1. Confucius vs Romper Room in Hacienda Heights 1 hour ago   permalink

Confucius vs Romper Room in Hacienda Heights
Kevin Roderick / LA Observed

That headline is a bit over-simplified, but not by much. Mary Ann King, a former host of the children's television series "Romper Room," opposes a plan to open a Confucius Classroom in a middle school in Hacienda Heights. The reason? It would be staffed for free by teachers from China, and King says, "We do not need to import teachers from the ( ...

2. Failed T.S.A. Nomination 1 hour ago   permalink

Www.nytimes.com

Re “Still Waiting at the T.S.A.” (editorial, Jan. 25): Regarding my unsuccessful nomination to be the head of the Transportation Security Administration, there would have been no utility in providing false testimony, knowing that F.B.I. headquarters possessed my own 23-year-old written statement to challenge the veracity of my ...

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3. A lean, not mean, City Hall 2 hours ago   permalink

Www.latimes.com

Concerned Los Angeles residents and advocates have warned the City Council not to impose draconian cuts that they say will harm the disabled, make the city vulnerable to lawsuits, gut the arts, stoke ethnic tension and undermine neighborhoods. Several council members have responded by promising not to make the cuts, or at least to delay any ...

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4. News sites explore how to earn revenue from Twitter, Facebook 4 hours ago   permalink

Jon / CyberJournalist.net

The New York Times, The Austin American-Statesman and The Huffington Post are all experimenting with ways to generate ad dollars using Twitter and Facebook, Poynter’s Mallary Jean Tenore reports.

5. The definitive, two-part answer to "is data journalism?" 5 hours ago   permalink

Holovaty.com

It's a hot topic among journalists right now: Is data journalism? Is it journalism to publish a raw database? Here, at last, is the definitive, two-part answer: 1. Who cares? 2. I hope my competitors waste their time arguing about this as long as possible.

6. Announcing the Django Book, second edition 5 hours ago   permalink

Holovaty.com

I'm excited to announce that I'm working on a second edition of the Django Book . The first edition, which I cowrote with Jacob Kaplan-Moss , was published in print by Apress more than a year ago, and, sadly, it's become out of date. It covers Django version 0.96, and many of the examples don't work with the current version, 1.0. Fortunately, ...

7. Cable News Program Rankings: FNC Nabs Top 13 9 hours ago   permalink

Mediabistro.com

In January, Fox News had the top 13 cable news programs in both total viewers and the demo starting with Bill O'Reilly , Sean Hannity , and Glenn Beck in the three spots. It's the first time in 5 years they've had the top 13 in the A25-54 demo. Here are the rankings in the demo (total viewers here ): In basic cable, Fox News was #3 in primetime ...

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Mediabistro.com
Cable News Program Rankings: FNC Nabs Top 13 The Scoreboard: Monday, Feb. 1   —  25-54 demographic: (L +SD) Total day: FNC: 442 | CNN: 124 | MSNBC: 120 | HLN: 160 Prime: FNC: 745 | CNN: 157 | MSNBC: 249 | HLN: 205 5p: 6p: 7p: 8p: 9p: 10p: 11p: FNC Beck: Baier: Shep: O'Reilly: Hannity: Greta: O'Reilly: 749 533 612 1062 682 487 432 CNN Blitzer: Blitzer: Blitzer: Brown: King: Cooper: Cooper: 91 156 168 146 172 154 106 MSNBC ...

8. Willie Brown's expensive dinner with Mayor Villaraigosa 10 hours ago   permalink

Kevin Roderick / LA Observed

Former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown was a good friend of, and frequent subject of, the late columnist Herb Caen. Brown is doing a decent job of emulating Caen's political gossip chops with his Sunday columns in the San Francisco Chronicle. In his latest , Brown describes a recent dinner reunion of former Assembly speakers in Beverly Hills. ...

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Mediabistro.com
Willie Brown's expensive dinner with Mayor Villaraigosa CBS News Cuts: 'Early Show' Staffers Out, Technology Correspondent Daniel Sieberg Cut   —  CBS Corp. is finishing up a round of cuts of both full time and part time employees at CBS News programs and bureaus across the country. The reduction also includes not filling open positions. Tipsters tell us that staffers in Washington DC, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami were all cut. Nine employees ranging from producers, to ...

9. D-Day at CBS News 11 hours ago   permalink

D-Day at CBS News
Www.observer.com

On the evening of Monday, Feb. 1, Katie Couric, anchor of the CBS Evening News, was wearing red. For the next half-hour, she tore through the headlines. There were allegations of bigotry among the federal air marshals in the U.S., an American church group accused of trafficking children in Haiti, faulty gas pedals in Toyotas, a suicide bombing in ...

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10. Where’s the spawn point? 11 hours ago   permalink

Where’s the spawn point?
Robin Sloan / Snarkmarket

Places that look like levels from first-person shooters: This new water filtration plant on San Erasmo Island in Italy. Sutro’s Scepter. Er, I mean. Sutro Tower. (See also.) Other nominations?

11. QWERTY, your day has come 11 hours ago   permalink

Robin Sloan / Snarkmarket

This just occurred to me, and I’m curious to know if you think it’s even halfway plausible. Let me walk you through my thought process: The iPhone and the iPad both have software keyboards. The underlying assumption is that it’s gross and wasteful to dedicate all those atoms to this thing that you only use 10% [...]

12. News Corp.: Conan’s Not Coming to Fox Just Yet, Amazon’s Ready to Bend on E-Book Pricing. 11 hours ago   permalink

News Corp.: Conan’s Not Coming to Fox Just Yet, Amazon’s Ready to Bend on E-Book Pricing.
Mediamemo.allthingsd.com

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch tried to lower expectations that his Fox broadcast network would hire Conan O’Brien. Murdoch hinted that his book publishing unit is in line to get a new deal on e-books from Amazon (AMZN), just as Macmillan has demanded (and other publishers will as well).

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13. Can iPad save media? Skeptics weigh in. 1 day ago   permalink

Can iPad save media? Skeptics weigh in.
Newsosaur.blogspot.com

Not everyone is buying into the iPad hoopla. A quick sampling of media thought leaders determined that many are skeptical, at least to some degree, about its potential as a high-tech elixir for all that ails their business. Here are their cautionary comments (edited in some cases for length):

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