Journalism

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."

THE young man with the AK-47 at a checkpoint in the Triangle of Death ordered us out of the car the moment he realized I was a foreigner. A flat gray sky closed in. Dust and diesel exhaust filled the hot air. He led us into the desert, over scrub brush and cigarette butts, toward a grizzled man in a wooden hut. "And who is he?" the older man asked my Iraqi colleague and interpreter, Raheem.

Re "Media as lapdog," Opinion, April 27 Greg Palast has hit the bull's-eye. The corporate mainstream media is not going to rock the boat. Why do real journalism when you can ensure advertising dollars to please your shareholders through shallow, infotainment pieces? Real investigative reporting could threaten the bottom line if you penetrate the corrosive corporatocracy of government and business these days. The media's AWOL performance in the lead-up to Bush's illegal and imperial invasion of Iraq, for example, is a clear window into the current mind-set of our Fourth Estate.

When is local journalism not really local? When it's about Pasadena and written by someone in India. James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the Pasadena Now website, hired two reporters last weekend to cover the Pasadena City Council. One lives in Mumbai and will be paid $12,000 a year. The other will work in Bangalore for $7,200. The council broadcasts its meetings on the Web.

The no-holds-barred competition for television exclusives ratcheted up another level this week as Paris Hilton's representatives told networks bidding for the first post-jail interview with the heiress that NBC was considering paying as much as $1 million for the scoop. The massive payment -- purportedly a license fee for the use of personal video and images of the 26-year-old -- succeeded in boxing out NBC's competition, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.