If Nikki Finke doesn't rub it all over their face, how else are they gonna learn? [DHD]

"In the 15 years I have been writing for The Times, I have covered wildfires, riots, gang murders and plenty of other mayhem," blogs LAT reporter Geoff Boucher. "I never got hurt. This weekend I covered a comic book convention in San Diego and I'm going home with staples in my head."

Who knew a trip to Comic-Con meant oogling Hayden Panettiere and getting your ass kicked?

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The Chandlers are selling! The Chandlers are selling! Actually, the Chandlers suffer from premature gratification: They've gone and sold their Tribune Co. shares below market value, and even sold them all off immediately instead of waiting until till November, when their terms under Sam Zell's buyout arrangement would've allowed them to earn $3 more per share.

Add to that the Chandlers' resigning their three board of directors seats, and you've got a scenario of completely severed ties between the Chandler family and newsprint after a 120 year love affair. Oh, and did we mention the $1.6 billion that's now in their pockets?

Let's hope some things will stay the same. Like Bill O'Reilly's endless feuding with the paper, for example.

The Los Angeles Times just found out they've got a lot of Hollywood starlets heading into rehab in their backyard and, quick, they need a newspeg to get to the game late! Byline Mary McNamara is on the case, with ousted ("voluntarily") HBO chief Chris Albrecht – who is heading back into the 'hab after realizing once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic – as her lede.

But we'll forgive the LAT for ignoring their trend story of the year, because they brought us this liner from Richard Rogg, the top dog at famed Promises rehab clinic: "I was just saying it feels like the '80s again … Everyone's going into rehab."

Also, leggings are back, so it really is the 80s!

Normally, were you not to check in with the Los Angeles Times, we wouldn't insult, make fun, or harass you. But this week, if you haven't been reading (the Times' website, in fact) you're really missing something. And it's not Sam Zell announcing layoffs.

It's the battle between Bill O'Reilly and the newspaper over Times columnist Rosa Brook's May 4 article "Sweet Jesus I love Bill O'Reilly!" As you might imagine, O'Reilly had an opinion about it: he didn't like-y. While Brooks' column is dek headed "Why I owe my gig as an L.A. Times columnist to the name-calling cable and radio personality," the meat of her piece focuses on a research analysis of O'Reilly, which finds that while four in 10 Americans think he's a journalist, he's actually a right-wing mouthpiece. (Absolutely mindblowing, we know.) Another fun facts from the study – and the one O'Reilly's camp are angry about – reveals "O'Reilly managed an impressive 8.88 name-calling incidents per minute — an insult every 6.8 seconds!"

On his show, Bill-O called the study bunk, and lashed out at the Times for printing Brooks' column. And here's where things get a little muddy, a little hard to follow. So keep up.

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It's rather bizarre to see the Los Angeles Times care about, let alone report on, that whole industry going on in its backyard. You know, that industry where they make movies and stuff? Oh, right, Hollywood. Even more out-of-place is the LAT mentioning a celebrity's name — so what are we supposed to do with Deborah Netburn and Joseph Kapsch's 12-step program for Lindsay Lohan to get back on her feet?

Among this twosome's suggestions for La Lohan: Stay home. Go back to school. Muzzle mom. Get a paparazzi game plan (can you believe the LAT mentioned the paparazzi?). Get a chauffer. Reevaluate the friend situation. Find a good man. Practice hair continuity. Magazine covers are for movie promotion only. Lose the singing career. Welcome yoga into your life. Leave us for a while.

It's gonna be hard, given that she's prone to violate everyone of those rules. In an evening.

What's it been? Like, five seconds since Sam Zell took over Tribune Co.? Just wanted to check and make sure we knew what ground we stood on, 'cause word arrived that the Los Angeles Times is slashing five percent of its staff, or some 150 jobs. (That would be 70 editorial slots.) And, as you've managed to guess by now, most of those axings will come in the form of voluntary buyouts, at least at first.

The news, announced by L.A. Observed, also brings word that LAT design director Joe Hutchinson is departing for Rolliing Stone.

And when Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone starts looking like a crazy better option than the LAT, well, that's significant and stuff.

• The $50 million Imus franchise is in peril. Quick, someone get Michael Richards.

• Inside Cable News v. Eat the Press: The biggest non-feud of the week.

• Larry Birkhead hasn't collected his $5 million tell-all story (complete with photoshoot!) because, well, he's an indecisive shit.

• LAT finally gets around to covering its own backyard.

• MySpace and Photobucket – the photo sharing service you use to keep porn from your wife – are feuding.

• WNYC fete its new home at a breakfast this morning. Which meant A.M. hours. Which meant there wasn't a chance in hell of us hitting that.

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The LAT woke up this morning and realized, "Hey, we're sucking at a lot of things. Let's do something about that." And they are. Focusing a bit on their website and naming – pardon us while we choke this one out – an "editor for innovation" should really spruce things up a bit. Oh, and also:

In his first significant action since becoming editor in mid-November, O'Shea said he would … launch a crash course for journalists to push ahead the melding of the newspaper and its website.

Said crash course will also include safety information on what to do in an emergency, like a water landing or the entire newspaper industry crumblings to its feet because it learned how to put the proper emphasis on this "Internet" word everyone keeps using just a few years too late.

If [Jennifer] Hudson goes on to win a best supporting actress Oscar, it will be another landmark moment in the breakdown between our pop culture's major and minor leagues. If anything bridges the chasm between amateur and professional, between crass and class, it would be a performer bouncing from the raucous populism of "American Idol" to the solemn elitism of the Academy Awards.

Anyone else mind if we jam a snowball down reporter Patrick Goldstein's throat for subjecting readers to this drivel?

Landmark moment? Pop culture's major and minor leagues? Chasm between amateur and professional? Raucous populism? Solemn elitism?

Um, we're pretty sure we're just talking about a nice girl in Hollywood who Americans might actually like. It's not like we're discussing a jihad or curing malaria or anything.

From LAT columnist Joel Stein's Jan. 2 column:

Have something to say? I don't care

Don't bother sending anything to that e-mail address below — because I don't care.

From today's LAT live chat:

Chat live with Joel Stein

The Times Op-Ed columnist will take your questions live Tuesday, Jan. 23 at 2 p.m.

Though they still won't launch a gossip column – and they definitely won't if David Geffen gets his hands on things, as we risk his friends being trashed in his own pub – the Los Angeles Times is finally realizing just what city it lives in. That would be Los Angeles. You know, where they make moves and stuff.

Sure, there's marked poverty and problems with the public school system in L.A., but the glitz and glamour of bright lights and the good chance Colin Farrell might flash his bits gives the Tribune paper the perfect opportunity to steal from industry trades like the Hollywood Reporter and Variety. Apparently, there's a $50 million (that's it?) niche ad spending industry devoted entirely toward swaying the ballots of award-giver-outer voters — and the Times wants in. No wonder why they moved their Oscar race-chronicling Envelope column from online-only to print. And, surprise of all surprises, it might actually be doing something.

Editorially, the impact has been more noticeable, said Anne Thompson, deputy film editor at The Hollywood Reporter. "The Envelope" was the first to report the news that the Golden Globes had nominated Leonardo DiCaprio for best actor for his performance in "The Departed" even though Warner Brothers had lobbied for a supporting-actor nomination.

"Los Angeles is a company town," Ms. Thompson said, "and now they're treating entertainment the way a Detroit paper would cover cars."

Yep: without a gossip column.

NPR media beater and Slate bubble burster (when Jack Shafer has the day off) Kim Masters gave us more of what we love yesterday afternoon: shattered dreams. While everyone – everyone! even reporters who work there – think David Geffen's ownership of Tribune's Los Angeles Times would be the best case scenario, Masters has news for y'all: Working for the Gef would, like, totally suck balls. Now watch as Kim trafficks in a little gossip and hearsay to reach her conclusion:

Is life under the Tribune Co. so nightmarish that Geffen seems like a dream? Both of them should know what Geffen can be like.

I've heard from multiple sources in L.A., including an editor at the Times, that Geffen told a Timesman that were he to succeed in buying the paper, his first order of business would be firing a reporter in the business section who had crossed him. If Geffen has that on his to-do list—much less at the top—he is the wrong man at the wrong Times. [...]

Geffen is famously vindictive. One reporter now at the Times once called me in tears after an encounter with him on the phone (one truly has to be on the receiving end of his verbal savagery to appreciate it). And does anyone think he'll tolerate articles that annoy him or his friends? And he has lots of friends—from Hollywood to Washington, from Steven Spielberg to Hillary Clinton.

But you know who Geffen isn't friends with? The Tribune Co. And Rupert Murdoch. And Dick Cheney. So at least when there's an article to do about Murdoch trying to buy out a Tribune property that Cheney might casually patron, you'll have full confidence it'll be an unbiased report. And then the world will be good again.

• E&P editor Joe Strupp lambasted for championing the Internet when, like, nobody understands it.

• NYT wading in the best job applicant pool: The New York Observer. Rebecca Dana is said to be departing Jared Kushner's camp for a seat alongside Bill Carter.

• Those redacted Iran documents are now all yours. Gee, whiz, NYT!

• Deborah Needleman, Jacob Weisberg, Malcolm Gladwell and Kim France all have nobody but each other this holiday.

• Google News alerts get the LAT into trouble.

• Joe Zee joins Ariel Foxman in finally landing a new job post-shopping mag fall out.

• Tina Fey to make bad 30 Rock jokes at Writers Guild Awards.

• LAT ain't giving Hispanics enough lovin'.

Could the LAT be extending out a friendly hand to potential buyer David Geffen? That's what moonlighting NYT blogger David Carr suspects. There are just too many flattering articles about Dreamgirls – Geffen's "pet project" – for the LAT to merely be towing the line of every other media outlet in fawning over the blockbuster project.

Still, the LAT and its Oscar website, The Envelope, has dived deeper into the tank and more often than almost any media outlet. The Bagger is no cynic — he actually enjoyed “We are Marshall” — but he has watched story after story emerge from his esteemed West Coast competitor and wondered if someone, certainly not him, would begin to think thusly:

“Dreamgirls,” is the long-beloved project of David Geffen, the Los Angeles macher who owned the film rights to the story and who has been rumored to be in talks with the Chandler family about teaming up on a bid for the LAT.

No one knows what, if anything, Mr. Geffen is going to do, but if you worked at the paper, might not the possibility that you would soon be calling him boss or He Who Must Be Obeyed have an impact on the amount of attention “Dreamgirls” gets?

While we were quick to notice former New York Post-cum-Fortune scribe Tim Arango's CNBC flattery when he thought he could land a gig on the biz channel, we're going out on a limb and remaining cautious about whether LAT writers even have the foresight or dot connecting ability to play into Geffen's back pocket. But when Lola Ogunnaike started feting ABC any chance she got as she auditioned for The View? Yeah, that was totally her M.O.