L.A. Times executive editor John Arthur probably sealed his fate last Friday with a memo to his boss, editor Russ Stanton, in which he extolled the virtues of the newsroom.

The staff is doing great journalism, he observed, while questioning the rampant rumors of reductions to the masthead and impending changes to their jobs.

Thursday Arthur became the first casualty of those changes.  He was fired after 23 years at the paper. (It probably didn’t help that Arthur cc’ed Stanton’s boss, Kathy Thomson, on the memo.)

 I'll be answering questions about the life and death of Michael Jackson tomorrow from 12 to 1 pm EST at my old haunt, The Washington Post's chat room.

Here's a link to submit questions and join the conversation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/07/06/DI200...

See you then. 

In death, Michael Jackson is suddenly some kind of a saint. A humanitarian. A philanthropist. A civil rights leader.

“Like our father Martin,” said Martin Luther King III before a live television audience of millions around the world at the memorial. “He was indeed a shining light.”

 I swear I’m almost done with writing about Michael Jackson, but honestly -- was anyone else gobsmacked to see photos and video of Michael Jackson with his children on ABC’s Primetime Live?

It’s almost too much information for a single day. For more than a decade the singer managed to raise his three kids without a single photo being made available to the world, other than paparazzi grabs of children wearing masks or veils.

“Ultra-quiet” is the word coming out of Sun Valley and Herb Allen’s annual retreat, but I don’t believe it. (I never believe those big media guys.)

Something is up at NBC-Universal, but exactly what is a Hollywood chess game.
With juicy items showing up in the media and my own phone ringing with talk about Vivendi and the “put” it has at GE, the waters are being stirred for a reason.

But what?

Call me sentimental, but it was beautiful July day in southern California, and I took a moment to chronicle a typical day at TheWrap at the same time as I took the Flip by the horns and set out to do more video, dammit!

The first phase of TheWrap is coming to a close. We've taken office space in Santa Monica and will be installed there by Monday.

We will do so with a new VP of ad sales, Victoria Gold, and a new television editor coming on board soon, Joe Adalian, and a redesign around the corner.

SnagFilms.com is one year old tomorrow, and to celebrate, the website devoted to distributing documentaries online is launching a snazzy redesign and an online film festival.

That’s cool. But the most interesting new feature is something they’re calling Movie Matcher.

Anne Thompson has become the latest journalist to branch out and become an entrepreneur.

She has signed up with Rick Allen, the CEO of SnagFilms and IndieWire, to promote and sell advertising on the Thompson on Hollywood blog, which will be dropped from the Variety.com platform on July 31.

Thompson will own and run the blog independently, though it will be promoted on IndieWire, according to knowledgeable individuals.