The Brief

Ruth Seymour, a public media lion who transformed KCRW-FM (89.9) from a struggling signal in Santa Monica into one of the most successful public radio stations in the country, has died. She was 88.

A statement announcing her death said Seymour died at her home in Santa Monica on Friday after a long illness.

Under Seymour's pioneering guidance, KCRW provided the soundtrack to life in Southern California and a backdrop to countless commutes with a potent programming mix of news, music and talk that shaped Los Angeles culture as much as covered it.

Some of those programs included “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” “To the Point” and the groundbreaking “Which Way, L.A.?,” a news program that in particular served as a kind of daily therapy session for a city struggling to regain its footing after the civil unrest that followed four white police officers acquitted in 1992 in the videotaped beating of Black motorist Rodney King.

“L.A. is a better place for Ruth having lived and worked in it,” said Bill Davis, president emeritus of Southern California Public Radio. “The world will be a less interesting place without Ruth in it.”

In a 2010 interview with Los Angeles Magazine to mark her retirement, Seymour called her station “singular, idiosyncratic, daring, independent, smart, and compelling.”

All words that could have described Seymour herself.

From her earliest years in Los Angeles radio, Seymour recognized that having the ear of Angelenos and Southern California listeners was both a privilege — and an opportunity. She had a shrewd sense of what listeners wanted and where the industry was headed, all qualities that served her well as she elevated KCRW to the National Public Radio flagship outlet in Southern California, and the envy of public radio stations nationwide.

She considered “Which Way, L.A.?” to be a “crowning achievement,” said her daughter, Celia Hirschman. “My mother was very proud of that… she sought to raise the discussion to a higher level.”

The host of that show, veteran broadcast journalist Warren Olney, said Seymour was "the smartest, most creative, most challenging and demanding person I ever worked with in almost 60 years of broadcasting." He added that sometimes Seymour could be "cranky and distant" and noted that some called her ```the iron whim," but those changes of mind mostly validated her predictions, built audience and gained respect for the station."

He said the idea for "Which Way, LA?" grew from Seymour's belief that "a major lesson of the disturbance was that LA’s myriad voices weren’t being listened to seriously."

And she wanted to change that.

Seymour was also a resonating voice on the Southern California media landscape — and that voice was all Bronx.

Listeners were no match for it. Seymour was adept at coaxing — or was it hectoring? — listeners to reach into their pockets during pledge drives. At one point, with Seymour at the wheel, the beachy Santa Monica station ranked third — behind urban heavyweights Boston and Chicago — in terms of membership dues raised for National Public Radio.

“She was a monster” at fundraising, said an admiring Nick Harcourt, handpicked by Seymour to become KCRW’s music director and an on-air presenter for the signature show, “Morning Becomes Eclectic.” “She was just so good at it, getting money out of the news audience.”

She was successful, he said, because listeners understood and believed in Seymour’s commitment to public radio’s mission.

Her early life in the Bronx

It’s no surprise where Seymour was born — the Bronx, as Ruth Epstein.

There, she attended public school and her education was supplemented with language and literature classes in Yiddish, fueling a love that would last a lifetime.

When profiled in 1995 by the L.A. Times, she recalled that her Russian-Polish immigrant parents were working-class and deeply intellectual, exposing her to “an extraordinary world of ideas, literature and politics.”

She attended City College of New York, married and became Ruth Hirschman, had two children, and came to L.A. when her husband was hired at UCLA. She talked her way into a job in public radio at KPFK, working as a drama and literary critic and worked her way up the ranks — and into the spotlight.

The station’s manager, who was also her boss, Will Lewis, was later jailed in 1974 for refusing to give the FBI tapes left at the station by the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Weather Underground, turning KPFK and its management into counterculture celebrities.

Early days at KCRW

Upheaval at KPFK led to Seymour’s departure in 1976, paving the way for her hiring at KCRW in 1977. Then, the station was located inside a middle school classroom in Santa Monica and had the oldest transmitter west of the Mississippi.

“There was no place to go but up,” Seymour would say.

She would move the station to Santa Monica College, and go on to become one of the first programmers to embrace eclectic music and carve out an audience niche for it, Davis said, calling the decision “incredibly influential.” And KCRW was “one of the first [public radio] stations in the country to sign up for “Morning Edition,” making other stations take notice, he added. KCRW was also the first station to carry “This American Life” outside of its home base in Chicago.

Seymour had a saying, Harcourt recalled, quoting it: “If you only worry about the listeners you have, they are the only ones you will have.”

Embracing eclectic music

Harcourt said that philosophy meant that even though Seymour “didn’t really understand the music I played” on “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” with its genre busting playlists and emerging world music, Seymour knew she wasn’t the show’s intended audience.

“She understood that it brought in a younger, highly-engaged audience, including decision makers in the entertainment industry,” Harcourt said. “And that was what was making the station a must listen in a demo that had money, and would support the station financially.”

And younger music listeners who were curious might stay for the news as well.

Keeping the Yiddish language and culture was a cause close to Seymour’s heart. (So was honoring family. When she divorced, she took the surname Seymour, in honor of her Polish-born great-grandfather, a rabbi.)

'Not one phone call came in'

When she noticed in the 70s that there were little radio options for Jews like her. So in December of 1978 she had an idea. She created and hosting “Philosophers, Fiddlers and Fools,” a joyous and colorful show that dove deep into Jewish culture, drawing from short stories, and Yiddish folk music and other touchstones familiar to those who might feel left out in a world dominated by Christmas trees.

But during that three-hour programming experiment in December the phones stayed deadly silent. “Not one phone call came in,” Seymour would later write in a history on the show. “I assumed — all of us there, that day, assumed — that we had lost the audience.”

But lo and behold, when the show ended, “The phones began to ring. And ring. And ring. They rang for hours,” she recalled. It was as if the lag was due to rapt listeners who couldn’t pull themselves away from the programming to pick up the phone.

Instead of a colossal failure, Seymour had a hit on her hands.

Celia Hirschman said her mother delighted in creating an entirely new show for Hanukkah each year thereafter.

By the time she announced her decision to step down in 2009, after nearly 30 years at KCRW, the station was in a period of transition. Ratings were struggling, as they were in many other outlets amid the ever-shifting media landscape.

As she told the Times: “It’s going to be a new era. Time to begin without me.”

There was no immediate information about services, although a memorial is expected to be held in her beloved city of Santa Monica.

“There was no one else like Ruth,” Davis said. “She was an absolute force in the history of public media in Los Angeles and the history of public radio in the country.”

An East Hollywood nursing home that nearly lost its license this year because of repeated state citations for deaths of residents at the facility was cited again last month after another person died.

The California Department of Public Health cited Brier Oak on Sunset after a 92-year-old resident bled to death on Sept. 27. Staff members had continued injecting her with blood thinners over a 40-hour period in violation of clinical guidelines.

It’s an AA citation, the most severe the department issues when violations of care standards are determined to be a substantial factor in someone’s death. The facility faces a $120,000 fine.

These kinds of citations are rare. The department has recently issued, on average, fewer than 20 AA citations yearly across more than 1,200 skilled nursing facilities in California.

Brier Oak has received three AA citations for patient deaths since late 2022.

State regulations require authorities to suspend or revoke the licenses of any facilities that get two AA citations within a period of 24 months.

The state Public Health Department began that process with Brier Oak in May based on resident deaths in 2022 and 2024. But officials dropped that effort later because they say they determined the two patient deaths had occurred 26 months apart — just outside of the two-year window.

A spokesperson for the company that owns Brier Oak told LAist it has appealed the first two citations and is considering whether to appeal the third.

Advocates for nursing home residents say the recent death could have been avoided if the state had taken action.

“There were red flags, and a lot of these red flags existed prior to the death of this poor resident,” said Tony Chicotel, senior staff attorney with  California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

The state said Brier Oak has until Dec. 19 to notify the department if it intends to appeal.

What led to the patient deaths?

In the recent death at Brier Oak cited by the state, multiple communication and technical failures by nursing staff led to the patient bleeding out over a period of 40 hours, according to the citation.

The 92-year-old patient was immobile and had been prescribed a blood thinner called heparin to help prevent blood clots from forming. But once a patient is bleeding, those injections make bleeding worse, and potentially fatal.

When nursing staff found bright red blood in the resident’s diaper the day before she died, Brier Oak failed to follow established processes for documenting the bleeding or communicating it to a nurse practitioner or medical doctor, according to the citation.

Nurses told state authorities they delayed informing physicians because they “get mad” when contacted in the middle of the night.

The facility’s staff also failed to fully assess the patient to determine the possible causes of the bleeding and or to properly monitor the issue during crucial periods, according to the citation.

She suffered four internal bleeding episodes over 40 hours and continued to receive blood thinner injections.

The citation says a nurse practitioner at Brier Oak told state licensing authorities later that if she’d been informed about the patient’s ongoing bleeding, she would have stopped the blood thinner and sent her to a hospital.

In 2022, Brier Oak received a AA citation after a 62-year-old woman died from respiratory failure in part because nurses hadn’t been trained to operate her breathing machine.

In 2024, the nursing home got another AA citation. This time, a 63-year-old woman with paraplegia and severe obesity fell from her bed and died while a nursing assistant was changing her. The assistant was alone, even though the woman’s care plan required two staff members.

Who owns Brier Oak?

Brier Oak on Sunset is primarily owned by Genesis Healthcare, a publicly-traded nursing home operator that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July.

Once the largest nursing home operator in the U.S., Genesis was facing billions in debt when it declared bankruptcy, according to court filings. That includes millions in potential damages from lawsuits related to patient care failures.

In a brief statement to LAist, a company spokesperson said it's still considering whether or not to appeal the recent citation at Brier Oak.

The citation should trigger a suspension or revocation of the facility's license, according to state regulations. The latter means it would have to close its doors. The two most recent deaths and citations at the facility occurred within the two-year window.

The California Department of Public Health confirmed it cited Brier Oak on Nov. 26.

The department said the facility submitted a required written response before a Dec. 6 deadline, showing how it will fix the problems and prevent them from happening again..

The department determined Brier Oak was back in compliance during an onsite visit last week, a representative told LAist.

Brier Oak on Sunset currently houses about 150 patients, according to state records.

A bankruptcy judge has stalled the proposed sale of Genesis Healthcare to an affiliate of one of its investors.

Experts say it’s unclear whether the state would revoke the license of an owner who is actively trying to sell and turn over operations to someone else.

It’s been a rough start to ski and snowboard season for California mountain towns. Snowfall is well below average, but Christmas could come with some of the white stuff. Here's where things stand:

Hmmm. Didn’t we just have a record storm?

Yes. That big atmospheric river that hit Southern California last month made it one of the wettest Novembers on records. But since then, it’s been unusually warm and dry, which is not good for mountain towns that depend on snow, and the outdoor enthusiasts that flock to them.

How bad is it?

California’s snowpack is about 20% of normal for this time of the year, according to the state’s snow-tracking website. Southern California isn’t quite as bad off — we’ve gotten about half our normal snowfall so far.

As for the resorts, only about 20% of the terrain at Bear Mountain in Big Bear is open. About 35% of Mammoth Mountain is open.

Can’t they just make snow?

They are, but the unusually warm temperatures have curbed resorts’ ability to make enough snow to open more terrain. “If you're blowing water into 40-degrees, it's going to stay water,” said Justin Kanton, a spokesperson for Big Bear Mountain Resort. “ So as much as people probably would want us to just crank the snow guns all day, every day up here and just get things moving, that's not really possible.”

But there’s a silver lining!

The dry weather has allowed Caltrans to make good progress toward opening Highway 38, said Evan Engle, who chairs the board of the Big Bear Chamber of Commerce. The road typically handles up to 40% of traffic up to the mountain town, Engle said. But it’s been closed since September when it got washed out by Tropical Storm Mario.

Getting it open as soon as possible is key to keeping visitor traffic manageable, and getting supplies to Big Bear.

What’s the snow outlook?

SoCal mountains are likely to see some precipitation around Christmas, said Kyle Wheeler, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. But with temperatures not expected to drop much, it’s uncertain how much of it will be white, Wheeler said.

If you go to Big Bear: 

• If you plan to hit the slopes, get on it early, when the snow is at its best given the warm conditions. 
• No snow? There’s more to do than ski and snowboard. Check this list of winter fun events.  
• Worried about traffic? Consider going up earlier in the week. If you can’t do that, consider taking Highway 18 through Lucerne Valley. It’s a longer route if you’re coming from L.A., but less traveled, and less likely to make you car sick (fewer tight curves). 

The Los Angeles Police Department used more than 2,400 crowd control munitions in response to protests from June 6 to 14, according to a new report.

Officers used a total of 2,431 less-lethal projectile rounds and 35 canisters of tear gas over the nine days, according to LAPD reports. The department recorded 12 injuries officers caused with those weapons.

The LAPD released the missing report last week after LAist identified the use of crowd control weapons on four different days in June that had not been reported according to state law. Assembly Bill 48, which went into effect in 2022, limits when and how crowd control weapons can be used, and requires law enforcement agencies to publicly release reports on their use within 60 days.

A 30-day extension for these reports can be granted in some cases, but the LAPD released this report about three months late even if an extension was justified.

Officials acknowledged they were out of compliance on Dec. 10 before releasing the report, saying the delay “stems from the extraordinary volume and complexity of incidents” over that time.

This report is different from others

It is unusual for a crowd control report to include more than one day, and the report for June 9 through 14 covered six days and “45 sepearte [sic] non categorical use of force incidents.”

It does not describe any of those use of force incidents specifically, and the LAPD has not yet responded to LAist’s request for more detailed descriptions of those incidents.

The report also considered the entire six days to have been one continuous protest, though it included several anti-ICE protests over the week and the national “No Kings” protest on June 14.

Two reports released earlier this year for June 6 and 8 covered single days and provided more detailed descriptions of incidents where the LAPD used less-lethal munitions against protesters.