LA Observed is a website devoted to independent reporting, informed commentary and selective linkage on Los Angeles news, media, politics, business, books and other topics. The site went live in May ...

Jim A. Beardsley is an independent archivist and historical research specialist in Los Angeles who began researching Newport '69 while pursuing his master's degree in history at Cal State Northridge.

With Ayn Rand in the media conversation around Paul Ryan and the Republican convention, here's a look at the home that Rand used to occupy in Northridge. And what a house it was — if it still existed, ...

Los Angeles car culture never saw anyone like Big Willie Robinson — or needed anyone quite so much. In the mid 1960s, when baby boomers were racing hot rods and fighting each other and the cops all ...

L. Ron Hubbard in 1950; crowd at Dianetics seminar in L.A. the same year. Sappell and Welkos hunted down the facts regarding Hubbard's trumped-up military record: his false claims of having received a ...

Sunday's New York Times revives a classic Los Angeles sports media incident — the time that KLAC radio reporter Paul Olden asked Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda what he thought of Cubs' left fielder Dave ...

The longtime SoCal sportswriter and columnist (and talk radio host) Doug Krikorian, laid off by the Press-Telegram in 2011, has shown up in the pages of the rival Long Beach Register.

Susan Atkins was the Charles Manson follower who used the knife on actress Sharon Tate on Cielo Drive in 1969. After she died this past September, Orange Coast Magazine writer Shawn Hubler began ...

Until I read Steve Martin's enjoyable new memoir, "Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life," I never would have connected him with Diane Arbus. He's funny and somewhat dark, but always struck me as fairly ...

Rodger Jacobs has a profile in Xbiz of Eric Edwards, said to have acted in adult films from the 1960s to the 1990s and recently both homeless with a thirteen-year-old son and suffering from ...

The New York Times Travel section does Long Beach: "While the city’s maritime character remains, its rough edges have been smoothed in recent years — the downtown waterfront transformed by ...

KNBC Channel 4 led with eight local Emmys at last night's awards ceremony at the Leonard H. Goldenson Theater in North Hollywood. The trophies included Mary Harris for outstanding news writer (she ...