Mobile phones didn’t really take off until the late 1990s, but the first of the things made a telephone call on this day in 1973. According to historical sources, Motorola DynaTAC inventor Martin Cooper placed that first mobile call to a rival inventor at Bell Labs. While the conversational details are lost to history, the first guy probably said something like “I’m kind of breaking up here, did you say ‘seven,’ seven p.m.?” And then the next guy likely said something along the lines of, “Gah, crap, I can’t hear you at all. Just text me and I’ll put it on my calendar. You still there? Hello? Hellooooo?”

One or both inventors then probably muttered something vile, and went on with their day.

Cooper was inspired by Captain Kirk’s communicator on the original “Star Trek” show. And he says the first batch of prototypes included a lot of things we’d recognize as an “old phone” even today: flip phones, clamshells, etc. But he went with the big “brick” style phone because it was the simplest model. Cooper is still inventing stuff in Silicon Valley. Stay in school, kids! And quit playing with your phone during class.

Photo by DeiMosz

“Give yourself a daily limit for checking Twitter. You can have a chart next to the computer in order to track the frequency. You can also print the word STOP in bold red at the bottom of the chart to serve as a reminder to stop.” Also: “Give yourself a reward for not engaging in the behavior. Remember that checking Twitter may be intrinsically rewarding; therefore, every time you check, you reinforce the behavior. Replace the reward of checking with another reward.” Also: Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?

People Will Be Singing That Song From From The White Stripes “Elephant” Album Long After Elephants Themselves Are Extinct

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_QbCY9gQJ4

The White Stripes’ greatest album, Elephant, came out ten years ago this week. You probably know about how the first song, “Seven Nation Army,” has become a ubiquitous (and sort of fascistic!) chant in sports stadiums across the country. It is a great song. A “classic” for sure. A better rock song has not been written since. What has happened since is that 62 percent of the world’s forest elephants, a distinct species native to central Africa, have been killed for the booming ivory trade in China and Japan. This is one of the more depressing things we can learn from the running Scientific American feature “Extinction Countdown.” It will be such a bummer when we have to tell our grandkids about these amazing animals that used to be such a big part of our thinking about the world — “Elephants were the biggest land mammals on earth! They used to live in the wild instead of just at the clone farms!” Sigh.

“Why is US sperm so popular?”

by Megan L. Wood

Brought to you by Jameson Black Barrel. Click here for more information.

If you live in Brooklyn you probably feel like you’ve turned down picklebacks in every conceivable watering hole in the borough. If you’re visiting Brooklyn, you’re probably blown away by the sheer number of places to consume alcohol in a social setting. Either way, refer to this guide to figure out where you want to go for pretty much any occasion. But don’t drink picklebacks — it pretty much guarantees other people won’t make out with you.

Start the night
Soda Bar
629 Vanderbilt Ave
No website
Prospect Heights

Even though The Soda Bar in Prospect Heights used to be an ice cream parlor, it now looks and feels like one of your friend’s apartments, as in kind of run down but who cares because they have a back patio. This place has a good happy hour and decent prices after that. Burgers and fried food guarantee you’ll have something proper in your stomach. (Photo: Flickr: Paul Lowry)

Dive
The Subway Bar
527 Metropolitan Avenue
No website
Williamsburg

I’m from a land where most bars have veterans from the last four American wars looking down female patron’s shirts from the cracked barstools, so I don’t throw the words “dive bar” around loosely. However, The Subway Bar (right off the Lorimer L stop) in Williamsburg qualifies. There’s no food, no happy hour, and the bathroom is gross. But you’re there to prove you can hang, so hang.

Bring your dog
The Gate
321 5th Avenue
www.thegatebrooklyn.blogspot.com
Park Slope

One time I came here with a beagle and it had one of those toys called kongs that you shove a treat inside so the dog can obsessively lick it and be distracted into behaving. Well, another one of the dogs managed to stealthily steal the beagle’s toy while I was drinking my version of a kong, (pint of beer) and did not notice that the beagle was dog bullied. We left without ever finding the kong or the thief. I still like The Gate and it’s an easy way to meet other dog owners and debate the best local dog parks and other boring stuff only dog owners want to talk about.

Cocktails
The Manhattan Inn
632 Manhattan Avenue
www.themanhattaninn.com
Greenpoint

Mixologists, right? Sometimes you need someone who knows the right proportion of candied ginger to Jameson. That person is a mixologist. Because if you asked a bartender to make you a Corpse Reviver #2, they would sigh audibly and embarrass you in front of your friends. Seriously though, bartenders who won’t make mojitos? That’s like a babysitter who doesn’t change diapers. Anyway. The mixologists at The Manhattan Inn will happily concoct something special for you while you listen to the sweet sounds of a live pianist and not a bartender who thinks he’s better than you because you’re on the other side of the bar.

Drink outside
Gowanus Yacht Club
323 Smith Street
No website
Gowanus and Carroll Gardens border

The name Gowanus Yacht Club is a hilarious joke because, obviously, it’s probably not even that safe to canoe on the polluted Gowanus Canal. The bar isn’t open in the winter because the whole thing is basically picnic tables underneath some aluminum siding on a vacated piece of asphalt. Drinks outside during the day is a national summer pastime, and this is the place to do it. Eat cheddarwurst and drink cans of cheap brew without being ironic about it — you should at least try, Brooklyn. (Photo: Flickr: Wikimedia Commons)

First Date
Black Mountain Winehouse
415 Union Street
www.blackmountainwinehouse.com
Gowanus

Aww, you guys met on OkCupid.com? Where did you go for your first date? Obviously, you went to Black Mountain Winehouse because it has an intimate setting, romantic fireplace, and friendly waitstaff. Plus, house wine for under seven dollars a glass? Aww, you guys, he got the dreaded red teeth from drinking Merlot and she still liked him. So cute.

Last Date
Rebar
147 Front Street
http://rebarnyc.com/
Dumbo

Eeh, you guys met on Match.com? And you thought he’d be a good guy to date because he’s in finance and could therefore afford to grow up and get married and buy a brownstone in Brooklyn for you and your future kids? Well, probably meet him at Rebar. One, it’s close to the city so he won’t freak out about having to take a car service all the way back to the Upper West Side. Two, the bar is stocked strongly with draft beers and attractive bartenders, so your whole night won’t be a waste. Three, the back of Rebar is a maze of hallways and private rooms and the bathrooms are somewhere back there by a screening room, so you can just hide out/slip out the back and never have to listen to a date tell you that they “play hard and work harder” ever again. (Photo: Flickr: Dumbo NYC)

Trivia
Black Rabbit
91 Greenpoint Avenue
http://blackrabbitbarnyc.com
Greenpoint

Black Rabbit has “the world’s nerdiest trivia night” every Tuesday from 8 to 10pm. So if you love bar trivia then scoot on over for bonus shots and a $25 bar tab to the winner. Personally, I feel like bar trivia brings out the worst in everyone but that’s because my older brother constantly cheated at Trivial Pursuit for Juniors when we were kids. He probably still does. (Photo: Flickr: Open Privacy)

Shake it
Bembe
81 South 6th Street
www.bembe.us
Williamsburg

Bembe doesn’t just do a small corner of the bar where a few brave souls are grooving along to a Katy Perry song on the jukebox. No. Bembe has completely insane live Brazilian music with bongos and cowbells. Everyone dances until 4 am. It’s the kind of place where you’d feel uncomfortable if you weren’t dancing with a caipirinha in your hand. Go there and dance.

Meet girls
Lavender Lake
383 Carroll St
http://lavenderlake.com/
Gowanus

Maybe it’s the pleasant sounding name that makes girls feel really comfortable here. Or the bathrooms that have fancy soaps. Or the four sexy dudes that own it. Or the light wood beams reminiscent of a Norwegian lake house. Or the cocktails with lavender infused vodka. Or the back patio where we could just go outside and talk?

Meet dudes
Bierkraft
191 5th Avenue
www.bierkraft.com
Park Slope

Maybe it’s the refrigerators filled with hundreds of different beers that make dudes hang out here? Or the gourmet meat sandwiches? Or the sort of intimidating beer nerds who fill up Growlers in house? Or the Pacman machine? Or the back patio where we could just go outside and talk? (Photo: Flickr: Bernt Rostad)

Drag Queen Karaoke
Hope & Anchor
347 Van Brunt Street
www.hopeandanchorredhook.com
Red Hook

Friday and Saturday nights at Hope & Anchor are karaoke nights, hosted by a fabulous drag queen. What fun! Tell your whiny friends they can take a bus to Red Hook or pay for a car service, because the drinks are cheap! You’ll save money by hanging out in Red Hook you guys. And remember Hurricane Sandy? The area needs your support. Go sing!

Video Games
Barcade
388 Union Avenue
www.barcadebrooklyn.com
Williamsburg

Wait, you love video games? Really love them? Did you grow up with a semi-permanent indent on your right thumb from holding down the B button while playing Mario Kart on NES? Me, too. Barcade is where you can get drunk and play your favorite video games from childhood: Contra, Asteroids, Ms. Pacman, Paperboy, Centipede, they’re all there. When Barcade invests in The Simpsons game or Dr. Mario, I will secretly live in the backroom so I can play uninterrupted after the bar closes. (Photo: Flickr: Rob Boudon

Fireplace
Brooklyn Buschenschank
320 Court Street
www.brooklynbuschenschank.com
Carroll Gardens

The brownstone that I live in used to have two fireplaces until the landlord ripped them out, leaving only the cement indications on the hardwood floors that something so primal and comforting used to exist in my home. So now I have to go out and search for bars with fireplaces. Brookly Buschenschank has a proper wood burning fireplace and plenty of space for everyone to enjoy it. Plus bratwurst.

Beer Garden
Greenwood Park
555 7th Avenue
www.greenwoodparkbk.com/blog
Greenwood Heights

Greenwood Park finally opened last summer and is 13,000 square feet of beer garden next to a picturesque cemetery. The bar has an industrial vibe with all-important big bathrooms (lots of beer equals lots of need to empty your bladder) and bocce ball courts. Fair warning, you’re near Park Slope so there will be strollers. Fair warning, if you bring your children to a bar they’ll probably hear curse words so stop glaring.

Gay
Metropolitan
559 Lorimer Street
www.metropolitanbarny.com
Williamsburg

I’m not an expert on gay bars. But I do know fun bars and Metropolitan has a lot of fun to offer: skee ball, photo booth, happy hour, pool table, dance floor, and bbq on Sundays. Sounds fun to me.

Beachside
Ruby’s Bar and Grill
1213 Riegelmanns Boardwalk
www.rubysconeyisland.com
Coney Island

Coney Island is accessible via the F Train. Ruby’s Bar and Grill is right on the boardwalk and plays incredibly loud music from the 80s and 90s. They just renewed their lease for another eight years, so you’ve got time to make it out there and eat fried clams. No excuses. (Photo: Flickr: EmilyDickinsonRidesaBMX)

Scene
Hotel Delmano
82 Berry Street
www.hoteldelmano.com
Williamsburg

Hotel Delmano is the place to go to stand around and look cool and pretend you’re not checking out every person who walks in but you obviously are, because if you weren’t trying to get laid you’d have stayed home and played Ruzzle.

Take your parents
Brooklyn Ale House
62 Henry Street
www.henrystreetalehouse.com
Brooklyn Heights

Your parents want to go somewhere civil where the bartender doesn’t look like a high school student and they can a decent mixed drink and a quality meal. Brooklyn Ale House is that place. For Gods sake, haven’t they seen enough of Williamsburg already? Why won’t you just move back to the Midwest and have a baby?

End the night
Union Pool
484 Union Avenue
http://union-pool.com/
Williamsburg

Yes, Union Pool. You’re probably rolling your eyes, but think about it. When you’ve spent a night imbibing, you want to end up somewhere where you know there’ll be a lot of other party people, that’s also close to the train. And there are good places to make out or eat tacos, depending on your mood. Just remember what I said about picklebacks. (Photo: Flickr: Rachel From Cupcakes Takes the Cake)

Bloody Mary
Black Swan
1048 Bedford Avenue
www.blackswannyc.com
Bedford Stuyvesant

If you have a hangover, hair of the dog doesn’t really help, that’s a myth. However, the bacon, cheese, and shrimp that come tucked into your Bloody Swan at Black Swan in Bed Stuy will distract you from your hangover. Try not to think about the name Bloody Swan. Michelin recommended.

Top Photo: themanhattaninn.com

Look, I appreciate the effort. I applaud everyone who has done their part even though it has become more than apparent over the course of what is almost 70 years that, no matter the hopes and dreams and signs and style guides, it is just not happening. So can we stop referring to it as the “Avenue of the Americas” already? Let it die.

Did you have to consciously put aside your personal reservations about salad to become the designated pecs and abs, as the “Zesty Guy,” for Kraft’s dressings?

Did you ever think you’d be subjected to gay guys who are TV execs ogling you on-air while you’re trying to stick to your agency-approved content delivery stratagems?

Did you ever imagine your first experience with “Good Morning America” would be because you were branded content?

Did you ever think that modeling would finally go 3-D?

Did your agent call a long meeting in which you two discussed if the Kraft family of salad-related brands was good or bad for your brand? How many times did the dude from the Old Spice commercials come up?

Did you have to have a conversation with your various agencies about your real name, Anderson Davis, and them asking if there was enough room in the “Anderson” marketplace for you to continue using your real name?

Can you tell us the name of the dude from the Old Spice commercials?

Isn’t it intriguing that you’re both former football players?

Did you ever think there’d be a entire line of work for men dedicated specifically to inspire objectification in service of a brand? Do you think it’s “good for women”?

Did you ever think you’d have to figure out how to deal with answering people on Twitter who are asking if you’re gay-friendly in an agency-approved way?

Did you ever think you’d have access to so much Italian dressing? OMG what are you going to do with all that dressing.

Aren’t you glad you’re not representing Kraft brand Oscar Mayer though?

Did you ever think that brand marketers would be so bad at embedding YouTube videos on a website?

Do you ever get the Alanis version of “My Humps” stuck in your head late at night and after a while you start inserting “dressing” into the lyrics?

Did you ever think the word “zesty” would start looking so strange? Zesty. Zesty. ZeSTy!!111! Oh my God, what is that word? Is it Arabic? Does anyone have an OED log-in? Oh my God, “zest,” right, that is French, that is so freaky. Zesssty. Zzzzessttyyyy. LOL. Are we asleep or are we awake?

What a long way we’ve come in the last ten years! “Anyone with a Tumblr, Twitter or YouTube account is practicing journalism in its most authentic form,” Times deputy editorial page editor Terry Tang told some college students the other day. From sneering at blogs to embracing the pamphleteer model of social media, well, we’ve all come a long way, baby. The joke’s on someone though. (Probably “all of us.”)

http://soundcloud.com/the_awl/april-3-2013

Mark Morris, The NY Review of Books, Junot Diaz and… Clint Mansell?

My office was the living room closet in a huge one-bedroom in a 1920s East Hollywood apartment court, across the street from the big blue Scientology headquarters in the old Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. There were built-in bookshelves and just enough space for a chair and a laptop and an ashtray. The neighbor lady’s rescued pit bulls romped outside in the overgrown garden, and that electric L.A. sunlight came filtered through the grimy old French windows to the hardwood floors. It was a very pleasant place to work, my friends lived within walking distance in other cheap apartments in Los Feliz, and I had a bad case of being in love with Los Angeles.

The eastside of 2001 was still cheap, still scarred by the Rodney King riots that crested in Silver Lake before falling back to the poorer neighborhoods that always take the heavy damage in these insurrections. I was writing a weekly media column for USC’s Online Journalism Review and had enough money to buy a Nash Rambler from somebody in the neighborhood — the car didn’t really run, so it sat behind the building in my $25-a-month parking spot. I walked everywhere.

But mostly, like always, I typed. Jim Romenesko’s blog was the first thing on my screen each morning, and I wondered why there wasn’t such a blog to cover all the media in Los Angeles. Over the course of a pot of coffee, my new L.A. site was born. Blogger, the wonderful new tool from Pyra Labs that let anyone create a handsome website, had a new “multiple authors” feature. I signed up my underemployed comrades in the neighborhood and LAExaminer.com was born. It would be another 18 months before Richard Riordan, the mayor elected in the wake of those riots, would very nearly launch the Los Angeles Examiner weekly newspaper with me as the editor.

LAExaminer.com was all black and white, its earthquake-Hollywood sign title strip ending in a photo of the Griffith Park Observatory dome run through a PaintShopPro filter. The style was just the way we talked around endless pitchers at Ye Rustic Inn up the street on Hillhurst, full of moral certainty and outrage and cheap jokes — it’s what is widely practiced and critically dismissed as “snark” today, although we never had any interest in celebrities. The dreary Mayor James Hahn and the pompous columnists at the terrible Los Angeles Times were regular topics, as was boosterism about the Lakers, public transportation and the eastside neighborhoods in general. We were reflexively opposed to the bland wealthy valet parking lot of the Westside.

The site was little noticed for a while, and the most engaged reader was a Malibu real estate agent who was on a permanent crusade to discredit the socialist writer Mike Davis, who dismantled the Los Angeles mythology so brilliantly in his books City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear. That Mike Davis was one of my very favorite writers and had completely shaped my understanding of L.A. never seemed to occur to our readers who believed we were a conservative alternative to the Los Angeles Times. We just hated boring newspapers, and the LAT was the worst big-city example of the preciousness and overeducation plaguing the still-powerful newspaper industry at the turn of the century. Politics is the realm of the dumb: If you’re not blatantly political in your approach to life, politically obsessed people will read exactly what they want into your writing.

In the 2001 mayoral primary and run-off, we vigorously endorsed the tattooed Latino liberal from the barrio, Antonio Villaraigosa, over the awful insider James Hahn. The eternally begrudged right-wingers of Los Angeles decided we disliked Hahn because he was a Democrat, and not because he was a dullard moderate. The anonymity of the L.A. Examiner, itself named in tribute to the gaudy old Los Angeles Herald-Examiner that said goodbye a dozen years earlier, added to a growing mythology that we were crusty old newspaper burnouts who took the white flight express to the suburban San Fernando Valley.

There were no bylines by design, but the unpaid contributors included comrades who worked for the Los Angeles Business Journal and Los Angeles Daily News and a handsome globe-trotting war correspondent who worked for the classroom news show “Channel One” with Anderson Cooper. Most posts were written by me or Matt Welch, who I’d met at an English-language newspaper in Prague and who lived a few blocks away at Vermont and Los Feliz Boulevard, behind the Chevron station.

There was no advertising for blogs at the dawn of this century — even Google, which had yet to buy Blogger, forbid “personal sites” from joining its text-ad network. LAExaminer.com was strictly a hobby, created because nobody else would do it, and the events of that September led to a gradual abandonment of the site. Still, it was so much fun that we asked our journalist-turned-entrepeneur pal Nick Denton to become publisher, but he had grown weary of California and said he was headed to Manhattan to launch his own snarky media blog where it was most needed. Gawker.com debuted at the beginning of 2003 beneath a banner for Corocan, the big NYC apartment broker. How did he sell a sponsorship on a blog? He hadn’t — it was a fake banner ad meant to look like a sponsorship. Corcoran apparently knew nothing of this genius move.

As the long insane blur of autumn 2001 gave way to a gloomy Los Angeles winter, I retired from my brief tenure as the token liberal in an increasingly nutty realm remembered with scorn today as “warblogging.” I had lost my USC media column and main source of income due to some idiotic battle with the Powers That Be in which I was the primary idiot. I had also moved house, to a crumbling cottage a few blocks past the old Vista Theater, and gotten married, and sold a comedic thriller to a small publisher in Australia — all of which is to say, I was utterly broke and shamefully unemployable. LAExaminer.com was still there, mostly untended, and I went back to it without much enthusiasm. Sweating at a thrift-store metal desk in the spider-infested carriage house that now served as my office, I looked at the ringing phone for a while and for some reason answered it instead of letting it go to voice mail.

“I’m trying to reach Ken Layne,” she said. “Matt Welch gave me your number. I’ve got Mayor Riordan on the line.”

Term limits backed by pre-Mayor Riordan meant that post-Mayor Riordan wasn’t mayor anymore — the odious James Hahn had won the run-off election — but Dick Riordan maintained his mayoral title amongst his friends and underlings. And in his new boredom, the very wealthy investment lawyer and politician was thinking about publishing a newspaper. Parties unknown had suggested he get in touch with the people behind the L.A. Examiner. When Welch and I were first summoned to Riordan’s low-slung California rambler in Brentwood a few weeks later, we met a garrulous and somewhat disheveled old Irishman full of zeal and filthy jokes. He was always a kind host and gave his scruffy low-income visitors his full attention — during one session in his Mexican-tiled living room, the unseen presence of his personal secretary had to repeatedly remind him by intercom that his friend Bill Clinton was waiting on the line. As in New York City, Riordan’s birthplace, a moderate Republican in coastal California is a moderate Democrat anywhere else in the country. I liked him right away.

California’s angry Republican base did not care for Riordan at all, and it was this reality that kept him out of the governor’s mansion. Riordan had the lead over Gov. Gray Davis, the unloved Democrat, but he couldn’t win the GOP primary. On March 5 of 2002, the alleged RINO Riordan lost badly to Bill Simon, who talked tough and had once worked for September 11 hero Rudy Giuliani, who at that point had still somehow saved America from terrorism by being the mayor of New York on 9/11.

Riordan could’ve hired editors with the right connections and right résumés, but there was something about those printouts of LAExaminer.com spread around the gigantic coffee table that bewitched him. Even as he mused about hiring this or that LAT veteran or New York editor and had Welch and I bring in a succession of blogging friends with far bigger names than our own — Jeff Jarvis who launched Entertainment Weekly, Tim Blair of TIME Australia and Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph in Sydney — the only editor on the only masthead of the only issue of the Los Angeles Examiner was me.

The formless planning stage dragged on so long that I had mostly given up on the project, and in the October days following yet another birthday without a steady income, I was morose. Back in my terrible office where the nighttime raccoons and opossums would step inside to eat the ever-present spiders swarming the floor, I listlessly worked on a sequel to the trashy thriller that had barely sold, in Australia, and was uniformly rejected by a number of New York agents because its author was unknown and the story was basically a comedy about terrorism. You just cannot overestimate how crazy everybody was after 9/11, for years after 9/11.

It was time for another ridiculous phone call out of the blue, on this occasion from Rick Barrs, the editor of New Times LA. I had become friendly with Tony Ortega, then the managing editor for the local New Times alt-weekly that had replaced the old L.A. Reader a few years earlier, and Tony needed a news editor. Would I agree to stay for a minimum of a year if they gave me the job?

At this point I would’ve signed a multi-lifetime contract with Scientology’s Sea Org in exchange for a paycheck. I said yes, of course, and we made arrangements for me to come to the office the next day.

That was the day New Times LA was shut down in a deal with between its corporate parent in Phoenix and the Village Voice company, which owned LA Weekly at the time. I barely had a chance to begin drinking heavily when Riordan’s people were calling again, because Riordan had apparently been offered various assets of New Times LA, including the then-crucial news rack locations around town, if he agreed to launch his rumored weekly.

We were back in semi-real business, even though we had lost some of the original team at this point. Welch had taken the first job offered after several years of rejection: a fill-in contract editing job for the libertarian monthly Reason, which somehow led to him working for the L.A. Times op-ed page under Michael Kinsley. In any case, Welch didn’t have the time to do the prototype issue of Riordan’s Los Angeles Examiner. Meanwhile, the word got out to the print reporters: A couple of common bloggers had hooked up with the very wealthy former mayor. Here’s the glossy Los Angeles Magazine, from the same dismal October:

Daily newspapers are struggling, yet these are fertile times for some journalists. Blogs — stands for “Web logs” — are flourishing; they are Web sites with short hit-and-run commentary and abundant links to other blogs, articles, and sites. Blogs are a pure expression of the Internet: unmediated opinion and information passing from hand to hand. Blogs promise a reckless, independent use of the First Amendment, journalism without fact checking, editors, advertisers — nothing but writers and readers communicating directly. In theory they offer across-the-spectrum opinion, electronic libertarianism.

One local specimen, LA Examiner, has clearly captured Riordan’s eyeballs. LA Examiner offers a wealth of information without generating much itself. What it does generate is a mountain of opinion, mostly press criticism. The Examiner links to a smattering of local newspaper stories, making it a great grab-and-read for journalists and insiders perusing Southern California news. But what has gotten it far more attention is its skewering of the Los Angeles Times. From reading the site entries and the e-mail from its readers, you can summarize LA Examiner’s opinion of the Times this way: The dum-dums blew it again! Much like Riordan’s review, a dated tone creeps into the Examiner’s criticisms — they sound like Civil War re-enactors suiting up to restage creaky battles over “political correctness” and “liberal bias.” The tone is acerbic, patronizing, witty, whiny. (Full disclosure: They criticized me for being soft on Times columnist Steve Lopez.)

The site is stewarded by Matt Welch and Ken Layne, a pair of young college dropouts and veterans of media start-ups who talk like insiders, who with their access to the Internet are insiders. Blogs scramble the divide between reader and writer, professional and amateur. This drives a lot of print journalists crazy. But while bloggers go heavy on the anti-print rants, there’s a passion there, too. Thanks to the Internet, the outsiders are in. The Web makes every journalist equivalent to every other; it makes everyone a media critic, media critics who don’t even need Riordan’s millions to get their message out.

Calling people “Civil War re-enactors” is a not very subtle way of implying racism is behind a dislike of shitty newspapers written by wealthy white people with Ivy League degrees, which is… insane? But the magazine writer got part of it right: I plead guilty to hating dull newspapers, and I plead guilty to a pro-Los Angeles boosterism — journalists should love the beat they cover. Local journalists should love the town they call home. Pinpoint what’s wrong and raise hell about it, but if your approach is always dreary and schoolmarmy, you should go out of business. The voice of a city cannot hate itself.

Dick Riordan still disliked the Los Angeles Times, but didn’t seem to have his heart in the Los Angeles Examiner once we finally needed to produce a sample issue. Still, he was paying us, and I liked finally getting paid. I assigned features and illustrations and dutifully called upon Riordan’s famous friends to get some celebrity submissions. The contributor list for that handsome tabloid issue included Cathy Seipp, since lost to cancer, and Billy Crystal, who came through when Steve Martin didn’t. Recycled LAExaminer.com posts and capsule restaurant reviews written by a drummer friend of mine filled the holes in the layout. In hopes of presenting an apolitical front to the city’s well-off liberal media watchers, I got the talented ESPN writer Eric Neel to do a piece on the Lakers’ dysfunctional dynasty, and on the cover I put a caricature of L.A. heroes Shaq and Kobe doing their best to ignore one another. I shouldn’t have been surprised when some critics of the whole enterprise complained that the politics-free cover was secretly political, because illustrator Roman Genn freelanced for National Review and caricatured two famous people who were black.

Still, there was real excitement among journalists because a new paper is always a cause for hope. Each time I did another interview about the prototype, the call would end with the reporter sheepishly asking if I had begun hiring for the paper. I dutifully worked the local press and attended our celebratory launch dinner at Gladstone’s Malibu, Riordan’s beachside restaurant. But I didn’t believe there would be a paper. When my wife got a good job offer in Reno, I encouraged her to take it. My prospects couldn’t be any worse up there. Besides, the journalist’s dream had almost come true: You could work anywhere with “access to the Internet.” If you could find any work.

Riordan was thinking of running for governor again, this time in the combination recall/replacement election of 2003 that would throw Davis out of office — the loathsome car-alarm salesman Darrell Issa led the recall effort from the right-wing suburbs of North San Diego County, although he ultimately got nothing for his trouble. Riordan was still popular statewide, still the winner of a match against Davis. But that summer, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his run on the Jay Leno show. The action-movie star and Riordan had privately agreed that only one of them would run. At the time, Arnold seemed a perfect candidate.

Riordan stood down and the Los Angeles Examiner died on the vine. I watched Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” for the only time in my life that night in August, from my crappy new house in the Great Basin Desert. A start-up that doesn’t go all the way is a heartbreak, but the start-up part is always fun. What has never really been said about Dick Riordan’s decision is that he was absolutely right, as a businessman. He had owned a paper before, a weekly in Pasadena, and he figured out that a newspaper launched in 2003 was dead on arrival. After all his meetings and phone calls with everybody from the alt-weekly people to the New York Observer’s publisher, Riordan the successful venture capitalist didn’t see any future in free weeklies.

LA CityBeat took the Justice Department-imposed slot on the Los Angeles alt-weekly market and was gone a few years later. New Times would buy its rival Village Voice and then divest of the thin little papers altogether. The Internet bled all these things dry.

Matt Welch and Ken Layne with a painting of Matt Welch and Ken Layne by the artist Greg McIlvaine, Los Angeles, 2002. (Photo by Tony Pierce.)

Previously: How To Get Your Readers To Write Your Newspaper For You