Housing Porn Creator Passes

Bad wknd. for former L.A. Times employees: We learn of the passing of Ruth Ryon (Would you give your hideous mutant offspring an alliterative name?) who started housing porn under the Hot Property rubric in the LAT. LA Obsv. pulled this from the Times announcement of her retirement in 2008:

Ryon was one of the first journalists in the country to recognize that readers shared her passion for a glimpse into the homes and lifestyles of Hollywood celebrities, sports figures and captains of industry. It was in reading Parade magazine that she got the idea to write the column as short, pithy items. Her writing style was the voice of the woman behind the pen: She let the facts, in understated prose, speak for themselves.

Although it was then-Real Estate editor Dick Turpin and Times' associate editor Jean Sharley Taylor who gave her the go-ahead for the column in 1984, then-deputy associate editor Shelby Coffey III saw its potent reader interest and moved it to the front page of the section in 1987.

69 is much too early from this reporter's perspective, but when former U.S.C. Trojan & Times sportswriter Lonnie White checked out later in the wknd., he was really too young. He played footsball for U.S.C. from 1982-86 & typed for the Times for 20 yrs., & recently admitted to receiving cash when he was setting records for the Trojans.