By their own estimation, Bill and Hillary Clinton have made over $150 million off speaking engagements since Bill left the White House in 2001. Over the last decade, their six-figure fees—and the attendant contractual demands—have become standard, but a new story in the Los Angeles Times reveals some of the extraordinary measures organizations were required to go to in order to book, and satisfy, Bill and his team.

There are two broad reasons why you might attend the Oscars. The first would be to enjoy the grand pageantry of the insanely rich and famous congratulating each other for completing the difficult but necessary act of making motion pictures. The second would be to do your job. Prior to this past Sunday’s ceremony, Los Angeles’ newspaper of record found itself being torn apart by these two distinct functions.

Police have busted a four-man crime ring in Los Angeles who had, for three years, been targeting the homes of Los Angeles Times subscribers while they were on vacation.

Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels, who will pay to see your breasts, is finally getting fired.

What would you do if you were in charge of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune? Would you offer a waitress $100 to show her breasts? That's what Tribune Company CEO Randy Michaels did. And it's not all.

From the 1930s until the 2000s, waterboarding was described as "torture" by The New York Times 81.5 percent of the time. But during the 2000s, it was described as "torture" only 1.4 per cent of the time. Wonder what happened!

After Richard Nguyen stabbed two men on the sidelines of an organized fight inside his house they went to McDonald's, leaving a trail of blood. But they followed the rules and refused to tell police how it happened. [LAT, pic]

The Los Angeles Times might have had more luck questioning the mayor's trustworthiness if it hadn't spelled it "crediblity [sic]" in a front-page headline. We'd wince in sympathy even if the paper wasn't bankrupt to boot. [LA Observed]

That pot haven hotel the LA Times wrote about has canceled their weed-tastic opening party.

Californians keep coming up with ridiculous schemes to attract tourists. Dennis Peron, a "hero to the marijuana movement," is trying to open a weed-friendly hotel, or "pot-tel" in Koreatown's famed Hotel Normandie. Tonight is the grand opening.

In your substitute Friday media column: Christiane Amanpour eyes George Stephanopoulos' old chair, the Los Angeles Times wraps itself in Johnny Depp's handsome mug, the New York Times does teevee, and a Star is unborn.

Dan Neil is the Los Angeles Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning automobiles columnist who recently took a job with the Wall Street Journal. The farewell memo he sent to his soon-to-be former colleagues, which was first printed in LA Observed, is as entertaining as his columns. Also, incredibly classy.

Thinking about taking a buyout, or leaving your media job to pursue your organic restaurant/piano teacher dreams? Read this depressing survey of 75 ex-Los Angeles Times journalists first. It's not pretty. Only 11 have landed full-time jobs!

Jailhouse tweets: harrowing, educational, and a bad idea if you're dodging the terms of your sentence. In the midst of his prison term for a fatal DUI, Roger Avary blew the whistle on his own short-lived accidental freedom via Twitter.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown's communications director illegally recorded Brown's conversations with reporters, an act that made the conversations themselves subject to California's public records law. The L.A. Times and other papers published them, which makes one reporter very uncomfortable.

The recent blows to print journalism are great news for politicians: They can afford to own news outlets again, just like in the colonial era! Even local politicians can afford their own newsrooms.

If anyone else is weirded out by newspapers trying to dispassionately report news of their decline, look away now.

The Los Angeles Times is losing its online managing editor to CNN.com, editor Russ Stanton confirmed in a staff email, reprinted below. The departure marks the further dismantling of a team that relaunched the site starting about five years ago.

Authorities say that the recent outbreak of California wildfires started in the cooking area of an illegal marijuana farm run by Mexican drug lords. The "La Brea fire" has already burned 75,000 acres in Santa Barbara County. [LA Times]

In a move sure to inspire more film-geek loin-warming than Monica Bellucci, Disney has fired the unbelievably horrible Ben Lyons, who pronounced I Am Legend "one of the greatest movies ever made," and Ben Mankiewicz, as At the Movies co-hosts.