Los Angeles is fortunate to have three journalists who manage to shed light instead of heat in the fractious world of daily, broadcast journalism. Warren Olney, Patt Morrison and Larry Mantle are the three pillars of local broadcast journalism who offer Angelenos the opportunity to hear and learn, in a dispassionate way and in depth, about the issues that truly affect our lives and our futures.
They are the keepers of the flame; the last redoubt of daily, substantive discussion of public affairs in a community with numerous television and radio stations that too often fall short. They are in the tradition of the late Bill Stout, an honored local and national broadcast journalist who, in his long career, railed against the deteriorating quality of local broadcast news.
Warren Olney is the host and executive producer of Which Way, LA? and To the Point. Which Way, L.A.? is the signature daily local news program on 89.9 KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, and began in June 1992 in the aftermath of the LA Riots. In fall of 2000, KCRW and Olney took his program to a national audience with To the Point, distributed by Public Radio International, currently airing nationwide. Olney and both of his programs have been widely honored. He is the only person to have been twice named “Broadcast Journalist of the Year” – for his work in both radio and television – by the Society of Professional Journalists, Los Angeles. Olney’s interviews, book reviews, articles, and columns have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, Los Angeles Magazine, and California Journal, among other publications.
Patt Morrison, host of Patt Morrison on KPCC, is best known as a longtime reporter and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, where she has won numerous awards, including a share of two Pulitzer Prizes. She has covered stories ranging from the LA Riots to the Space Shuttle to the fall of the Berlin Wall. She was a founding host of Life & Times on KCET-TV. She also hosted the nationally syndicated television program, The Book Show with Patt Morrison. Her television and radio work has won her six Emmys and eight Golden Mike awards and she was the first woman in almost a quarter century to win the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Press Club. She is the author of Rio L.A. Tales from the LA River which spent six weeks on the best seller list and won the Southern California Booksellers’ Association prize for nonfiction.
Larry Mantle has been the host of AirTalk on KPCC since 1985, making it the longest continuously airing daily talk program in Southern California. Since then, the fourth-generation Angeleno has interviewed thousands of prominent guests on an extraordinary array of topics (from Medicare to the Middle East, from jazz to the current cinema) and received many journalistic awards in the process including Golden Mikes, LA Press Club Awards and the Distinguished Journalist Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. His collection, This Is Air Talk, 20 Years of Conversations, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. Larry grew up in southwest Los Angeles, Inglewood, and Hollywood. He’s a graduate of Hollywood High School and Vanguard University of Southern California.
David A. Lehrer, Joe R. Hicks,
President Vice-President
Community Advocates, Inc. (CAI) strives to re-frame discussions about critical current human relations issues— particularly race, ethnic tensions, education, multi-culturalism, inner city violence— through a new and updated lens. Chaired by former Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan, CAI has been at the forefront of a fresh approach to race, ethnic and cultural issues promoting critical discourse and common ground. CAI argues that Los Angeles and the nation are emerging from the “civil rights era” into a new period of tolerance and acceptance, a “trans-racial” society of fewer complaints and grievances that represents the future of America, www.cai-la.org.
