I dashed off an item late Monday night, after the Lakers lost Game 1 of their series with Houston. I was determined to catch the 12:07 a.m. Metrolink train back to Long Beach, along with several dozen of my best crazy and drug-addled homeless friends … And, yes, I made it, but only by a […]

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The meltdown in print journalism has produced an unfortunate side-effect:
Diminished newsrooms largely populated by timid journalists.
They might not be timid with sources. (Though I have to wonder.)
What I am fairly certain of is that the print survivors are scared stiff of their managers, and what I believe was the healthy skepticism and byplay of a […]

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Tony Jackson, Dodgers baseball writer, was laid off Thursday by the L.A. News Group.
LANG getting rid of solid, veteran journalists is nothing new. It’s what Dean Singleton’s collection of imploding SoCal suburban newspapers have been doing for more than a year now. The L.A. Daily News, the San Gabriel Tribune, the Long Beach Press Telegram, […]

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Oscar De La Hoya made official his retirement today. (See that story here.) Which triggers several thoughts.
1. Boxing is in trouble as a spectator sport. And now one of the last great public figures in the sport is done.  I suppose boxing can survive the end of DLH’s career, but it won’t be easy.
2. This […]

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A year ago, two, I would have been all over this.
The first San Bernardino County high school basketball team to advance to a state championship game.
That would be Eisenhower, of Rialto, a basketball power for most of the last 30 years but particularly effective under the guidance of coach Steve Johnson.
Eisenhower won the CIF Division […]

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It will take a while for the surviving media pundits in downtown Los Angeles to notice … but the last serious player in Inland Empire sports journalism — and one of the final 3-4 in the entire Greater L.A. market — has given up its claim of “major league” status in the past 24 hours.
That […]

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I banged the drum for an arena in the Inland Empire for, oh, 20 years. OK, almost 30, while working as sports editor and columnist at The San Bernardino Sun. Going back almost to the day in 1981, I believe it was, when the pilot of a small plane had a heart attack while flying […]

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Guaranteed, this is not the first time someone has suggested that, if Karl Marx were alive today … he would be 190 years old, and doctors would be staring at him with mouths agape — like rubes at the carnival’s two-headed calf.
As I was saying, if Karl Marx were alive today, he wouldn’t be talking […]

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Just heard this from the man himself. He was responding to my note wishing him good luck, because there were rumors around …
But it was too late, he wrote back to me in a short note.
Steve got a call last night from people in the L.A. Daily News office. He is out, and he is […]

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I’m not sure how many employees at what used to be the San Bernardino Sun-Ontario Bulletin-San Gabriel Valley Tribune were fired today, but it was more than one and … more than 10, even?
A couple of things:
1. One of those fired was my friend and former colleague Doug Padilla. I can’t imagine Doug was shocked. […]

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