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LA Observed

LA Observed

LA Observed

LA Observed covers the week's top stories in LA media, politics and culture, sharing breaking news when it's available and tying up loose ends on the topics that Angelenos have been discussing all week.

RECENT SHOWS

LA Observed

Incredible Shrinking Times

If it weren't so sad for the families involved -- and damaging to the community fabric of Los Angeles -- what happened this week at the LA Times could be the punch line in a bad joke about how to ruin your brand name...

LA Observed

Ray Bradbury's Rant

I recently was invited to speak at the Geffen Playhouse to the Friends of the Westwood Library. I was struck by all the nostalgia I heard for bookstores that used to thrive in Westwood Village. Yes, I know this will be hard for some listeners to accept. But Westwood Village, on the border of UCLA, actually used to resemble...a college town.

LA Observed

Good Week for Blogs

This has been another of those weeks in the local news media, where you could feel the rules changing. Score one for the blogs. Or make it three...

Travels with Antonio

Travels with Antonio

Since this is the first day of summer, it seems appropriate to talk about traveling. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa flew to Israel last week on official for the city...

Degrees of Separation

Degrees of Separation

This week I was struck -– again -- by the uncanny way that news stories in Los Angeles overlap through time and main characters. Many fewer than six degrees of separation are needed to make a lot of connections between events in this town...

LA Observed

Circling Back

One of the complaints people have about the media is that stories that fill the airwaves for one or two news cycles are too often just dropped. What's important one day is forgotten the next. It drives a lot of people a little crazy, me included...

Election Daze

Election Daze

You might not know this. In fact, you probably don't know or care. But there will be an election in California on Tuesday...

LA Observed

Toilet to Tap?

Did you know that we're almost three years into the Antonio Villaraigosa era in Los Angeles? I know, I know, it seems like longer. With all that has gone on...

LA Observed

Times Are Tough

Just because gas prices have dipped back down below four dollars a gallon in most parts of LA doesn't mean that you can call off the recession...

LA Observed

Special Order 40

Well, May 1 came and went without incident in Los Angeles. It's always a good thing when we get past May Day without a half-million people marching down Wilshire Boulevard. Or the LAPD busting reporters' heads in MacArthur Park....

Bookish LA

Bookish LA

I suspect that, by now, just about everyone has heard the claim that Los Angeles is the biggest and most vibrant book selling market in the country...

Writing Noir LA

Writing Noir LA

If Los Angeles has a native literary genre, it would have to be noir fiction. Think of all the hard-boiled, cynical detectives, private eyes and freelance mystery solvers we associate with LA...

Mirthala Speaks

Mirthala Speaks

We finally heard this week from Mirthala Salinas. Her side of last year's messy affair with the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa...

LA Observed

They're Killing Us

f you aren't one of the four million or so people who live within the formal limits of Los Angeles, you probably don't pay much attention to the L.A. City Council...

Coliseum Party

Coliseum Party

Now that I've written books about Los Angeles history, I sometimes get labeled a historian. I'm still not used to it. You mean me, I wonder, looking around to see who they really mean...

 
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Host

Kevin Roderick

Editor and Publisher of the website LA Observed and a writer for Los Angeles magazine; former reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

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