L.A.

Lily Burk, whose slaying July 24 in downtown Los Angeles has received widespread attention, was the daughter of Greg Burk, a LA Weekly writer and editor for over two decades. "The LA Weekly community that attended (parties hosted by the Burks) has mostly disappeared from the (LA Weekly) building now," writes Pandora Young in Fishbowl LA. "But the community, though scattered, still exists. We keep track, we keep in touch, and we're devastated by the news of Lily's death."

The shock rocker has issued a warning on MySpace against journalists who write "cavalier statements," saying there will be repercussions for the "soon-to-be-murdered-in-their-home press" if more inaccuracies are reported. Manson's threats come on the heels of a recent L.A. Weekly interview with Buddyhead.com founder Travis Keller, who talked about what it was like to meet Manson in 2007. In the piece, Keller paints Manson as a paranoid cocaine addict and a fraud.

Drex Heikes, who served the Los Angeles Times for 18 years as the Sunday magazine's editor and foreign affairs editor in the paper's Washington bureau, has been named L.A. Weekly's next editor. He will start in August. The position will allow a homecoming of sorts for Heikes: He left L.A. in 2005 to work at the Las Vegas Sun, which recently won a Public Service Pulitzer for an investigation he assigned and edited. "Village Voice Media publishes vital newspapers because it has upheld the vision of its founding editor, Mike Lacey," Heikes says. "Mike is a reporter at heart. His mission has never wavered. First you report, and you report hard. Then you write -- and you do it as a storyteller."

Appearing on a local radio show this week, Los Angeles Police Department chief Bill Bratton went after a recent Weekly cover story that questioned his department's use of crime statistics -- especially Bratton's assurances that crime levels are on par with L.A.'s in 1956. As the chief and radio host segued out of a discussion on drug laws, Bratton cracked, "I think they were smoking a little weed when they wrote that article." He claimed the article was part of a vendetta the Weekly has against Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and added that he stood by the department's numbers. "It's kind of voodoo reporting," he said of the story.