THE DEAN OF CITY HALL
--Media Circus--
I couldn't help correcting someone who commented not long ago on L.A. Observed, the virtual media water cooler site, that Marc Haefele is the "Dean of City Hall reporters." No offense to Haefele, who has covered local politics for a long time, but everyone knows that Rick Orlov of the Daily News is the Dean of City Hall reporters. Orlov has been at it since 1988, for a daily paper, while Haefele's background is in alt-weeklies. Orlov, who's 55, did remind me that Haefele is older than he is. Those City Hall reporters - question which one of them is Dean and they can be cattier than a sewing circle.
Actually, Orlov (who also covers state politics) is that rare media type who's never catty and has no enemies. Off-the-record with him means off-the-record, and he's long had a reputation for being an old-fashioned straight shooter who honors secrets not only in print, but also in hallway gossip. "He's a person you can trust," Richard Riordan told me once when he was mayor. "He's not some young person trying to prove himself with a gotcha."
"A big part of it is, you don't play favorites," Orlov said the other day over lunch at Pete's Café, the new downtown hangout for local pols. "I always remember what an editor told me when I started out: 'These people are not your friends.'"
They are, however, collegial and friendly sources, and plenty of them stopped by to say hello to Orlov during lunch that day, shortly before the primary election. One was the building's owner, developer Tom Gilmore. The L.A. Press Club had originally wanted to house their new offices there, but too many old-timers worried that the Skid Row-adjacent location was dangerous. "We should put a sign on our door: Fourteen months and not a death yet," joked Gilmore.
It's not as if Orlov is above needling his sources. He's long been openly cynical, for instance, about the grandstanding and ineffective ways of the L.A. City Council. "They came out against Prop. 187, so you knew it would pass," he said. "They're for 55 and 56, so you know they'll fail." (Rick was just half right; only 56 failed.) "And then there's the war in Iraq. They were against the Patriot Act, and there's a lot of things to dislike about the Patriot Act, but I can't believe anyone in Washington cares what the L.A. City Council thinks."
I've known Orlov since I worked for the Daily News in the early '80s, when he was the paper's city editor. Years later, when I was writing a pseudonymous column about the Los Angeles Times for the now-defunct Buzz magazine, he was able to quickly figure out the real person behind the persona after I made the mistake of mentioning to a Daily News reporter that I used to work at the paper, too. Rick scanned the masthead, saw my name and remembered my style - discovering in five minutes what at that point the Times had been trying to find out for almost two years.
But he often beats Spring Street on much bigger stories, and having no enemies doesn't mean his reporting never sticks in anyone's craw. Recently, airport commission president Ted Stein put his hand up to stop Orlov from approaching him for a quote; Stein hadn't liked a Daily News report that the district attorney's office was looking into a connection between Stein's fund-raising and airport contracts.
"He said, 'After all the years we've known each other!'" Orlov recalled, shrugging that Stein really had no reason to be angry that he didn't get to present his side of the story. "I said, 'Well, Ted, you wouldn't return my phone calls.'"
The "pay to play" airport commission story is just one in a long string of Daily News scoops on the Times Orlov has raked in over the years. After the Rodney King beating, he was able to reach the normally inaccessible Daryl Gates because he had the then-police chief's home phone number. One of his favorite bits of one-upmanship came in the early '90s, when then-D.A. Ira Reiner gave what was supposed to be an exclusive scoop to the Times announcing he wouldn't run for reelection. Orlov found out and quickly got the same news in the Daily News the same day. The Times was livid.
"The Times just doesn't care about a lot of stuff that goes on," Orlov said. "Their attitude is they're a monopoly, and it's not news if they don't write about it."
I loved the "Cripes, it's the media" headline for the story Orlov wrote (with Beth Barrett) this winter about mayor James Hahn's annual Christmas party for the press, paid for by the global spinmeisters at Fleishman-Hillard. Doug Dowie, who runs the PR giant's L.A. office, had remarked, "Cripes, it's the media. Chips and plain-wrap booze," about keeping expenses down. As it happens, Dowie used to be managing editor of the Daily News.
"In some ways it's a semi-conflict," Orlov said about reporting Fleishman-Hillard stories, "because Dowie was my boss, but he was only there a few years. He said to me once, 'How long do I have to carry that burden?'"
Orlov is such a City Hall institution that for years no one complained about his lighting up cigarette after cigarette in full view of the mayor and various councilmembers and their aides. Puffing away in office buildings has, of course, long been illegal, but Orlov's chainsmoking habit apparently was tacitly OK'd under some sort of grandfather clause. It's a moot point now, since he gave up the cigs (and lost 30 pounds) after he was diagnosed with diabetes a couple of years ago.
"When they cut off your toes it gets your attention," said Orlov, who now gets around with a duck-headed cane and a handicapped parking pass. He can still drink, which is fortunate, as a key technique of his schmoozey style of information gathering is his endearing willingness to buy everyone a round. "The doctors tell me a drink now and then is good," he noted. But "now and then" doesn't mean pitching camp by the bar, so he's had to adjust his style. He still keeps a bottle in his desk drawer, although this seems to be more for tradition's sake now.
But even if he hadn't had to cut back the drinking, which used to extend to Friday evening boozefests at the Daily News press office in City Hall, Orlov finds politics these days less colorful. "The Riordan administration was more fun because they were so unprofessional politically," he said. "Riordan would just say whatever was on his mind, whereas [Mayor James] Hahn has been around politics since he was five years old."
Orlov has known Hahn for years and gets along with him fine. "He used to come to news conferences when I was covering his dad," former L.A. County Board of Supervisors chief Kenneth Hahn. "He doesn't let anything bother him." That's in contrast to Riordan, now California's education secretary, who's known for blowing up anytime his motives are questioned. "But then if he's angry in the morning," Orlov added, "he's forgotten about it by the afternoon."
We drove back to the underground City Hall parking garage, and I was impressed by the Dean of City Hall's prime parking space. Rick smiled. "It's that whole Deandom thing," he said.
LOH RISES: No big surprise here, but it's finally official: Public radio commentator Sandra Tsing Loh is indeed moving to KPCC (89.3 FM), KCRW's rival L.A. NPR affiliate, where she'll begin weekly commentaries in June. (To recap: Sandra, a friend since our Buzz magazine days, was fired by KCRW general manager Ruth Seymour March 1 for accidentally saying the F-word on-air. After much public pressure, Seymour offered the job back nine days later, but Sandra turned her down.)
I've actually had a little grudge against KPCC since Minnesota Public Radio took it over and reorganized four years ago, switching to an all-news, all-talk format. MPR got a $90 million windfall a couple of years before that, when Dayton Hudson bought MPR's Riverton Trading, the cash cow mail order firm so popular with all those free-spending Garrison Keillor fans. KPCC's axing of the beloved vintage radio program Same Time, Same Station was a crime, I tell you, a crime, and it's taken me more than a couple of slices of be-bop-a-rebop rhubarb pie to get over it. But I guess now the time has come.
Meanwhile, I just heard from someone who wants to contribute to FiredbyRuth.com, a website one of Sandra's fellow KCRW firees is thinking about starting. My correspondent, who worked part-time at KCRW for several years, writes: "I came in one day to find all my materials (I did promotion, ticket giveaways, the schedule of announcements) piled in a box on the desk. This was my not-so-subtle cue to hit the road."
You know, I can't help feeling rather sorry for Ruth Seymour at this point. Sandra said she's just heard from "another fabulously crazed fan," who says he plans to start booing KCRW trailers in movie theaters. She added: "Wouldn't that be a beautiful world."Published: 03/25/2004
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