Chicago Cubs baseball team — named no successor to Hiller.

Hiller was the third Times publisher named since the newspaper was acquired in 2000 by Chicago-based Tribune. He succeeded Jeffrey M. Johnson, who lost his job after publicly resisting cost-cutting measures ordered by the parent company in October 2006. One month later, Hiller asked Editor Dean Baquet, who had joined with Johnson in opposing the cutbacks, to resign.

Baquet was replaced by James O’Shea, a longtime editor at the Chicago Tribune. O’Shea departed in January, also while protesting cuts ordered by corporate management.

read the whole story here.

meanwhile here’s some video i shot of mr hiller singing before at the dodgers / cubs game earlier this year.

apparently all it takes to get the ear of the vice president

or condi is a “few” hundred grand. “not a lot”.

whats interesting about working at the LA Times is we have people in interesting places. for example one of our bloggers writing Countdown to Crawford is in Washington D.C. and goes to the white house all the time and travels with the president. so when he wants to follow up on something like this video that broke this weekend, he simply asks the press secretary. Here’s some of what he wrote today in regards to Stephen Payne, a GOP fundraiser who seems to be getting the Bush library a ton of cash in return for access to a member or two of the cabinet:

At the White House today, Press Secretary Dana Perino said there was “categorically no link” between official White House business and library fund-raising.

“We would not advocate … such behavior,” she said, and stated that Payne has never worked for the White House.

and yet he’s clearly working for the library, or is that clear? nothing is clear these days, like, how is it possible that this got caught on video and theres not a huge hub-bub about it.

maybe tomorrow, i guess.

anonymous protested a hospital this weekend

actually they wanted to protest outside the scientology center on sunset
but the cops pushed them back a few blocks, so it looked like they were pissed at medical care



as ive said before, im not crazy about anonymous protesting this small group when there’s way bigger churches who are literally f’ing children, but you gotta hand it to anonymous, they have great outfits, so heres some pics




it was bring your kids to the protest:

it was also bring tom cruise to the protest:

it was also the first time i ever got rickrolled by a tshirt: