Reporters

I looked into the woman's face. Her large brown eyes widened with fear. She winced in pain. Blood spurted from her thighs. I dropped my purse and knelt beside her on the asphalt. Reporters are trained to remain detached, to observe and record without interfering. But the circumstances that Saturday afternoon compelled me to reach out and help this stranger, the victim of a drive-by shooting in South Los Angeles. From that chance encounter, a bond would grow between us -- fleeting but powerful.

Six days ago, a Pakistani journalist on the run from Taliban militants landed in the United States holding a valuable key to sanctuary: a visa granting him the right to work for the Voice of America radio service for one year. But today Rahman Bunairee is in an immigration lockup in Virginia after being detained upon his arrival at Dulles International Airport. "We are concerned and upset" about the detention, said Joan Mower, a spokeswoman for the VOA, which is funded by the U.S. government.

William A. Emerson Jr., who covered civil rights flash oints as part of a cadre of gutsy Southern reporters and later served as editor-in-chief of the Saturday Evening Post, has died. He was 86. Emerson, whose health had declined after a stroke, died Tuesday at his home in Atlanta. A boisterous, outsize figure in an era of colorful New York magazine editors, Emerson stood 6-foot-3, with a booming voice that took over any room. His gifts as a phrasemaker made him a sought-after speaker.

The arrest and eventual release of Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee by North Korea, and recent reports of North Korean and Chinese authorities cracking down on refugee networks, have renewed the public debate over how far foreign journalists should go in covering repressive nations. The leaders of countries such as Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), China, North Korea and Zimbabwe restrict foreign media access, fearing that independent interpretations of their policies and actions will threaten their rule at home and damage their reputations abroad.

A group that includes former state lawmakers, high-profile attorneys and veteran former newspaper reporters plans to launch a nonprofit online news organization to provide watchdog and investigative journalism in Orange County. The Voice of OC, which will get its start with $140,000 from the Orange County Employees Assn., hopes to fill a void left by shrinking staffs covering the county at the Orange County Register and the Los Angeles Times, said Joe Dunn, a former Democratic state senator from Santa Ana who will chair the outlet's board of directors.

Editor Jiro Ishimaru dimmed the lights and started the shaky video clip before a roomful of North Korea experts. The footage, taken surreptitiously from a speeding motorcycle, was jarring: It showed the Soonchun Vinylon factory, which many defectors claim has been secretly used to produce lethal chemicals, including nerve gas. But the video showed a deserted complex now slouching forlornly on a weed-strewn stretch of countryside. The experts sat wide-eyed. They had heard rumors of the factory's fate, but this was their first real evidence.

They're not the Emmys or the Oscars, and the gift baskets aren't full of expensive goodies. But for the people who break into television and radio programming every so often to tell you how traffic is on the 405 and 110 freeways, this was their day in the driver's seat. It was the annual Golden Pylon Awards, which were dished out today at Maggiano's Little Italy restaurant in the Grove. Pylon is the fancy word for traffic cone, which for drivers always signals trouble ahead.

You heard all about it, in this newspaper and others, on talk radio and television and all over the Internet. The Angels had celebrated their division championship by pouring beer and champagne over the jersey of Nick Adenhart, the rookie killed in April by an alleged drunk driver, and everyone had an opinion. Tim Mead, the Angels' vice president of communications, was stunned by the wave of reaction. Surely, he thought, someone would ask him for the answer he considered essential to forming an opinion: Had the Adenhart family objected to the celebration?

Los Angeles County officials have been complaining for years about the ever-decreasing number of reporters who cover them. The county press room, once bustling with a dozen or more reporters, now looks like a ghost town, home to three reporters on a good day. Nonetheless, the Board of Supervisors has decided that the few journalists still around are causing problematic "traffic jams" during board meetings. So supervisors have decreed that reporters can no longer interview key personnel in the back rooms and corridors where the officials work during board meetings.

Former Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano and another man were sentenced to three years in prison Friday after pleading no contest to charges that they threatened a Los Angeles Times reporter in 2002. Pellicano, 65, and Alexander Proctor, 66, were charged with threatening reporter Anita Busch, who was doing investigative research on Hollywood industry figures. Busch found a dead fish with a rose in its mouth on her car's shattered windshield along with a sign reading "Stop," according to prosecutors.