Rupert Murdoch pulls plug on 'the Daily,' first news app for iPad

Rupert Murdoch has pulled the plug on News Corp.'s high-profile experiment to create a digital national newspaper.

The demise of the Daily, announced Monday by News Corp., illustrates the challenges the media baron faces as he attempts to transform his global publishing empire for the Internet age.

The Daily was introduced nearly two years ago as the first news application for Apple Inc.'s iPad and was designed to dazzle a generation of young readers who found print publications too dated and stodgy. But in the end, News Corp.'s expensive endeavor violated an old-school media tenet: Don't be boring.

"The Daily wasn't very interesting," said Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst and author of "Newsonomics," a book about the future of the online news business. "Visually, it was attractive, but they forgot that if you are going to call it the Daily you have got to change people's daily reading habits. They never presented enough of a compelling reason to read the Daily."

Analysts estimated that News Corp. spent at least $80 million to hire big-name journalists and designers and operate the application with the look of a high-end magazine. Along the way, Murdoch discovered that established brands such as the Wall Street Journal would be a more potent draw for readers in the digital world rather than trying to create a new title from scratch.

The Daily will cease publication Dec. 15. Its technology and some employees will be folded into the New York Post, one of Murdoch's old-media titles.

"From its launch, the Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing," Murdoch said in a statement. "Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long term."

News Corp. on Monday outlined a sweeping restructuring as it prepares to break into two separately traded companies next year. It plans to spin off its publishing assets, including the Journal, the Post, the Times of London, the Australian and book publisher HarperCollins, into an entity that will retain the News Corp. name "in keeping with the company's 60-year heritage of bringing news to the world," Murdoch said.

The more profitable entertainment properties will constitute the second company, the Fox Group. The entertainment side will boast News Corp.'s vast television assets, including Fox Broadcasting, cable channels FX, Fox News Channel and National Geographic, regional sports networks, and interests in British and European satellite services, as well as the 20th Century Fox movie studio.

Murdoch, 81, will be the chairman and chief executive of the Fox Group. He will remain chairman of the reconstituted and much smaller News Corp. Robert Thomson, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, will become chief executive of the publishing company when the corporate split is complete, most likely next summer.

The selection of Thomson, 51, to run the company confirms his increasing stature within Murdoch's enterprise. Thomson, who like Murdoch is a native of Australia, has been an increasingly close confident of Murdoch since he was installed as managing editor of the Journal and editor in chief of its parent, Dow Jones & Co., in 2008. Before joining Dow Jones, the onetime China correspondent served as editor of the Sunday Times, another News Corp. paper, for six years. Before that, he was editor of the U.S. edition of the Financial Times, owned by News Corp. rival Pearson.

Murdoch, in a Twitter post, called Thomson "a special leader and great friend. Also an Aussie!" In the company's statement, Murdoch singled out the Journal's growth internationally and the U.S. during Thomson's tenure.

The company said the Journal's deputy editor in chief, Gerard Baker, 50, will succeed Thomson. Baker has worked at the Times of London, BBC and Financial Times.

Separately, the company said Tom Mockridge, who was tapped last year to lead News Corp.'s scandal-plagued British newspaper unit News International, would leave the company at the end of this month. Mockridge, who was passed over for the CEO job in favor of Thomson, had worked at News Corp. since 1991.

Mike Darcey, 47, chief operating officer at pay-TV operator British Sky Broadcasting Group, will replace Mockridge at News International, the company said. He will become the division's third chief in less than two years. Mockridge last year was dispatched to replace Rebekah Brooks, who was forced to resign over News International's hacking and bribery scandal at the company's now-closed News of the World and faces a criminal trial next year.

Monday's moves were designed, in large part, to structure News Corp. for a new era. Wall Street had long agitated for News Corp. to shed its newspapers and focus on the more profitable television channels and moviemaking. But Murdoch refused to relinquish his publishing titles. Instead, he agreed to separate News Corp. to appease investors and give him the freedom to buy new properties.

The company has more than $10 billion in cash, and has begun a buying spree that includes regional sports networks and an Australian television business. The company is said to be contemplating other acquisitions in the old-media space, including the Los Angeles Times and book publisher Simon & Schuster, owned by CBS Corp.

The company would like to bolster its HarperCollins publishing arm, reportedly to better compete against the powerhouse Amazon.com, which has the ability to offer price discounts.

"The power of the written word has been in my bones for my entire life," Murdoch wrote Monday in the email to employees. "It began as I listened to my father's stories from his days as a war correspondent and, later, as a successful publisher. It deepened when, starting in grammar school, I rolled up my sleeves and worked alongside fellow students to publish school journals."

meg.james@latimes.com

dawn.chmiewlewski@latimes.com

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San Diego mayor leaves office with his legacy intact

SAN DIEGO — On his last full day as mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders did something Sunday that took him back four decades.

He rode with a police officer assigned to the 2 p.m. to midnight shift patrolling downtown. In the mid-1970s, fresh out of San Diego State, Sanders was a rookie officer assigned to that same beat.

"I came in in a police car, I'm going out in a police car," Sanders, 62, had said with a laugh last week as he stood outside one of his signature achievements of his seven years as mayor: a new central library under construction.

A Republican in a city where Democrats hold a voter-registration edge and control the City Council, Sanders, who rose from beat cop to chief in his 26 years at the Police Department, has governed through relentless attempts at consensus and a deceptively low-key style that leans on sharing credit whenever possible.

Ask about the library project and Sanders says, "The library commission wouldn't take no for an answer."

Ask about his role in calming civic nerves during the 2007 wildfire that raged for days and destroyed hundreds of homes — a mayoral effort that led the local newspaper to compare him favorably to Rudy Giuliani after 9/11 — and Sanders mentions the help provided by two county supervisors.

Ask about his management style and he says he prefers to hire good people and then stay out of their way, but some who have worked with him point out that he watches even tiny details of important efforts.

Outside San Diego, Sanders may be remembered best for breaking with the GOP to endorse same-sex marriage, explaining that his daughter, a lesbian, should be free to marry someone she loves. He then campaigned against Proposition 8 and later went to Washington to join other — mostly Democratic — mayors to lobby Congress to repeal a law that defines marriage as between a man and woman.

In San Diego, his legacy includes guiding the city back from the precipice of its worst financial debacle in history through a series of politically controversial cutbacks in city services and then hard bargaining with labor unions that led to a salary freeze, reduction in health benefits for retirees, increased payments by employees to the pension fund and the end to guaranteed-benefit pensions for new hires.

Although the city's financial future, like that of other cities, remains uncertain, San Diego appears to be ahead of other cities, including Los Angeles, in dealing with the common problem of spiraling pension deficits.

"He did steady the local ship of state," said Steve Erie, political science professor at UC San Diego. "Whether he actually turned it around is another question."

Sanders lists the new library, the planned expansion of the waterfront convention center and the plan to remodel the core of Balboa Park as among his proudest achievements. All three faced opposition; the convention center and park plans are being fought in court.

"This isn't a hard city to govern," he said, "but it's very hard to get consensus."

One of his disappointments is the failure to put together a project to build a new stadium for the San Diego Chargers and keep the NFL franchise from leaving the city.

The Chargers issue, in which the public wants the team to remain in San Diego but does not want to spend public money for a stadium, will now be left to Sanders' successor, Bob Filner, 70, a Democrat who left a safe seat in Congress to run to replace the termed-out Sanders. Filner will be sworn into office Monday.

Although he was reelected easily in 2008, voters in 2010 turned down his request for a half-cent boost in the sales tax, which Sanders said was desperately needed to avoid additional cuts in city services. "We gave voters the opportunity," he said.

In style, Filner and Sanders are opposites: Filner is confrontational; Sanders usually isn't. Sanders appears without ego; Filner is different.

"I tell Bob that he's the most obnoxious individual I've met and that's what I like about him," Sanders said.

Lest anyone think of him as a rhetorical milquetoast, it bears remembering that, during the 2008 reelection campaign, he turned to an opponent and directed a two-word obscenity at him.

Sanders was an anomaly as a politician when he was elected in 2005 to replace Dick Murphy, who resigned amid criticism over the pension deficit. Sanders had never before run for public office, although he was a well-known public figure after six years as the highly regarded police chief.

As chief, he expanded the city's "community oriented policing" style that emphasized close collaboration between the police and neighborhood groups.

Retiring from the city in 1999, he served as chief executive of the local United Way and as president of the local Red Cross chapter — arriving when both organizations were beset by personnel turmoil and financial problems.

Sanders and his wife, Rana Sampson, will soon depart for a long-delayed vacation to Italy. Sampson retired Friday as vice president for development and marketing for the San Diego Center for Children, which provides educational and mental health services for at-risk youth.

Upon the couple's return to San Diego, Sanders will become president and chief executive of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.

But first was that final shift as a beat cop downtown, asking people what help they need and providing a reassuring presence that says San Diego is a good place to live.

"Best job I ever had," Sanders said.

tony.perry@latimes.com

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Jackson's 'Bad' jacket, costumes sold at auction

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Costumes worn by Michael Jackson commanded hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction, and Lady Gaga was among the collectors.

Gaga tweeted Sunday that she bought 55 pieces in the sale administered by Julien's Auctions and said she plans to keep the items "archived and expertly cared for in the spirit and love of Michael Jackson, his bravery and fans worldwide."

Auctioneer Darren Julien said the jacket Jackson wore during his "Bad" tour fetched $240,000. Two of Jackson's crystal-encrusted gloves sold for more than $100,000 each, as did other jackets and performance costumes.

The auction featuring the collection of Jackson's longtime costume designers Dennis Tompkins and Michael Bush raised more than $5 million. Some proceeds benefited Guide Dogs of America and Nathan Adelson Hospice of Las Vegas.

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Online:

www.juliensauctions.com

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Call That Kept Nursing Home Patients in Sandy’s Path

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Workers were shocked that nursing and adult homes in areas like Rockaway Park, Queens, weren’t evacuated.

Hurricane Sandy was swirling northward, four days before landfall, and at the Sea Crest Health Care Center, a nursing home overlooking the Coney Island Boardwalk in Brooklyn, workers were gathering medicines and other supplies as they prepared to evacuate.

Then the call came from health officials: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, acting on the advice of his aides and those of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, recommended that nursing homes and adult homes stay put. The 305 residents would ride out the storm.

The same advisory also took administrators by surprise at the Ocean Promenade nursing home, which faces the Atlantic Ocean in Queens. They canceled plans to move 105 residents to safety.

“No one gets why we weren’t evacuated,” said a worker there, Yisroel Tabi. “We wouldn’t have exposed ourselves to dealing with that situation.”

The recommendation that thousands of elderly, disabled and mentally ill residents remain in more than 40 nursing homes and adult homes in flood-prone areas of New York City had calamitous consequences.

At least 29 facilities in Queens and Brooklyn were severely flooded. Generators failed or were absent. Buildings were plunged into a cold, wet darkness, with no access to power, water, heat and food.

While no immediate deaths were reported, it took at least three days for the Fire Department, the National Guard and ambulance crews from around the country to rescue over 4,000 nursing home and 1,500 adult home residents. Without working elevators, many had to be carried down slippery stairwells.

“I was shocked,” said Greg Levow, who works for an ambulance service and helped rescue residents at Queens. “I couldn’t understand why they were there in the first place.”

Many sat for hours in ambulances and buses before being transported to safety through sand drifts and debris-filled floodwaters. They went to crowded shelters and nursing homes as far away as Albany, where for days, they often lacked medical charts and medications. Families struggled to locate relatives.

The decision not to empty the nursing homes and adult homes in the mandatory evacuation area was one of the most questionable by the authorities during Hurricane Sandy. And an investigation by The New York Times found that the impact was worsened by missteps that officials made in not ensuring that these facilities could protect residents.

They did not require that nursing homes maintain backup generators that could withstand flooding. They did not ensure that health care administrators could adequately communicate with government agencies during and after a storm. And they discounted the more severe of the early predictions about Hurricane Sandy’s surge.

The Times’s investigation was based on interviews with officials, health care administrators, doctors, nurses, ambulance medics, residents, family members and disaster experts. It included a review of internal State Health Department status reports. The findings revealed the striking vulnerability of the city’s nursing and adult homes.

On Sunday, Oct. 28, the day before Hurricane Sandy arrived, Mr. Bloomberg ordered a mandatory evacuation in Zone A, the low-lying neighborhoods of the city. But by that point, Mr. Bloomberg, relying on the advice of the city and state health commissioners, had already determined that people in nursing homes and adult homes should not leave, officials said.

The mayor’s recommendations that health care facilities not evacuate startled residents of Surf Manor adult home in Coney Island, said one of them, Norman Bloomfield. He recalled that another resident exclaimed, “What about us! Why’s he telling us to stay?”

The commissioners made the recommendation to Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Cuomo because they said they believed that the inherent risks of transporting the residents outweighed the potential dangers from the storm.

In interviews, senior Bloomberg and Cuomo aides did not express regret for keeping the residents in place.

“I would defend all the decisions and the actions” by the health authorities involving the storm, said Linda I. Gibbs, a deputy mayor. “I feel like I’m describing something that was a remarkable, lifesaving event.”

Dr. Nirav R. Shah, the state health commissioner, who regulates nursing homes, said: “I’m not even thinking of second-guessing the decisions.”

Still, officials in New Jersey and in Nassau County adopted a different policy, evacuating nursing homes in coastal areas well before the storm.

Contradictory Forecasts

The city’s experience with Tropical Storm Irene last year weighed heavily on state and city health officials and contributed to their underestimating the impact of Hurricane Sandy, according to records and interviews.

Before Tropical Storm Irene, the officials ordered nursing homes and adult homes to evacuate. The storm caused relatively minor damage, but the evacuation led to millions of dollars in health care, transportation, housing and other costs, and took a toll on residents.

As a result, when Hurricane Sandy loomed, the officials were acutely aware that they could come under criticism if they ordered another evacuation that proved unnecessary.

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New-home communities boast food-related amenities

If the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, can builders and developers land home buyers via the same route?

That may be something of a stretch, but food-related amenities are fast becoming a way to make today's new-home communities stand out from the competition.

For example, a few years ago, developers would have asked authorities to chase away any food truck that set up shop near their community centers. And if a homeowner turned his backyard into a farm, the community association probably would have objected.

Now mobile dining and urban agriculture are the rage, and forward-thinking developers are welcoming vendors and gardeners as part of their amenity packages. Call these new edible community features "gastronomic extras."

Mobile kitchens are helping to energize many downtown markets at lunchtime, and they can do the same at master-planned communities, according to panelists who shared their best ideas on what it will take to succeed at a recent Urban Land Institute conference.

Mobile vending used to be the sole purview of ice cream trucks and food and vegetable wagons. But now a variety of gourmet and ethnic meals are being served from vans and even pickup trucks.

These meals on wheels are welcome not only at lunchtime but also in the late afternoon — say, just after school — or any other regularly scheduled time, such as during sporting events.

"Creative retail is a wonderful thing," said Theresa Frankiewicz, vice president of community development at Crown Community Development of Naperville, Ill.

Just as hot as mobile dining is urban farming. Agriculture is supplanting golf courses as today's must-have amenity, said Randal Jackson, president of the Planning Center/DC&E, a consulting firm in Santa Ana.

One good thing about gardening is that developers don't have to devote big acreage to it, which is important with today's downsized projects. Whereas golf courses can easily gobble up a couple of hundred acres, community garden plots may require as little as one.

Some builders are offering storage sheds, arbors, greenhouses and even vegetable beds as options. One well-stocked backyard garden can yield enough produce to feed the entire block, according to one Urban Land Institute panelist.

Following the same food-based theme, Adam McAbee of John Burns Real Estate Consulting in Irvine recently noticed a couple of attention-grabbing features that are intended to stick in visitors' minds long after they've left the premises.

One, in a San Diego market with a predominantly Asian buyer profile, was a wok kitchen, offered as an "extended prep" area off the main kitchen. Another was a sales office that looked decidedly like a French countryside cafe, where prospects could linger and sip coffee.

Creating a social infrastructure has long been as important to developers as streets and sewers. But nowadays that means going beyond intranet systems and clubs, especially if the property is large enough to support retail and commercial components.

Anything that gives a project a sense of place and encourages social interaction will create value, the Urban Land Institute panelists stressed. It could be a trout stream, such as the one running through a Salt Lake City project, or a riverside park, such as the one below a freeway in Houston.

One of the best tools for bringing people together is restaurants, according to developers. "You buy a couch once every 10 years, but you eat three times a day," said Jonathan Brinsden of Midway Development, the developer of the CityCentre mixed-use property built on an old mall site in Houston.

Other people magnets are athletic clubs and hotels, if the properties are large enough to support them.

"Athletic facilities are part of our daily lives now," Brinsden said. "And public spaces are so ingrained in our DNA that they are the most valuable acres in our project."

lsichelman@aol.com

Distributed by Universal Uclick for United Feature Syndicate.

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A father's long battle for his daughters

Luis Ernesto Rodriguez eyed the metal door as he waited for his little girls. Now 6 and 5 years old, they were his only children, inseparable, with thick black hair and mischievous smiles that reminded people of little mermaids.

More than two years had passed since he had last seen them. What would they be like now? Would they recognize him? He had shed 20 pounds during the long journey north.

The door opened and his girls bounded into the tiny room. They shouted and laughed the same way they did when he used to carry one in each arm on the way to day care.

PHOTOS: The case of Luis Ernesto Rodriguez

But their smiles melted away when they saw the thick wall of Plexiglas between them and their father, clothed in an orange jumpsuit worn by detainees at an immigration detention center in California's Imperial Valley. There would be no hugs, no kisses.

The girls pressed their palms to the barrier. Rodriguez did the same. His older daughter showed him how to shape a heart with her hands. Rodriguez did the same.

"Be patient," Rodriguez said. "I promise I'll be with you again."

::

Rodriguez last caressed his daughters in the predawn darkness of their cluttered apartment in South Los Angeles. The girls were asleep under the pink sheets of their shared bed when he kissed them and then rushed out to seek day laborer work at the Home Depot store on Slauson Avenue.

FULL COVERAGE: Without a country

It was there, on that morning in November 2008, where police converged on Rodriguez, weapons drawn, and arrested him on suspicion of armed robbery. A short man with a bristly mustache, Rodriguez, then 39, fit the description of a man who had swiped three gold rings from a woman.

It was an apparent case of mistaken identity. No charges were filed, but Rodriguez wasn't going back to his girls.

An immigrant from El Salvador with a troubled past, he had a deportation order dating to 1991. He spent the next two months in jails.

The girls ended up with their maternal grandmother, who was destitute and suffered from memory lapses, so social workers took them away. They joined the thousands of children nationwide who are under custody of child protection agencies after their parents have been placed in deportation proceedings or deported. An estimated 5,000 such children are in foster care, about 1,000 of them in Los Angeles County, according to juvenile court attorneys and the Applied Research Center, a nonprofit racial justice think tank.

Many follow their deported mothers and fathers, if the parents can convince U.S. agencies that they can provide a stable life in their home countries. In such cases, social workers from Los Angeles escort the children to parents at joyous airport reunions, usually in Mexico and El Salvador.

But sometimes parents fail. Their children either languish in foster care or they're adopted by American couples. Some never see their biological parents again.

::

In January 2009, Rodriguez was placed on a flight to El Salvador, a nation he had fled as a teen, when it was rife with war.

He had hours to agonize over his girls' fate. "Being away from them was tearing me apart," he recalled.

Rodriguez had been through such a separation before. In 2007, social workers had taken his daughters from Rodriguez's dirty, near-empty apartment in South Los Angeles. Rodriguez and his wife, Blanca, were cocaine users.

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6 Futuristic Fireplaces to Keep You Warm This Winter

Who would have guessed — the futuristic-looking luxury fireplace industry is booming. Surprisingly, if you can dream it, it can be built. But, most of the time, it’ll cost you.

It seems we’re no longer just content to view the crackling Yule Log on our TVs. These fireplaces even move past the traditional stone and brick models commonly seen today. They run on gas and have controllers to turn them on or off. Some can even be operated from smartphone apps.

[More from Mashable: For Sale: Space Shuttle Xing Sign]

Check out the gallery and tell us which one is most appealing to you.

Uni Flame

The Uni Flame indoor or outdoor fireplace comes from modern home goods company Radius.

[More from Mashable: Portland Toymakers Create Ten-Legged Bamboo Companion [VIDEO]]

Click here to view this gallery.

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, dszc

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Katzenberg, Spielberg attend Governors Awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tom Hanks. Quincy Jones. Kristen Stewart. Warren Beatty. Quentin Tarantino. George Lucas. Steven Spielberg. Kirk Douglas. Amy Adams. Richard Gere.

These and other famous folks came to the film academy's Governors Awards Saturday to honor filmmakers whose names may not be as well known, but whose contributions to the industry have affected movie-lovers everywhere.

Documentarian D.A. Pennebaker helped make the medium mainstream with his direct-cinema approach. George Stevens, Jr., founded the American Film Institute and established the Kennedy Center Honors. Hal Needham developed new ways of performing and directing death-defying movie stunts. DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg raised hundreds of millions of dollars for charity.

Octogenarians Pennebaker, Stevens and Needham received honorary Oscars for their distinguished careers and Katzenberg was recognized with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Governors Awards ceremony, held at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood and Highland Center.

The film academy has long awarded honorary Oscars, but established a new tradition four years ago of presenting those statuettes at a private dinner party where there are no time limits on speeches. Portions of the untelevised event may be included in the Feb. 24 Academy Awards telecast.

Stars mingled in the ballroom and dined on filet mignon and banana cream pie before academy president Hawk Koch urged them to "finish the deals, make the deals" so the program could begin.

Each honoree was introduced by a pair of stars and a short film of their work.

Michael Moore and Sen. Al Franken introduced Pennebaker. Moore called him an inspiration and the inventor of the modern documentary. Pennebaker ditched the tripod and carried his camera on his shoulder, and "all filmmaking changed," Moore said, "nonfiction and fiction."

The 87-year-old Pennebaker seemed to thank every colleague from his six-decade career during a nearly 20-minute speech that prompted his family to signal him to finish and inspired a joke from Will Smith later in the evening.

"Before I get started, D.A. Pennebaker has a couple more people he wanted to thank," Smith cracked.

Sidney Poitier and Annette Bening introduced Stevens, speaking of his commitment to honoring, preserving and furthering the art of film. In accepting his Oscar, Stevens thanked his late father for encouraging him to consider film a timeless art and "for opening the door for me to a creative life."

Needham "pushed the boundaries of what could be done in action," Tarantino said as he introduced the stuntman and director, adding, "I've ripped off many shots from you."

Al Ruddy, Oscar-winning producer of "The Godfather," described Needham as "one of the good guys" and "a gift to any producer." Ruddy told a story about making 1982's "Megaforce," which Needham directed. The stuntman helped design a rocket for the film's action sequences, and when brought it to the Goldwyn lot to demonstrate it, he accidentally launched it into a new soundstage and burnt the whole thing down. Later, while filming another stunt, Needham crashed a motorcycle and got a concussion, but he was back on set shooting the next morning.

The 81-year-old Needham called himself "the luckiest man alive": He grew up a sharecropper's son with eight years' education and went on to work with Billy Wilder, Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne. Now he's getting an Academy Award.

"My mom's looking down on tonight with a big smile on her face," he said, choking up and dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief.

He closed by thanking "the entire Hollywood community for allowing me to be a part of it."

Tom Hanks and Will Smith introduced Katzenberg by joking about his persistent calls for charitable donations. The DreamWorks executive has raised more than $230 million as chairman of the Motion Picture and Television Fund foundation.

"Jeffrey has no problem asking for way too much money," Smith said.

"Mostly, all I did was pick up the phone and ask you," Katzenberg said as he accepted his award. "It's you who did it. You who gave of your time, your talent, your money, your hearts. Because that's what you do. That is what Hollywood does."

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AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APSandy .

___

Online:

www.oscars.org

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Opinion: A Health Insurance Detective Story

I’VE had a long career as a business journalist, beginning at Forbes and including eight years as the editor of Money, a personal finance magazine. But I’ve never faced a more confounding reporting challenge than the one I’m engaged in now: What will I pay next year for the pill that controls my blood cancer?

After making more than 70 phone calls to 16 organizations over the past few weeks, I’m still not totally sure what I will owe for my Revlimid, a derivative of thalidomide that is keeping my multiple myeloma in check. The drug is extremely expensive — about $11,000 retail for a four-week supply, $132,000 a year, $524 a pill. Time Warner, my former employer, has covered me for years under its Supplementary Medicare Program, a plan for retirees that included a special Writers Guild benefit capping my out-of-pocket prescription costs at $1,000 a year. That out-of-pocket limit is scheduled to expire on Jan. 1. So what will my Revlimid cost me next year?

The answers I got ranged from $20 a month to $17,000 a year. One of the first people I phoned said that no matter what I heard, I wouldn’t know the cost until I filed a claim in January. Seventy phone calls later, that may still be the most reliable thing anyone has told me.

Like around 47 million other Medicare beneficiaries, I have until this Friday, Dec. 7, when open enrollment ends, to choose my 2013 Medicare coverage, either through traditional Medicare or a private insurer, as well as my drug coverage — or I will risk all sorts of complications and potential late penalties.

But if a seasoned personal-finance journalist can’t get a straight answer to a simple question, what chance do most people have of picking the right health insurance option?

A study published in the journal Health Affairs in October estimated that a mere 5.2 percent of Medicare Part D beneficiaries chose the cheapest coverage that met their needs. All in all, consumers appear to be wasting roughly $11 billion a year on their Part D coverage, partly, I think, because they don’t get reliable answers to straightforward questions.

Here’s a snapshot of my surreal experience:

NOV. 7 A packet from Time Warner informs me that the company’s new 2013 Retiree Health Care Plan has “no out-of-pocket limit on your expenses.” But Erin, the person who answers at the company’s Benefits Service Center, tells me that the new plan will have “no practical effect” on me. What about the $1,000-a-year cap on drug costs? Is that really being eliminated? “Yes,” she says, “there’s no limit on out-of-pocket expenses in 2013.” I tell her I think that could have a major effect on me.

Next I talk to David at CVS/Caremark, Time Warner’s new drug insurance provider. He thinks my out-of-pocket cost for Revlimid next year will be $6,900. He says, “I know I’m scaring you.”

I call back Erin at Time Warner. She mentions something about $10,000 and says she’ll get an estimate for me in two business days.

NOV. 8 I phone Medicare. Jay says that if I switch to Medicare’s Part D prescription coverage, with a new provider, Revlimid’s cost will drive me into Medicare’s “catastrophic coverage.” I’d pay $2,819 the first month, and 5 percent of the cost of the drug thereafter — $563 a month or maybe $561. Anyway, roughly $9,000 for the year. Jay says AARP’s Part D plan may be a good option.

NOV. 9 Erin at Time Warner tells me that the company’s policy bundles United Healthcare medical coverage with CVS/Caremark’s drug coverage. I can’t accept the medical plan and cherry-pick prescription coverage elsewhere. It’s take it or leave it. Then she puts CVS’s Michele on the line to get me a Revlimid quote. Michele says Time Warner hasn’t transferred my insurance information. She can’t give me a quote without it. Erin says she will not call me with an update. I’ll have to call her.

My oncologist’s assistant steers me to Celgene, Revlimid’s manufacturer. Jennifer in “patient support” says premium assistance grants can cut the cost of Revlimid to $20 or $30 a month. She says, “You’re going to be O.K.” If my income is low enough to qualify for assistance.

NOV. 12 I try CVS again. Christine says my insurance records still have not been transferred, but she thinks my Revlimid might cost $17,000 a year.

Adriana at Medicare warns me that AARP and other Part D providers will require “prior authorization” to cover my Revlimid, so it’s probably best to stick with Time Warner no matter what the cost.

But Brooke at AARP insists that I don’t need prior authorization for my Revlimid, and so does her supervisor Brian — until he spots a footnote. Then he assures me that it will be easy to get prior authorization. All I need is a doctor’s note. My out-of-pocket cost for 2013: roughly $7,000.

NOV. 13 Linda at CVS says her company still doesn’t have my file, but from what she can see about Time Warner’s insurance plans my cost will be $60 a month — $720 for the year.

CVS assigns my case to Rebecca. She says she’s “sure all will be fine.” Well, “pretty sure.” She’s excited. She’s been with the company only a few months. This will be her first quote.

NOV. 14 Giddens at Time Warner puts in an “emergency update request” to get my files transferred to CVS.

Frank Lalli is an editorial consultant on retirement issues and a former senior executive editor at Time Warner’s Time Inc.

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Home of the Week: A premier view estate in Santa Barbara

Solana was created by early clothing manufacturer Frederick Forrest Peabody of Arrow shirts fame with the goal of having a premier view estate in Santa Barbara. The knoll-top compound, which has undergone three years of renovation and updating, features 360-degree ocean and mountain vistas.

Location: Santa Barbara

Asking price: $57.5 million

Year built: 1914

Architect: Francis T. Underhill

Living space: eight bedrooms, 20 bathrooms, more than 20,000 square feet

Lot size: 11.29 acres

Features: Hand-carved mahogany details, bronze hardware, mosaic tile floors, 18th-century wall sconces, 17th-century French oak paneling, a theater, two studies, a wine cellar, a fitness room, a craft room, a beauty salon, a staff apartment, interior courtyard, gated entrance, fountains, guest house, swimming pool, reflecting ponds, 200 fruit trees, 500 rose bushes, cutting garden

About the area: In the third quarter, 60 single-family homes sold in the 93108 ZIP Code at a median price of $1.711 million, according to DataQuick. That was a 4.6% decrease from the third quarter last year.

Agent: Harry Kolb, Sotheby's International Realty, (805) 565-8633

—Lauren Beale

To submit a candidate for Home of the Week, send high-resolution color photos on a CD, written permission from the photographer to publish the images and a description of the house to Lauren Beale, Business, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Send questions to homeoftheweek@latimes.com.

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