Revolving Door Newsletter: 06.10.08

LAT Editorial Loses Another Battle

June 10, 2008

Things keep going from bad to worse at the Los Angeles Times. The latest body blow? The publishing side has staged a coup at the paper's monthly magazine, replacing the entire editorial staff with new editors and designers answering to publisher David Hiller, not editor Russ Stanton. Stanton's bold countermove? He asked Hiller to change the magazine's name, so it wouldn't reflect badly on the actual newsgathering side of the operation. The new editor is Annie Gilbar, a Home Shopping Network host who worked for InStyle and has written advice books like Wedding Sanity Savers. The new creative director is Rip Georges, who held the same post at InStyle. (See where this is going?) Meanwhile, former LA Times op-ed chief and perennial gadfly Michael Kinsley weighs in on Tribune's insane plans to boost the productivity (and therefore profitability) of the paper: "If the average Los Angeles Times journalist produces 51 pages a year, as Michaels has calculated, this means that a 50-50 ratio will allow him to lay off 500 Los Angeles Times journalists, which is more than half of the current staff. Then, if he can persuade the remaining Los Angeles Times journalists to raise their productivity from 50 pages to 300 pages a year, he can dismiss five-sixths of the rest. That would leave something like 50 journalists to put out the Los Angeles Times every day. For now."

Boston Globe stalwart and multimedia experimentalist John Yemma has been appointed editor of The Christian Science Monitor, replacing Richard Bergenheim, who's ascending to a higher position in the church of Christian Science itself. Yemma spent 10 years at the CSM in the 1980s before heading to the Globe, where he spent the last few years trying to drag the newsroom into the 21st century... The Associated Press continues to bulk up its celebrity reporting operations, this time on the video side, by naming Nick Moore its manager of entertainment operations and appointing Antonia Ball and Alicia Quarles to handle international and national video, respectively... Nancy Johnson takes over as editor-in-chief of Cadalyst, while Kenneth Wong is executive editor... Prevention has hired a quartet of new online sales managers from the likes of Travel + Leisure, Forbes.com, Lifetime, and Women's Day... And there are more changes at Avenue A | Razorfish, Story Worldwide, ALS-New York, Waterfront Media, and Essence.com...

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