Week one: 800 Degrees returns, LA’s potholes fixed, journalist speaks about Trump and media

This Week in the News serves as The Quad’s space for reflection on current events at and around UCLA. Every week, Daily Bruin staffers will analyze some of the most significant stories to keep readers up to speed.

And we’re back to week one again.

Coming out hot off the presses after spring break, the Daily Bruin has had a busy week – as we shift back into gear and get ready for the oncoming quarter, we’ve seen a reopening of a beloved pizza joint in Westwood as well as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist deliver a lecture on campus. Here are the Quad’s picks for some of the biggest stories of the week.

800 Degrees pizzeria to reopen Westwood location after closing last year

That’s right, folks – 800 Degrees is back.

After closing its Westwood location back in Oct. 2018, students were left with limited options for getting their fix of pizza in the Village. That all changed Wednesday when the pizza shop reopened.

According to Eater LA, 800 Degrees’ management had always planned on returning to Westwood, however they didn’t feel that the old location could accommodate the pizzeria’s expanded woodfired kitchen concept, which they adopted in early 2018.

While the pizzeria returned to its same original location, the owners have been working on renovating the space and integrating equipment better suited for the woodfired kitchen. This also comes with a more expansive menu, including dishes like salads, salmon, rotisserie chicken and vegan options that were not on the menu before.

Los Angeles repairs roads riddled with potholes after recent rain

Ever notice how cragged and bumpy Westwood’s roads are? It’s hard not to.

As a part of the City of Los Angeles’ “pothole blitz” project, 1,200 potholes across the city were repaired. After frequent winter rains caused an increase in road damage all throughout town, the City of LA Bureau of Street Services began the initiative to identify and repair potholes all across the city. The project lasted about a month, and was completed Sunday.

Prior to the project, the city of Los Angeles identified and fixed about 250 potholes in and around Westwood, however Paul Gomez, a Department of Public Works public relations representative, did not specify whether any of the 1,200 potholes repaired in the last month were in Westwood.

Bob Woodward criticizes media’s coverage of Donald Trump in lecture series

Bob Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist credited for uncovering the Watergate Scandal, came to campus Thursday.

Woodward spoke to an audience of students and UCLA faculty and staff for the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture series, which honors Daniel Pearl, a journalist for the Washington Post who was killed while reporting abroad in Pakistan.

Woodward spoke mainly on the relationship between journalists and President Donald Trump’s administration; he believes that reporters have become too involved in disagreements between the media and the President. Woodward told the audience he is worried that the public has begun to see journalism as another form of politics, as news outlets have put a strong emphasis on Trump’s criticism of and lack of understanding of the media.

In addition, Woodward said he was nervous that Trump’s administration poses a larger threat to the American public than people might think. While he said that journalistic standards and freedom are certainly at threat under the current administration, he also said that the best way for reporters to combat that is to remain nonpartisan and stick with the facts, rather than becoming too defensive.

“When I wake up in the morning, to be honest with you, my first thought is, ‘What are the bastards hiding?’” he said to the audience.

Special to the Daily Bruin: “Whose Campus?”

On Friday, the Daily Bruin’s Opinion section published a print insert and interactive webpage examining some of UCLA’s core values: equity, diversity and inclusion.

The project includes 10 different columns, from Assistant Opinion editor Ani Gasparyan’s analysis of the oftentimes uninviting and unaccommodating realities faced by women in academia to columnist Stephen Wyer’s exploration of UCLA’s relative lack of geographic diversity.

In the package’s column entitled “A Campus Divided,” Opinion editor Keshav Tadimeti discusses how the campus falls short of providing a truly diverse environment for its students, in spite of its message of fostering the aforementioned core values.

The package can found online as well as on newsstands across campus.