INSIDE SCOOP

-- Compiled by the Daily Pilot staff

Reporters have a lot of weird phone conversations. It’s part of the

job. Some are pleasantly weird, some unpleasantly so and others can only

be described as, well, kind of amusing.

Here’s an excerpt from one that a Pilot reporter had with Thomas

Gionis, the Irvine orthopedic surgeon who was convicted in 1992 for

hiring thugs to assault his former wife, Aissa Wayne, daughter of actor

John Wayne.

Gionis actually returned a call made from the newsroom by a reporter

who only hoped to get comments about the John Marshall Law School in

Chicago canceling Gionis’ appointment as editor-in-chief of its

prestigious Law Review. He is a second-year student there.

Gionis: So you are with the Daily Pilot?

Reporter: Yes.

Gionis: I’ll give you the interview if you accept two things...

Reporter: Yes...

Gionis: One, that the Daily Pilot is a paper fit only to wrap dead

fish, and two, that if you’re a reporter worth anything you would not be

working for the Daily Pilot.

The reporter does not know what category that conversation goes into,

but one question remains: Is it a good thing when a convicted felon is

mad at your paper?

And oh, the reporter did not get the interview.

Newport Desert?

No matter how much we all love Newport Beach, there’s no question that

it’s sometimes nice to get away for a couple of days.

Councilman Tod Ridgeway must have thought so as well when he took his

family to Palm Desert for spring break. But the balmy inland temperatures

must have appealed to a few more Newporters as well.

“It seemed like half of Newport Beach was there,” Ridgeway said after

he returned Friday. That morning, at 10 a.m., the temperature was 84

degrees out there, by the way.