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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Coast Guardsman is killed after suspected smugglers ram his boat

A veteran U.S. Coast Guard chief petty officer was killed Sunday after suspected smugglers rammed his vessel near Santa Cruz Island, casting him into the ocean with a fatal head wound.

Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne III, 34, of Redondo Beach was second in command of the Halibut, an 87-foot patrol cutter based in Marina del Rey. Authorities said they could not recall a Coast Guard chief petty officer being killed in such a manner off the coast of California.

Early Sunday morning, the Halibut was dispatched to investigate a boat operating near Santa Cruz Island, the largest of California's eight Channel Islands. The island is roughly 25 miles southwest of Oxnard.

The boat, first detected by a patrol plane, had fallen under suspicion because it was operating in the middle of the night without lights and was a "panga"-style vessel, an open-hulled boat that has become "the choice of smugglers operating off the coast of California," said Coast Guard spokesman Adam Eggers.

The Coast Guard cutter contains a smaller boat — a rigid-hull inflatable used routinely for search-and-rescue operations and missions that require a nimble approach. When Horne and his team approached in the inflatable, the suspect boat gunned its engine, maneuvered directly toward the Coast Guard inflatable, rammed it and fled.

The impact knocked Horne and another Coast Guardsman into the water. Both were quickly plucked from the sea. Horne had suffered a traumatic head injury. While receiving medical care, he was raced to shore aboard the Halibut. Paramedics met the Halibut at the pier in Port Hueneme and declared Horne dead at 2:21 a.m.

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of our shipmate," said Adm. Robert J. Papp, the Coast Guard commandant. "Our fallen shipmate stood the watch on the front lines protecting our nation, and we are all indebted to him for his service and sacrifice."

The second crew member knocked into the water suffered minor injuries and was treated and released from a hospital later Sunday. He was not identified.

Using a helicopter and a 45-foot boat stationed in Los Angeles, the Coast Guard later found the panga and stopped it.

Two men were detained. The Coast Guard declined to identify them or say whether drugs were found aboard the boat. A second suspicious vessel was believed to have been traveling alongside the panga before the incident.

"We are actively working to ensure that all of the individuals involved in this illegal activity are brought to justice," said Coast Guard Capt. James Jenkins.

The Coast Guard was unable to provide a detailed account of Horne's service.

He had been heralded by the agency on several occasions.

He appears to have arrived in Southern California last summer after serving for two years as an executive petty officer in Emerald Isle, N.C. There, he received a Coast Guard Commendation Medal for his leadership in 63 search-and-rescue cases, in which 38 lives were saved.

According to an account of the medal ceremony, the most notable of those operations involved a boat that capsized in a North Carolina inlet in 2010. The account said he coached his team through "treacherous" sea conditions to rescue five people.

The Coast Guard also noted Horne's involvement in a January operation in which the Halibut found and stopped two boats operating at midnight with

no lights. The boats contained 2,000 pounds of marijuana.

In the last five years, as U.S. authorities have become increasingly successful at blocking traditional land routes, smugglers have taken increasingly to the sea — ferrying both drugs and immigrants. Authorities believe a smuggling vessel is launched toward California every three days; the number of immigrants and smugglers arrested at sea or along the coast more than doubled to 867 in 2010 from the previous year.

Drug runners and human smugglers have run ashore at a dog beach in Del Mar, at Crystal Cove in Orange County and next to the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Border Patrol agents have been diverted from land to sea, and an agency supervisor recently called the ocean "the front line."

The eruption in sea-based smuggling has created the same cat-and-mouse game in the ocean that has long existed along the U.S.-Mexico border. Smuggling boats often travel without lights and at a slow speed to limit their wakes. When U.S. agents began disrupting routes into San Diego beaches, smugglers began conducting counter-surveillance, using radios to direct boat pilots to unguarded beaches.

scott.gold@latimes.com

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Specs surface for alleged low-end $99 Nexus 7

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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.

___

Online:

www.juliensauctions.com

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Vietnam Veterans, Claiming PTSD, Sue for Better Discharges

NEW HAVEN — In the summer of 1968, John Shepherd Jr. enlisted in the Army, figuring that the draft would get him anyway. By January 1969, he was in the Mekong Delta, fighting with the Ninth Infantry Division.

Within a month, his patrol was ambushed, and Mr. Shepherd responded by tossing a hand grenade into a bunker that killed several enemy soldiers. The Army awarded him a Bronze Star with a valor device, one of its highest decorations.

Yet the medal did little to assuage Mr. Shepherd’s sense of anxiousness and futility about the war. A few weeks after his act of heroism, he said, his platoon leader was killed by a sniper as he tried to help Mr. Shepherd out of a canal. It was a breaking point: his behavior became erratic, and at some point he simply refused to go on patrol.

“I never felt fear like I felt when he got shot,” Mr. Shepherd said last week.

After a court-martial, the Army discharged Mr. Shepherd under other-than-honorable conditions, then known as an undesirable discharge. At the time, he was happy just to be a civilian again. But he came to rue that discharge, particularly after his claim for veterans benefits was denied because of it.

Today, Mr. Shepherd, 65, is part of a class-action lawsuit against the armed forces arguing that he and other Vietnam veterans had post-traumatic stress disorder when they were issued other-than-honorable discharges. The suit, filed in Federal District Court, demands that their discharges be upgraded.

The suit raises two thorny issues that could affect thousands of Vietnam veterans: Can they be given a diagnosis of PTSD retroactively, to their time in service, though the disorder was not identified until 1980? And if they can, should recently instituted policies intended to protect troops with PTSD be applied retroactively to their cases?

Mr. Shepherd’s legal team, students with the Yale Law School veterans legal clinic, argues yes on both counts. In court papers, they assert that it is reasonable to assume that Mr. Shepherd and other veterans who were later given PTSD diagnoses began exhibiting troublesome symptoms while in service.

Moreover, under rules put in place during the Iraq war, troops who say they have PTSD must be given medical examinations before they are forced out of the military, to ensure that problematic behavior is not linked to the disorder. If they are given a PTSD diagnosis, service members may still receive an honorable discharge.

“Vietnam War-era veterans, in contrast, have been denied this opportunity for appropriate consideration of the PTSD,” the students said in the complaint.

But the Army says no. In a rejection of an earlier request by Mr. Shepherd to upgrade his discharge, the Army tersely rejected evidence that his misconduct 43 years ago was linked to PTSD and raised questions about whether his platoon leader was actually killed.

A spokesman for the Army said the military has a policy of not discussing pending litigation.

The details of Mr. Shepherd’s case aside, the suit could have a wide impact. The Yale team says that its review of records from 2003 to 2012 shows that 154 Vietnam-era veterans petitioned the Army to upgrade discharges because of PTSD, but that only two were successful. Yet the Army Board of Corrections for Military Records granted upgrades nearly half of the time for other cases.

The students estimate that more than a quarter million Vietnam-era veterans were discharged under other-than-honorable conditions, and that thousands of those probably had PTSD. Their suit names as defendants the secretaries for the Army, Air Force and Navy. Vietnam Veterans of America, the veterans service organization, is joining the case as a plaintiff on Monday.

Discharges that are other than honorable can make it harder for veterans to find work and also disqualify them for veterans benefits.

In Mr. Shepherd’s case, a Department of Veterans Affairs doctor in 2004 gave him a diagnosis of service-connected PTSD. As a result, the department will provide health care for his PTSD. But it will not provide him general medical care, unless he is found to have other health problems related to his service.

Veterans disability compensation is also a problem. Mr. Shepherd’s undesirable discharge was actually upgraded to a general discharge in the 1970s under a special Carter administration program. That upgrade should have made it easier for him to apply for disability compensation. But subsequent legislation enacted by Congress said that clemency upgrades like Mr. Shepherd’s did not automatically qualify veterans for benefits. Mr. Shepherd’s compensation claim was ultimately rejected.

Mr. Shepherd, who has been divorced twice and battled through alcoholism and drug abuse, lives in New Haven, getting by on Social Security and a Teamsters pension. (He drove trucks for years.) He could use the extra money from disability compensation, but what matters as much, he says, is removing the stain of his discharge.

“I want that honorable,” he said. “I did do my part, until I really felt it wasn’t worth getting killed for.”

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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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Katzenberg, Spielberg attend Governors Awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Stars such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are arriving at the Hollywood and Highland Center in Los Angeles to pay homage to four industry heavyweights.

The film academy's fourth annual Governors Awards are being presented Saturday to honorary Oscar winners Jeffrey Katzenberg, stuntman Hal Needham, documentarian D.A. Pennebaker and American Film Institute founding director George Stevens Jr.

The four men will accept their Oscar statuettes during the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' private dinner program in the Ray Dolby Ballroom. Portions of the untelevised event may be included in the Feb. 24 Academy Awards telecast.

Other guests expected at Saturday's ceremony include Quentin Tarantino, Bradley Cooper, Kristen Stewart, Bryan Cranston and Oscar host Seth MacFarlane.

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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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