Los Angeles Times Cancels 'Non Sequitur' Comic Over Obscenity

As the LA Times' comic section has been condensed over the years, the paper has been left with just a handful of strips — most of them legacy, and rather unexciting. One of the few comics with any sort of edge, "Non Sequitur," has now been axed as well — over an subtly obscured obscenity that made it into print.

See above: In the one frame, scribbles appear to read, "We fondly say go f**k yourself to Trump.” Alas, that was too much for many newspapers — including the L.A. Times, which wrote in an editor's note:

In the Feb. 10 comics section, the “Non Sequitur” cartoon by Wiley Miller contained a vulgar message that was hidden in an illustration.

Andrews McMeel Syndication, which distributes the cartoon, apologized Monday for missing the offensive wording in its editing process. “If we had discovered it, we would not have distributed the cartoon without it being removed,” the statement said. “We apologize to Non Sequitur’s clients and readers for our oversight.”

Miller, in a statement, said he had prepared the cartoon with the vulgar message several weeks ago, intended to remove the message before the cartoon was distributed but neglected to do so. However, in a Twitter post Sunday, the cartoonist wrote: “Some of my sharp-eyed readers have spotted a little Easter egg from Leonardo Bear-Vinci. Can you find it?”

The Los Angeles Times considers this a breach of trust with our readers and will halt publication of the “Non Sequitur” cartoon. The Times' comic pages are prepared in advance, so readers may see “Non Sequitur” cartoons for several more Sundays.

Other newspapers that have dropped the strip include the Chicago Tribune, which wrote an identical editor's note, with just the newspaper's name changed (and signed by Tribune editor Bruce Dold). Strangely, the Trib's statement even ran on the LAT's site — a legacy, I assume of the papers' former co-ownership.

Other papers dropping the strip include the San Diego Union-Tribune, and reaction from readers was very mixed.

Los Angeles Times Building: One Last Tour Inside Spring Street

When Tribune split into two companies, Tribune Media — which took the TV and digital assets — also shamelessly grabbed the real estate where Tribune Publishing's newspapers had lived for decades. It forced papers like the Chicago Tribune and our Los Angeles Times to suddenly pay rent on their own buildings! Now that the L.A. Times is out of the Tronc (er, I guess it's Tribune Publishing again) orbit, new owner Patrick Soon-Shiong is moving the newspaper to a building in El Segundo. He's promising updated facilities — and considering the sorry shape of the LA Times building, which hasn't been kept up by its Tribune Media landlords — that could be a good thing. Not so much for some of the staff, which will now have to alter their commutes. (Some will remain in downtown, in a new space above The Last Bookstore).

As a Los Angeles booster, I had somehow never taken a Los Angeles Times tour. Shame on me. I had, well, decades where I could have. So when I discovered that the final tour was this past Friday — and that it was all booked up — I put a plea out to my pals at the paper: Let me visit!

Thankfully, Kate Stanhope and Yvonne Villarreal came through, and offered to invite me over for a peek inside the LA Times building, one last time. Thanks to them — and here's a look at the final days of the Los Angeles Times on Spring Street.

In the Spring Street lobby (where most employees and people enter).

The Los Angeles Times hallways are filled with history: Key front pages, Pulitzer Awards, tributes to legendary employees like Jim Murray, and much more.

In the Globe lobby — the iconic space most people think of, when they think about the LA Times building — a museum's worth of historic artifacts, including this typesetting machine. Most of this will be moving to the El Segundo building, where Soon-Shiong plans a new museum.

The famed Globe lobby.

The Los Angeles Times has won 44 Pulitzer Prizes since 1942.

Harry Chandler.

Gen Harrison Gray Otis.

More from the Globe lobby.

Hidden inside the old phone booth: A relic of an old pay phone!

Also in the lobby: This eagle was saved from the old Los Angeles Times building that was famously bombed in 1910.

The old publisher's office.

The famed Los Angeles Times test kitchen.

Now mostly packed up and ready for the move.

Where LA Times staffers would often do live news shots.

A view of the Calendar section newsroom.

More old memorabilia — classic cameras.

Signs from the recent fight to form a union are still everywhere.

PTSD -- Post-Tronc Stress Disorder.

Super Patrick!

The Tronc banner of shame, featuring Sam Zell and Lee Abrams as well.

Not a lot of fans of Tronc's money-grabbing exiting chairman Michael Ferro.

L.A. Times: Great Los Angeles Walk is a "Health Happening"

Thanks to the Los Angeles Times, which is also a marketing partner of this year's walk, for this writeup in their "Health Happenings" column! Kavita Daswani writes:

Pencil in Nov. 19 for the 11th pre-Thanksgiving Great Los Angeles Walk. Some 400 people are expected to participate in the low-key, no pressure trek from downtown to the beach, traversing 16 miles along Pico Avenue. Organizer Mike Schneider says that the walk can be "as long or as short" as people want, although with breaks, the exercise usually takes about eight hours. Walkers can opt out at any time. The walk is returning to Pico Avenue for the first time since 2007. The new Metro Expo Line runs between the start and end points.

More news on Monday as we announce the start point of this year's walk!

San Bernardino Aftermath: Thursday's Newspaper Front Pages

Per the Los Angeles Times' Henry Fuhrmann, who posted this on his Twitter feed: "Here's today's almost-final front page. (The edition just now sent to press has a few changes.)"

Below, the San Bernardino Sun's Thursday front. (The Sun's sister paper, the L.A. Daily News, sports an identical cover.)

The New York Times Yet Again Discovers That People Like Living In Los Angeles

Oh, New York Times, where do I even begin? Listen, I'm always in favor of touting Los Angeles, and if L.A. is now winning the perception war vs. New York, I suppose that's fine. And yet, there's something about the "hey, L.A. is suddenly OK" tone in paragraphs like these that grate:

Bearded young New Yorkers can snap up brioche tarts at Proof Bakery in Atwater Village, visit gallery shows at Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Projects in Echo Park, or settle in over barrel-aged rye cocktails at Bar Stella in Silver Lake, and scarcely realize they are more than a stroll away from McCarren Park, except for the 70-degree sunshine tickling their cheeks in February.

The changes are more striking in downtown Los Angeles. Long a gritty urban backwater, Downtown has become a trend factory, brimming with Beaux-Arts loft condos, galleries, groundbreaking restaurants like Baco Mercat and, inevitably, a new Ace Hotel to serve as “Portlandia” south. (GQ magazine called Downtown Los Angeles “America’s next great city” last year.)

The buzz from all this is audible 3,000 miles east, to the point that New Yorkers’ incessant Williamsburg comparisons to Silver Lake, Highland Park, Venice Beach — or wherever — have become a wearying cliché to locals (except Aja Brown, the mayor of Compton, Calif., who has been pitching her economically challenged south-central city as “a new Brooklyn” of late.)

No wonder a new generation of restless New Yorkers is starting to heed the Los Angeles siren call, and not just aspiring actor-waiters, as in years past.

“New York feels like it’s all about ‘making it,’ ” said Julia Price, a musician and former Manhattanite who is in her 20s. “L.A. feels like it’s all about making things.”

Folks from the East Coast have flocked to Los Angeles for over 100 years, drawn by the exact same things you mention in this article -- creative freedom (a little business known colloquially as "Hollywood"), weather, real estate and a lot more. There's so much condescension in the idea that Los Angeles is suddenly OK because it's got hipper restaurants and more people who care about fashion (is that even true?) Remember, In-N-Out Burger has been here since 1948.

L.A. was enough of a lure to East Coasters that the Los Angeles Times even published an annual "Midwinter Edition" and sent it to the East Coast up until the late 1950s:

Scenes from This Year's Festival of Books

Target wasn't a sponsor of this year's Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC -- and although I'm sure that was a financial blow to the festival organizers, it was likely a nice boon to independent bookstores like Montrose's Once Upon a Time (above). I happily shelled out money to support the store (one of the gems of Montrose's shopping district) and buy the Blogger Kids some fresh books (many of which were autographed by the authors) at the same time.

I also stopped by Angel City Press (by far my favorite booth every year at the festival), where I picked up a few new L.A.-centric books for my collection and also caught up with LA Observed's Kevin Roderick, and we both marveled at how we've now been doing this blogging thing for 12 years. Is there an end game? Or can we keep this up as a hobby forever? Good question!

I had Blogger Kid 2.0 in tow, so there was no time to really listen to any speakers, although we did stop for a bit to hear Billy Idol interviewed about his career. Some pics of our Saturday at the Festival of Books:


Music at the USC stage


Kind of hard to make out, but yes, that's Billy Idol


Always a crowd at the Festival of Books!


I think this character has something to do with a Trader Joe's cookbook.


C-SPAN's Book TV

Los Angeles Times Stops Pretending We Don't Know What Jonathan Gold Looks Like

I always thought it was kind of charming that the Los Angeles Times kept up the practice of hiding superstar food critic Jonathan Gold's face in the newspaper and in all of its marketing. After all, anyone who cares about food criticism or Jonathan Gold knows exactly what he looks like. As Gold became a well-known name, his face was everywhere.

Now, the LA Times is giving up the practice. I'll miss the Jonathan Gold silhouettes, but he says it's time to give up the ghost:

I regularly decline magazine profiles, corporate speaking gigs and reality show appearances. I once walked backward from a lectern after winning an award because I was afraid of being photographed. I have OpenTable accounts under many different names, a habit of paying bills — even large ones — in cash and a burner phone account, all in an attempt to keep my identity a secret from the chefs and staffs of restaurants I have reviewed.

But my identity is not secret.

I have been charmed into posing for a thousand food-festival selfies. A hundred waiters know my name. I have been called out in taquería lines from Pacoima to Bell Gardens. At chic restaurants, chefs nervously avoid my gaze. When he spotted me eating dinner, a Las Vegas maître d' once physically moved the table at which I was sitting from its cozy niche behind a pillar to a more glamorous spot in the middle of the room. I have become adept at pretending not to notice that a restaurant staff is pretending not to notice me noticing them noticing me.

Any real anonymity I may have once had ended in 2007 when an assistant at a publication I used to work for accidentally posted a photograph to the paper's website. The pretense of anonymity ends today.

I believe he's referring to this photo (below), taken at an LA Weekly toast to celebrate Gold's big Pulitzer Prize win:



Let's face it, Gold has such a distinct look that I don't know how he ever escaped notice when he ate at restaurants. But I don't think it impacted his reviews one bit. Now that he's free of the facade, I wonder if we'll see more JGold on TV and elsewhere.

The timing of the announcement comes as Laura Gabbert's L.A. food documentary, "City of Gold," premieres at Sundance. It also comes, Gold writes, as "the kabuki of the pose is a distraction." I can't wait to see "City of Gold," and congrats to Jonathan Gold for finally being free!