Newspapers

A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt. This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before - and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Much of the planet's electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms.

SAN FRANCISCO - The Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee filed suit Wednesday against the University of California Board of Regents, demanding the release of police officers' names removed from a critical report on the controversial pepper spraying of UC Davis students. The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court, contends that when university officials agreed in a court settlement last month to redact all but two names, they "failed to represent the interests of the press and public," leaving the newspapers with "no choice but to bring this petition to protect the public's right of access to this important information.

"Oh, you mean the guy with the 70-year-old head and the 20-year-old body-builder body? That picture has got to be Photoshopped." Dr. Jeffry Life smiles when I tell him about the general reaction I get about the famous picture of him with his shirt off, the shot that turned a mild-mannered doctor in his mid-60s into a poster boy for super-fit aging and controversial hormone replacement Appearing in medical-clinic ads in airline magazines and...

You can draw a straight line, in terms of architectural history, from William Randolph Hearst'ssprawling estate in San Simeon to the corner of Broadway and 11th Street in downtown Los Angeles. It was at that downtown site in 1913 that Hearst commissioned architect Julia Morgan to design a headquarters for his Los Angeles Examiner newspaper, which he'd founded in 1903. Morgan produced one of the most remarkable designs of her prolific career, a 103,500-square-foot Mission Revival building draped with Italian and Moorish touches, including domes covered in yellow and blue tile.

The Los Angeles Times will begin charging readers for access to its online news, joining a growing roster of major news organizations looking for a way to offset declines in revenue. Starting March 5, online readers will be asked to buy a digital subscription at an initial rate of 99 cents for four weeks. Readers who do not subscribe will be able to read 15 stories in a 30-day period for free. There will be no digital access charge for subscribers of the printed newspaper. Separately, The Times announced plans to launch a new weekly lifestyle section called Saturday for its print subscribers.

The Los Angeles Times will begin charging readers for access to its online news, joining a growing roster of major news organizations looking for a way to offset declines in revenue. Starting March 5, online readers will be asked to buy a digital subscription at an initial rate of 99 cents for four weeks. Readers who do not subscribe will be able to read 15 stories in a 30-day period for free. There will be no digital access charge for subscribers of the printed newspaper. Separately, The Times announced plans to launch a new weekly lifestyle section called Saturday for its print subscribers.

Is there anything that could persuade muckraking Tijuana journalist Jesus Blancornelas to lay down his pen? A nearly successful assassination attempt by the Tijuana drug cartel failed to silence him. He waves away the inconvenience of life with 13 army bodyguards as just another bizarre plot twist in his episodic career.

Press authorities on Monday ordered the temporary closure of Shargh, Iran's leading reformist newspaper, just days after the publication printed a cartoon that appeared to lampoon Iranian nuclear negotiations. In a letter to the paper's managing director, the Press Supervisory Board ordered the shutdown "for publishing articles insulting to religious, political and national figures, and fomenting discord."

You think the economy is sending mixed signals? Just look at the newspaper industry. For every "green shoot" that appears, there's a tumbleweed or two rolling by next door. On the positive side, advertising sales firmed a bit in June at major chains such as Gannett Co. and New York Times Co., enabling those companies to post unexpectedly strong second-quarter profits. Newspaper stocks rallied sharply -- Gannett shares have rocketed 156% since the end of June -- as some investors bet that aggressive cost cutting has positioned the companies for higher profit once the economy rebounds.

In an effort to help struggling newspapers stay in business, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is asking the Justice Department to broaden its view of media competition when reviewing merger proposals. Pelosi sent a letter to the Justice Department on Monday saying any antitrust concerns that arise from proposed mergers between newspapers should take into account online news sources and nearby daily and weekly papers "so that the conclusions reached reflect current market realities." The Hearst Corp.

The U-T San Diego newspaper is in talks to buy the daily Orange County Register. U-T Chief Executive John Lynch confirmed that executives at his newspaper, formerly known as the San Diego Union-Tribune, have "had discussions" with Irvine-based Freedom Communications, which owns the Register. But although several recent reports have suggested that a deal is nearing, Lynch stopped short of saying that. "Nothing is certain as we attempt to expand our holding in L.A. and O.C.," Lynch wrote in an e-mail.

The Los Angeles Times won Newspaper of the Year for 2011 among the state's largest daily newspapers and a total of 20 journalism awards as part of the annual Better Newspaper Contest, officials announced Saturday. The Times won first-place awards among newspapers with a circulation of 150,000 or more in the following categories: local government coverage, investigative reporting, sports, and arts and entertainment. The paper also received second prize for design and general excellence in the contest sponsored by the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., a nonprofit trade group.

Five years after his partnership lost a bid to buy Tribune Co.and the Los Angeles Times, billionaire businessman Eli Broad said he remains interested in joining with others to restore local ownership to The Times. The issue arose this week with the pending release of Broad's book, "The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking," in which the onetime home builder and investment services magnate speculates that the newspaper will be sold after the resolution of the bankruptcy of its owner, Tribune.

LONDON - He's hobnobbed with every British prime minister of the last 30 years but says he wields no undue political influence. His scandal-loving tabloids strike fear into the hearts of decision-makers, but he denies ever using his newspapers to advance his commercial interests. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch cast himself as the very model of a modest, upright newspaperman Wednesday, insisting in a London courtroom that any suggestion to the contrary was based on lies and legends.

As they do on many Saturday afternoons, the teenagers from across Los Angeles county descended on the nondescript Fairfax district office building. It was time for the weekly editorial meeting at L.A.Youth the newspaper by teens for teens. The latest issue had just hit the hallways of L.A. schools, and the deadline for the next one was fast approaching. As more than a dozen students sat around a square of folding tables, Amanda Riddle, one of the adult editors, kicked things off with a question: What did they know about Trayvon Martin?

Jeffrey Chandler, an influential member of the family that built the Los Angeles Times and the last person with the Chandler name to play a significant role in the newspaper's ownership, has died. He was 70. Chandler, who had been a radio station owner and real estate developer in the San Diego area, died Sunday at his home in Rancho Santa Fe after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer, his family announced. Long a maverick who sought to return The Times to its conservative roots, Chandler was one of three representatives of his family on the Tribune Co. board of directors who forced a sale of the company to a group headed by Chicago real estate investor Sam Zell in 2007.

I was standing recently before a classroom full of fresh-faced journalism students at a local high school. As I usually do at such things, I opened by asking for a show of hands from all those planning newspaper careers. Crickets. "Nobody?" I asked. A couple of students tentatively raised their hands, mostly, I gathered, out of a sense of politeness. Why should I have expected anything different? The newspaper industry is rapidly disintegrating.

Dave Eggers doesn't look like a newspaper baron. At 39, wearing a baseball cap and hiking boots, the author -- whose most recent project is the screenplay for "Where the Wild Things Are" -- appears more an older brother to the interns who work feverishly in the Mission District offices of McSweeney's, the independent publisher Eggers founded with the proceeds from his bestselling 2000 memoir, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." In addition to books and a monthly magazine, McSweeney's publishes a literary journal, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the new issue of which is set to appear here today in a form that confounds every trend in publishing: a 300-plus-page Sunday-style broadsheet newspaper called the San Francisco Panorama, with which Eggers and company mean to celebrate the glory of the form.

Jesse Linares, a journalist who helped launch the Spanish-language newspaper Hoy Los Angeles, died Saturday at Kaiser Permanente Baldwin Park Medical Center. He was 49 and had cancer. Linares worked at Hoy Los Angeles since its founding in 2004 and helped shape its coverage as he rose to the position of deputy editor. "Jesse was a fundamental part of Hoy. His love of journalism not only impacted our coverage, but the work of his co-workers," said Reynaldo Mena, Hoy's editor.

The federal government has tried just about everything to stop the flow of migrants crossing the border illegally. It boosted the number of Border Patrol agents, made punishment harsher, deployed drones and motion sensors, built and rebuilt fences. For years it has even quietly funded the dissemination in Mexico of songs and mini-documentaries about dangers at the border. Now it is using a more proactive tactic: Since last year, agents in Arizona have called Mexican and Central American television and radio stations and newspapers, asking for the opportunity to tell of the dangers of crossing illegally, particularly through the Sonoran Desert . The outreach, which was initially greeted with skepticism, is being embraced.