Baker Joins E! From Us Weekly, Where He Most Recently Served as Editorial Director for the Magazine’s Web Site, Usmagazine.com

Los Angeles, CA, February 4, 2008 — E! Entertainment, the global leader for entertainment and celebrity news, has hired industry news veteran Ken Baker as Executive News Editor. In this role, Baker is charged with obtaining and reporting entertainment and celebrity news and information for E!’s various news outlets, including E! News, Daily 10, Eonline and E! News Now. The announcement was made today by Jeff Shore, Senior Vice President, Production for E! and Suzanne Kolb, Executive Vice President, Marketing and Communications for E! and Style, to whom Baker will report.

“Ken’s outstanding relationships within the entertainment industry and track record for exceptional reporting make him the perfect addition to our news organization,” said Jeff Shore. “E! is the leader in entertainment news and Ken will play a key role in ensuring we continue to deliver the most reliable, up-to-the-minute entertainment news and information across our E! Everywhere platform 24/7.”

Baker, who holds a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, got his start as a newsdesk assistant for David Brinkley, Ted Koppel and Sam Donaldson at ABC News in Washington, D.C. After working as a newspaper reporter, Baker entered celebrity journalism as a staff correspondent for People magazine. The author of three books, including his Oprah Winfrey featured memoir Man Made, Baker in 2000 joined Us Weekly, holding the title of Senior Writer, Bureau Chief, West Coast Executive Editor and, most recently, Editorial Director of the magazine’s web site.

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Hunter Thompson’s widow, Anita Thompson, is boo-hooing over Marc Weingarten’s LAT review of a new biography of the gonzo king, Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson.

According to Stacey McCain in the Washington Times, Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour discredit everything Thompson wrote after leaving Rolling Stone. Considering the source, well, duh. What does she expect from Wenner? She sounds annoying as hell. So many rock widows do.

Weingarten wrote:

Rolling Stone founder Jann S. Wenner and writer Corey Seymour– who held Thompson’s hand as a Rolling Stone assistant editor in the ’90s–trace the slow spiral into infirmity and depression ending in Thompson’s suicide on Feb. 20, 2005.What “Gonzo” makes abundantly clear is that he circled the drain for a long time.

Mrs. Thompson wrote Wenner a tell-off letter last May, but assures fans that Johnny Depp, who wrote the forward, is a-okay:

for those of you worried about Johnny Depp, although I haven’t spoken to him in a long time, I can assure you that he probably did not have a chance to read the manuscript before agreeing to let Jann republish his rolling stone article as the “forward.”

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