First Nuclear Meltdown Was In Suburban L.A..

This short film from the History Channel documents the formerly secret 1959 meltdown of the sodium-cooled reactor at the Rocketdyne research facility in the hills above Simi Valley, Calif.

Politics, environmental health, and history of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory site will be discussed 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 26, in the Performing Arts Center as part of Moorpark College's Year of the Environment Program.

The talk is free and open to the public. Parking is $1.

Three local activists, Christina Walsh, John Luker, and William Preston Bowling of Clean-up Rocketdyne, will host a discussion of the history and current legal environmental status of the site in Simi Hills.

The research facility saw at least four nuclear accidents and rocket fuel contamination, and has been implicated as a major health hazard, according to the activists.

"This may be one of the biggest local environmental issues that directly affects our community," says Environmental Science Professor Lori Clark of Moorpark College.

For more information, see http://www.cleanuprocketdyne.org/, http://h2ohno.com/, http://www.rocketdynewatch.org and http://www.acmela.org. Sphere: Related Content

Who Owns This Place?

Click and laugh! Sphere: Related Content

The Rise of the 'Citizen Paparazzi'

Hunger for Celebrity Gossip Helps Create a Market For Amateurs, But Not Everyone Is Happy

Erin Horgan is more than a casual John Mayer fan. When she learned about a Caribbean cruise being offered earlier this month with the singer as the featured entertainment, the 22-year-old worker at a Hyannis, Mass., scrapbooking store didn't hesitate to drop $1,000 for a ticket.

As it turned out, she got even more contact with her favorite singer than she expected: Mr. Mayer, hamming it up for fellow passengers, donned a neon green thong-style swimsuit as Ms. Horgan and others furiously snapped photographs.

In a blog post after returning home, Ms. Horgan joked that she was going to send the pictures to celebrity magazine Us Weekly.

She didn't have to. Within days, Ms. Horgan heard not only from Us Weekly, but also from MTV, VH1, Rolling Stone, Blender and Newsweek. She ended up selling photos to Newsweek and VH1 – she says she was offered "a couple hundred" for each photo, but declines to be more specific.

"The thought of getting shots that anyone was interested in was never on my mind," she said.

Ms. Horgan is part of the changing face of the paparazzi trade, an Internet-fueled industry that feeds on the public's seemingly insatiable interest in entertainment news. [Click for MORE] Sphere: Related Content

Twin Cities-based Rake Mag Drops Print Edition, Remains Online

The last edition of the Rake magazine of Minneapolis has rolled off the presses. Publisher Tom Bartel told staff today that the monthly publication will discontinue its print edition immediately, but it will continue to publish online.

Bartel said a lack of advertising and increasing costs of printing and production are the main reasons for the demise of the print version of the magazine that he and his wife, Kristin Henning, began in 2002. The March edition is currently on newsstands.

The announcement means that most of the 15 writers, editors, production staff and bookkeepers are out of a job. [Click for MORE]

• The Rake

> Time Inc. to Make More Cuts This Year
> Sun-Times Media Group's stock opens at $1; NYSE trading halted
> Who Put These Guys In Charge? (Why Newspapers Are Failing) Sphere: Related Content

Albuquerque Tribune Shuts Down

The Albuquerque Tribune said goodbye Saturday to the city it had served for nearly nine decades as it closed in what observers described as the latest newspaper to succumb to the digital age.

Eighteen editors, reporters and photographers hunkered down in front of computer screens to put out the last edition. The final front-page headline read simply, "Goodnight, Albuquerque."

The Tribune's circulation had dropped from 42,000 in 1988 to about 9,600; some blamed the advent of an era in which readers increasingly shun ink and paper to consume news online. Its main competitor was the much larger Albuquerque Journal. [Click for MORE]

Phill Casaus, editor of The Albuquerque Tribune, holds up the last edition of the newspaper while reporter Ollie Reed Jr., left, applauds and copy editor Paul Maldonado Jr., right, sits at a desk where the final button was pushed, sending the paper to print on Saturday Feb. 23, 2008 . The Tribune closed Saturday after 86 years in business . [AP Photo]
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What That McCain Article Didn’t Say

By CLARK HOYT
Public Editor, New York Times

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said the article about John McCain that appeared in Thursday’s paper was about a man nearly felled by scandal who rebuilt himself as a fighter against corruption but is still “careless about appearances, careless about his reputation, and that’s a pretty important thing to know about somebody who wants to be president of the United States.”

But judging by the explosive reaction to the 3,000-word article, most readers saw it as something else altogether. They saw it as a story about illicit sex. And most were furious at The Times. [Click for MORE] Sphere: Related Content

Mike Huckabee on Weekend Update

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