Yes, OC Weekly investigative reporter Nick Schou got his mug shot in today's Los Angeles Times. No, he wasn't participating again in a riot, peeking inside an undercover DEA 18-wheeler or even driving solo in the HOV lane.
A year or so ago, Schou thought it'd be fun to perform his normal work duties, raise an infant son, pamper his beautiful wife, teach a journalism class at UCI and write a book. Sure, he looks like a zombie most days now and is often heard mumbling to himself, but he can point to all his accomplishments including the acclaimed, “Kill The Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb.”
Back to why his pic appears in today's LA Times: He's one of the featured book authors at the paper's wonderful Festival of Books. See him at 1 p.m. in Moore 100 on the “Journalism: Getting the Story” panel moderated by Miles Corwin.
Schou isn't the only person who multitasks each day at OC Weekly's world headquarters. The unstoppable Gustavo Arellano will also travel north today but not to talk about food, sports, movies, his lovely girlfriend, tequila, Catholic Church sex scandals or his near monopolization of talk radio. He'll dish about the subject that made him nationally famous two years ago (with loving guidance, of course, from then OCW-editor Will Swaim).
Gustavo is the epitome of good timing. On Tuesday, Scribner publishes his book, “Ask A Mexican.” Today, he'll be on the “Crossing the Border: Immigrant Lives” festival panel at 2:30 p.m. in Schoenberg Hall. In coming weeks, he'll face Sean Hannity on Fox.
Other OC-related authors featured at the UCLA-based weekend festival include Hugh Hewitt, T. Jefferson Parker, Barry Siegel, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Don Winslow and Jon Wiener.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.