Category: News

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,…

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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,…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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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Friday, May 16, 2003 4:10 PM Aja Bufka, one of the Press Club’s many foreign correspon- dents, has opened a one-man show of his celebrity photography at the Czech Republic Consulate’s gallery, now through May 19. Born in Prague, Bufka graduated with honors from the Czech Film and Television Academy, FAMU, and worked as a director and cam- eraman for national television. He also formed a multimedia group under the umbrella of the state- owned ART Centrum. Bufka’s photo artwork won numerous awards and was pub- lished and exhibited worldwide…

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Friday, May 16, 2003 4:07 PM By Michael Collins Last month’s column gave tribute to Charles Rappleye, former news editor and staff writer for the L.A. Weekly. But, here I am writing about Charlie again, and for good reason. This stalwart of the paper, and the Press Club, has decided to leave the Weekly after a wonderful and illustri- ous career at the paper after the publication and Charlie came to a mutual agreement that, effectively, ended his employment at the largest alternative news weekly in the nation. This came…

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Friday, May 16, 2003 3:45 PM BY PATT DIROLL Longtime club member Nicholas Royce, whose career as a professional dancer is legend, has been honored by U.S. Congresswoman Diane Watson and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein for his activism in entertainment industry philanthropies and his efforts on behalf of the Greek Orthodox Church. Royce, 77, who danced on the Milton Berle, Ed Sullivan and Kate Smith television shows during the 1950s, has spent most of his adult life “kicking” — both on and off-stage — for humanitarian causes. The son of…

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