Journalism

As the alleged scourge of American journalism, James Macpherson cuts a rather disappointing figure. In a crisp blue blazer, with slicked-back gray hair, the onetime garment manufacturer looks like a prep school headmaster. He speaks with the polite self-control of PBS' Jim Lehrer. Macpherson drew headlines and hate mail last year when it was revealed that his Pasadena Now website intended to report the news from Pasadena using writers in Mumbai and Bangalore, India.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, best known for its contested antiquities, Impressionist irises and gorgeous grounds, has been diversifying in gruesome black and white. Since 2003, the museum has bought up several photographic prints that count among the 20th century's most iconic journalistic images of death by violence: Malcolm Browne's picture of the 1963 self-immolation of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk; a print from the Zapruder film of the 1963 shooting of John F.

A research group said Thursday it is monitoring the output of nearly 50 U.S. news organizations to produce a weekly index of the topics receiving the most attention from TV, newspapers, the Internet and radio. The Project for Excellence in Journalism, part of the Pew Research Center, said it would publish its News Coverage Index online at journalism.org each Tuesday, beginning next week. Among the news organizations being monitored include the New York Times, CNN.com, Yahoo News, MSNBC.

THE Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem once remarked that in the Jewish hamlets of his native Ukraine there were only two people who really were serious about God. One was the local rabbi and the other was the village atheist. These days, American public life often seems awash in cheap piety and religious sentiment -- things quite distinct from genuine conviction.

Los Angeles Times staff writer Kenneth R. Weiss and former staffer Usha Lee McFarling have won a George Polk Award for their series "Altered Oceans," it was announced today. The five-part series, published July 30 through Aug. 3, chronicled symptoms of distress in the world's oceans, ranging from a virulent rash afflicting Australian fishermen to brainaltering poisons detected in California sea lions.

Scholars, journalists and other investigators may be held liable for invasion of privacy if they misrepresent themselves to obtain sensitive information, the California Supreme Court decided 5 to 2 on Monday. A lawyer for the media said the ruling was troubling for both journalists and academics.

News organizations confronted with declining revenue and increased competition are entering an era of more limited ambition in which they will drop a broad worldview for more narrowly focused reporting, according to an annual review of the news business being released today by a watchdog group.

IN a third-floor Flower District walkup with bare wooden floors, plain white walls and an excitable toy poodle named Simon, six guys dressed mainly in T-shirts and jeans sit all day in front of computer screens at desks arranged around the oblong room's perimeter, pecking away at their keyboards and, bit by bit, at the media establishment. The world headquarters of TPM Media is pretty much like any small newsroom, anywhere, except for the shirts. And the dog. And the quiet.

Los Angeles Times Publisher David D. Hiller's decision Thursday to scrap a special opinion section to avoid the appearance of an ethical breach triggered the resignation of Editorial Page Editor Andres Martinez, who accused the paper's editor and publisher of overreacting.

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have officially endorsed a state Senate bill aimed at increasing the public's access to police disciplinary records, a legislative spokesman said Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) is proposing to "reverse a Supreme Court decision that requires police departments across the state to keep information from the police disciplinary hearings secret."