A new company - the NOLA Media Group, which will include The Times-Picayune and its affiliated web site NOLA.com - was announced today by Ricky Mathews, who will become its president. The change is intended to reshape how the New Orleans area's dominant news organization delivers its award-winning local news, sports and entertainment coverage in an increasingly digital age. NOLA Media Group will significantly increase its online news-gathering efforts 24 hours a day, seven days a week, while offering enhanced printed newspapers on a schedule of three days a week. The newspaper will be home-delivered and sold in stores on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays only. A second new company, Advance Central Services, will print and deliver the newspaper. Both of the new companies are owned ... Continue reading →
A 23-year-old gang member who shot and killed a high school football star he mistook for a rival gangster should be sentenced to death, a Los Angeles jury decided Wednesday. The panel returned the verdict after about a week of testimony in the penalty phase of the trial, in which jurors were asked to determine what punishment Pedro Espinoza should receive for the 2008 shooting death of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw II. He was convicted earlier this month of first-degree murder, which prosecutors said was an execution-style killing because Espinoza concluded from Shaw’s skin color and red backpack that the teenager was a Bloods gang member. Jurors found true allegations that he acted on behalf of a gang and that he used a firearm, making him ... Continue reading →
Piers Morgan has long insisted that, in his days as the editor of a London tabloid, he didn’t order or condone his reporters hacking into cellphones to get scoops about celebrities. But a British TV personality told a special inquiry Wednesday that Morgan seemed to have some very specific knowledge about how to access other people’s phone messages. Morgan, now the host of a nightly talk show on CNN in the U.S., also joked about overhearing a phone conversation between a pair of celebrities, Jeremy Paxman testified before the British government panel investigating journalism ethics. The BBC's Paxman recalled telling Morgan during a 2002 lunch that he was wholly unfamiliar with phone hacking. "He then explained the way to get access to people's messages was ... Continue reading →
Handout / City of Berkeley Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan, already under fire for sending an officer to a reporter's house after midnight, ordered police - some on overtime - to look for his teenage son's stolen cell phone in Oakland, authorities said Monday. Officers did not file a police report about the January incident, "an oversight that came to our attention when researching your questions," said police Sgt. Mary Kusmiss, a department spokeswoman. On Jan. 11, Meehan's son reported that somebody stole his iPhone from his locker at Berkeley High School. The phone was equipped with tracking software. The chief showed his own phone to the property crimes sergeant, who deployed his team and drug task force officers to ... Continue reading →
