According to today's Los Angeles Times, Telemundo reporter Mirthala Salinas will be reassigned Monday to be a general assignment reporter for the Inland Empire division of KVEA-TV, based out of Riverside, starting Monday.  Salinas was previously suspended for two months for violating conflict-of-interest journalistic policies.

I first heard the story today on the John & Ken Show at the tail-end of their 6 PM hour, and they had some interesting predictions about how the seven-member Riverside City Council will now make a lot of news just for the extra Telemundo coverage.

A few observations on this:
- It's great to see KVEA expand to the Inland Empire, one of the fastest-growing populations in the nation, with a rapidly-growing Latino population.  There's not an incredible lot of news generated each day, but Riverside is the largest city in this two-county region and it's good to see more Spanish coverage to supplement the La Prensa papers (which I believe are weekly?) here.
- It's funny to see this story covered by outlets as far away as the U.K. Guardian as "breaking international news."  One publication in the U.K. even calls the transfer an "exile!"
- John and Ken were surprised that we call our seven districts "wards" which sounds like Chicago's political system.  They aren't too many California local governments that call their subdivisions "wards," and only in Riverside and Moreno Valley in this county, are cities divided into districts for representative local government.  I wonder if there's ever been a push to modernize city government nomenclature and just call the "wards" districts...