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LAObserved.com just posted a memo from Sallie Hofmeister, the LA Times‘ incredibly mediocre Assistant Managing Editor for Arts & Entertainment. More interested in celebrity coverage than substantive beat reporting, Hofmeister exhorts her showbiz blog staff to try to have “an original thought” from time to time which ”readers can use to sound smart in a meeting or cocktail party”. Isn’t it swell to be so trivialized, Hollywood? By the way, several current LA Times entertainment beat staffers have approached Deadline about jobs recently. They don’t want to work anymore for Silly Sallie.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Sad
Lol. All you need now is the weekly pie in the face report, for those individuals that have earned one.
Nikki, you’re wrong. Hollywood does read the LAtimes.com everyday. I check the weather listings on their site every morning.
“…some angle that readers can use to sound smart in a meeting or cocktail party.” Good God, that’s priceless! How about the upcoming Tribune Company bankruptcy meeting?
As a Deadline Hollywood reader I don’t come here just for the firsts and exciting agent métier-minutia that I can’t get anywhere else and certainly not because I care about journalism.
I come here to bow at the altar of Nikki Finke.
Can’t wait to catch that Tilda pilot.
TILDJA!
What a lifeless, listless memo – I fell asleep reading it. Entertainment reporting these days is about immediacy, not juicing up a story after the fact (that is any number of people’s jobs – publicists, agents, lawyers, etc.). Hire me Nikki, hire me!
Reading this memo made my ass clench in embarrassment for Ms. Hofmeister.
please, leave these people alone. let them live in their dreamworld, and, during these hard times, collect their last remaining paychecks. it’s the holidays! be kind!
It used to be called “the velvet coffin”
The tragic thing is that the Los Angeles Times could be a news organization of note. Instead they waste their time attacking whichever studio, star or film they’ve heard the most gossip on that day.
If the Times was interested in actually understanding this business and the people who work so hard to make it possible, then the Cotown blog would be THE news source.
“Subject: what is news?”
The LA Times has to send out a memo to remind their staff what is news??? How sad and pathetic is that? If that’s not a sign to clean out the department, I don’t know what is…
Maybe if the LA Times would write about some real fucking news….like how Supervisor Antonovich is stealing all the water from the Antelope Valley….then maybe people would pay attention. What is going on out there is exactly what happened in “China Town” for all you movie buffs. Check it out. Antonovich and the LA Water Dept are creating a fake “water crisis”, just like they did in China Town. Rent the movie and see history unfolding right before our eyes. And no one will write about it because the government is shushing all the press outlets. Come on Nikki, please help the farmers and folks who can’t reach the press find a voice.
Silly Sallie has single handedly destroyed the Calendar section with all her stupid ideas. It doesn’t surprise me that the few good writers who are left there want to jump ship.
I wish Patrick Goldstein would move on, I can’t stand that guy’s week late and three ideas short approach to reporting.
i WORSHIP you and your site and particularly your recent addition of Ms. Andreeva BUT your obsession with personally attacking LA Times people and people you didnt or dont like..is way beneath all the other great platinum status qualities of your site.
I do miss Paul Brownfield, though.
Not everyone likes u either: so what?? ??????
I at first thought that memo was a parody. I know there are vapid, half-bright Daisy Buchanans in entertainment journalism, but mostly in TV, not (what little is left of) newspapering.
Just canceled my LA Times subscription.
I read Deadline every day and like it very much. Special thanks for the great Oscar coverage.
Still, I think it’s just childish to waste your time bashing other peoples’ work and try convince your readers how dumb other journalists are. Let your own great work do the talking.
Meow!
In all fairness, because we are in LA home to most of the industry, you would think they would be more involved in the film biz. I find some of their articles regarding the film industry interesting.. But find the Business area of the paper more helpful/useful. Maybe the editors can work on this, there is always room for improvement.
Their film reviewers suck. They are nothing like the NY TIMES. NOTHING. HEY EDITORS, start looking around at other papers and see what you are doing wrong. You can always get better.
I got a link in an email to read a story around the Thanksgiving Holidays, about how ‘Angelina Jolie Hates Thanksgiving.’ It was very obviously, a lying ‘hit piece,’ by that slime ball (and former PR flack) Rob Shuter of Poopeater (popeater dot com), filled with crap designed to make the Aniston friendly site (which is in her rep, Stephen Huvane’s pocket) rag on Jolie. Yeah, I know…so what else is new? That’s been going on for a few years now.
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Basically, the gist was, ‘Hey America, Jolie hates You.’ Probably a planned 1, 2 punch w/ the attack from Huvane’s newest client, Chelsea Handler to come a week later. But whatever…
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Sure enough Shuter’s tabloid ready lie, got picked up by hundreds of other news aggregators and other websites, such as Fox, who attributed it correctly to Shuter, but nevertheless used it to get hits, like the rest of them.
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Anyway, imagine my disgust when Patrick Goldstein of said LAT Entertainment section, in a probably not-so-noble attempt to right a wrong, came out saying, ‘Yes the story was probably a lie and not sourced believably,’ and then, he strangely went on to blame, and rail against….wait for it….FOX news. WTF? Now I’m no Fox fan or apologist, but they regurgitated it like dozens (hundreds?)of others, and they, UNLIKE the LAT, at least printed it’s origins, and said it was Rob Shuter’s report.
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By contrast, The LAT’s Goldstein, in his smackdown of Fox, failed to even mention WHERE the lie/story ORIGINATED and who it was written by — the long-time lying Hollywood cretin Rob Shuter at Popeater/aol (who these days just plants items for PR flack friends looking to damage others).
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Goldstein was essentially calling Fox out for doing what most outlets do (including HIS OWN), try to make bank and hits off anything Jolie related – but FAILED to even mention the name of the author, and the origins of what they say was probably a lie. Why not EXPOSE Rob Shuter? Why not discuss his habit of planting lies in the media (see Gawker, and what he used to do for the family Simpson, as Jess Simpson’s flack, before he crossed the line and got fired)
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Do the actions of the LAT make sense to anyone else? The only explanation I have, is that the same people that grease Shuter (big powerful PR flacks), are also doing the same thing at LAT, and they just don’t want to go there.
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I can’t tell you how disappointed I was to see what’s supposed to be a paper of note, the LAT, do a piece on a lie being disseminated to damage someone, and then do a bait & switch and NOT name, nor address who wrote it and why! They predictably laid into Fox, AS IF they wrote it. I was like, W.T.F?
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It almost seemed like a cover for someone.
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I think everyone in that entertainment section is owned, and getting a heads up from PR flacks and studios on the stories they need to write, to conversely puff someone up, or tear down perceived enemies/rivals.
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You can see it in the predictable stories they do.
I remember reading an interesting Hollywood-related LA Times story earlier this year and being like, “Huh! Guess a stopped clock is still right twice a day!” I’m serious. I was genuinely surprised.
LA Times ET is owned by PR flacks for certain stars/studios. ‘Sad Sarah’ is correct. Don’t believe me, just read them…in particular Goldstein. If you notice a pattern of him dumping on certain people – it’s pretty easy to figure out who he’s working for. The agenda for certain people, places and things is so obvious it might as well be in neon. lol My question is, why does the LAT Et section think I would want to read pay for play crap, by people who are getting greased?
….the weather AND the obits….
I still read the L.A. Times every day. We need a strong big city newspaper around here to keep an eye on our local government.