Monday, June 16, 2003 4:28 PM Los Angeles Times columnist and well- known author Al Martinez has been selected as this year’s recipient of the President’s Award, to be presented at the Press Club’s Southern California Journalism Awards. The award is given annually to an individual who has had substantial impact on journalism, the media and the greater community. Ted Johnson, president of the Los Angeles Press Club and a national writer at TV Guide, selected Martinez in consultation with the club’s board and will present the award. “For years,…
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Is rollback idea real, or yet another phony Mount Rushmore?
Monday, June 16, 2003 4:27 PM BY JILL STEWART Governor Gray Davis says he is rethinking his plan to wipe out funding for the posting of public meeting agendas, a cut Davis had pro- posed as a way to help balance the gaping $38.5 billion budget deficit. The conventional wisdom is that Davis was dead-serious about his controversial plan, but is reconsidering because of the outcry from media, politicians and others. As I noted in a recent column (www.jill- stewart.net), which examines the power elite in the statehouse, Davis may…
Read MoreGray Davis blasted on plan to slash funds for posting public agendas
Monday, June 16, 2003 4:26 PM Sunshine Committee, many others, decry attack on Brown Act BY TED JOHNSON AND KAREN OCAMB After an uproar among journalists and open government advocates, Governor Gray Davis is reconsidering plans to remove a key govern- ment provision that requires the state to reim- burse local governments and their agencies for posting public meeting notices and publishing agendas. Southern California journalists and members of the L.A. Sunshine Coalition, led by Press Club Board member Karen Ocamb, acted swift- ly to report and respond to this…
Read MorePearl Award Given Posthumously to Michael Kelly
Monday, June 16, 2003 4:24 PM BY TED JOHNSON Editor and reporter Michael Kelly will posthumously receive the Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism in a June 21 ceremony at the Southern California Journalism Awards. Working for the Atlantic Monthly and as a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post, Kelly was killed in Iraq on April 4. He had been riding in a communications Humvee just out- side Baghdad when the vehicle came under fire from Iraqi forces. It swerved off an embankment and into a canal,…
Read Morethe Collins Connection: June
Monday, June 16, 2003 4:23 PM By Michael Collins News that our dear friend, the wicked, wonderful and gorgeous Marnye Oppenheim had died, devastated us at the Press Club. I could barely function after hearing this terrible information. My writing partner, the former editor of the Ventura County Reporter, Sharon McKenna, and I, were planning to see Marnye and Rick Barrs, editor of Phoenix New Times and the love of Marnye’s life, along with syndicated columnist Jill Stewart and others, during Marnye’s planned trip here recently. The trip didn’t happen,…
Read MoreAwards Finalists Speak Out
Monday, June 16, 2003 4:21 PM BY DIANA LJUNGAEUS When writing coach and copy editor Cynthia Goldstein went to our 43rd Annual Journalism Awards Dinners for the first time two years ago, she was impressed by her fellow journalists. She saw her own paper, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, win a few awards but “ I was convinced we could do better,” she recalls. Consequently, she offered to coordinate herpaper‚s future entries. As a result of her hard work, the Daily Journal, a legal paper with a circulation of 12,000…
Read MoreJune 21st Awards Gala— Don’t Miss it!
Monday, June 16, 2003 4:20 PM BY ALEX BEN BLOCK There is still time to book seats at a very special 45th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards on Saturday evening, June 21, in the Grand Ballroom of the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Universal City, where the club honored Dan Rather and CBS News two years ago. It promises to be an evening of fun, entertainment and great emotion. Among this year’s award presenters is Larry McCormick of KTLA, former football- turned-TV star Fred Dryer, Los Angeles Times Managing Editor Dean…
Read MoreMarnye Oppenheim
Monday, June 16, 2003 4:16 PM New Times “Bite Me” Columnist, former Press Club Asst. Director [In Memoriam] Marnye Oppenheim was hired as the newsroom assistant at New Times Los Angeles on May 14, 1997, a classically insecure writer from a small town con- vinced that the only way she could break into journalism in L.A. was by starting as a secretary. She died five years later, to the day, on May 14, 2003, as the hottest new writer in Phoenix, mourned by thousands of readers and friends in both…
Read MoreThe Press and the Patriot Act
Friday, May 16, 2003 4:13 PM Nearly 75 journalists, legal experts, law enforcement officials and civic activists traded stories of civil liberties in a May 1 forum called “Covering Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis: Have the Rules Changed?” The event, co-spon- sored by USC’s Institute for Justice and Journalism, New California Media and the Los Angeles Press Club, featured a half-day of panels and workshops on how the media has cov- ered issues such as gov- ernment immigration sweeps and terrorism inter- rogations following Sept. 11, 2001 and the…
Read MoreSunshine “Report Card” Makes News; Effects Change
Friday, May 16, 2003 4:12 PM BY KAREN OCAMB (KAREN@LAPRESSCLUB.ORG) The Los Angeles Sunshine Coalition, which is pressing local governments to increase accessibility to government deci- sion-making and public records, earned widespread news coverage in April when the Coalition released a report card on Los Angeles County’s compliance with its own policies that slammed the County’s top lawyer for his persistent refusal to release requested public records. The report card and analysis were released April 8, a year after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors ordered numer- ous changes…
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