Times Axes OC Sports Department; Hoffman’s New Role
The LA Times’ new regional focus has struck the sports department of the Times OC, which is no more. A dozen or so editorial employees have been reassigned, spelling an end to game-by-game prep coverage. (Angels and Ducks coverage isn’t affected.) OC sports editor Mike Hiserman is figuring out how to cover OC from his new roost in LA. Some of the affected reporters are said to be balking at accepting reduced duties and a longer commute, and there are fears in Costa Mesa that other desks could be eliminated. OC edition editor Lennie LaGuire says some other operations are being evaluated, but she said the Times is committed to big-picture news coverage that its OC readers want More evidence of life existing outside the big corporation: Former Irvine Co. exec, Carol Hoffman, is now a principal with Coralee Newman and Pamela Sapetto (ex-Irvine Co. employees themselves) in Government Solutions, a government relations and entitlement firm. “I never had any idea it would be this exciting,” says Hoffman, whose clients include Vons, Irvine Ranch Water District and C.J. Segerstrom & Sons’ Home Ranch project. Her new office is still in Newport Center, just a few doors down from her old one in Donald Bren’s digs In search of life outside the small corporation: Sandi Cain, the OCBJ’s Jill-of-all-trades for the past 10 years, has decided to leave her reporting and copy-editing gig to become a full-time freelancer working from home (scainado@earthlink.net). She remains a contributor to the paper but no longer has to make sure that EE RR meets deadlines and crosses his t’s “I just want to say to all of you who ever drove behind a rock truck,it wasn’t us!” Kim Pugmire of Fontana-based Dispatch Transportation Inc., accepting his award at the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year dinner at the Marconi Automotive Museum in Tustin More recognition for South Coast Rep: Managing director Paula Tomei has been elected to the two-year presidency of Theatre Communications Group, the highest-ranking post in non-profit American theater “Party boy” Billy Fried says he’s learned a lesson: Networking may be hot, but seminars are not,at least not when the admission price is $500. “You live and learn,” said Fried after he had to call off a two-day Entrepreneur Summit at Chapman U due to lack of interest. But he said Digital Orange County’s first-Wednesday-of-the-month mixers go on, though this week’s event was cancelled,Fried decided not to push his luck on the Fourth of July, either The June 18 Sports Illustrated has a “Catching Up With” feature on OC developer and retired baseball star Doug DeCinces Gloria Zigner and Irv Goldberg are back from three-plus weeks in France, Belgium, Estonia, Holland, Finland, Norway and Sweden. “The women are more beautiful in OC,” says Goldberg.
