We’ve pasted the entire memo from Eddy Hartenstein below:

From: Hartenstein, Eddy
Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 11:06 AM
Subject: Editorial Pages Announcement

I am pleased to announce the following changes in management responsibilities of our editorial pages.

Jim Newton, who has served as editor of the editorial pages for more than two years, is stepping down in order to finish up his biography of Dwight Eisenhower. Nick Goldberg, who has ably served as the section’s deputy editor, will now become editor, overseeing the editorial board, as well as Op-Ed, Sunday Opinion, letters and our opinion coverage online. He will assume his new responsibilities on Monday, Sept. 28 and report to me.

Starting next week, Jim will scale back his duties. He will relinquish his management of Opinion but remain part of it, becoming editor-at-large, a new masthead position. In that capacity, he will advise on editorial matters, remain a member of the editorial board and will keep writing and editing for the editorial pages, both as an editorial writer and an Op-Ed contributor.

Read more

Slate’s Jacob Weisberg read from his new book The Bush Tragedy at a Domino-sponored shindig in Brentwood. 300 guests stormed Arianna Huffington’s mansion house. (Or home, as the invitations read.)

Adrian Grenier, sporting a beard that would have been a bushy tragedy on anyone else, Tracey Ullman, who does a wicked Arianna herself, and Christine Lahti represented SAG; Dale Launer and Stephen Gaghan were the WGA/DGA guys, and producers were thick on the ground with Lawrence Bender, Mike Medavoy, Irina Medavoy, Sam Goldwyn and George Stevens. Matt Groening had the animation arena all to himself.

Jim Ledbetter gave Arianna a copy of his new collection for Penguin–Karl Marx’s Dispatches for the New York Tribune, stopping her as she was enroute to her office. Gabe Snyder got the story behind her distracted expression: book deadline! (Who else was in the study, anyway?)

Usual coterie of LA media types–Mickey Kaus, Carla Hall, Kevin Roderick, Nick Goldberg, Kim Serafin, Ruth Shalit, Rob Barrett, Roman Genn–let’s move on, shall we?

Weisberg’s clever wife, Deborah Needleman (she edits Domino) brought her Conde Nast cohorts along–Clemmy Closson and Beth Brenner.

Oscars were discussed perfunctorily, Obama enthusiastically (Rachel Sklar’s cries of plagiarism! were dismissed as business as usual which means those dissing her didn’t read very closely. Or else they were drunk.) Plenty of food and drink, which is unusual for book parties–and lots of copies of the book which looks like a fast read. No need to send it out for coverage.

(photos by Stefanie Keenan for Patrick McMullan)

We would have thought Swati Pandey at the LA Times was too young to have turned into the usual Times fogey, but we were wrong. Pandey’s as cut off from the real world as all the rest of them. Maybe Nick Goldberg has staffers hermetically sealed.

In a meant-to-be-cute signed op-ed, Pandey pleads for a louder horn for her Corolla (she calls it “rare”–it’s only the most popular car in history). Evidently, the car’s factory-issue horn is too quiet.

You’d think Dan Neil could offer advice. Or just replace it. Isn’t she supposed to be a cracker-jack researcher?

Rebellion on Two Wheels wants a horn, too.

The LA Times Op-Ed section really must be jinxed. First, the whole Martinez/Grazer fiasco. Today, section editor Nick Goldberg writes a moving piece about his friend, Daniel Pearl, whom he knew in Teheran, 10 years ago. He asks the question so many others have asked:

What would possess an American Jew to go to an after-hours meeting in Karachi, Pakistan, with an obviously hostile and possibly dangerous fundamentalist leader?

And, with just the worst timing in the world, answers:

Sure, there were killers and rejectionists and crazies, like the old Shiite mullah I met in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, who told me that that he’d never met a Jew but that if he did, he’d know it instantly and kill him; and the young Jihadi I met in Peshawar, Pakistan, who told me virtually the same thing. We knew that all was not well in the Muslim world, but it felt, somehow, like such people were on the fringes, not in the ascendancy.

and

Perhaps we were naive. Perhaps I should have taken the old, bearded men more seriously when they said they wanted to kill Jews.

People in London and Glasgow are taking those sentiments very seriously.

Obviously Goldberg couldn’t have known about the attacks when he wrote the piece or fixed the publication date.

Readers expect, unfairly perhaps, that professional journalists have keener instincts and sharper observational skills than the ordinary traveler/tourist, as well as access to more information.
But what good is all that access and skill if the reporter ignores what he’d being told, face-to-face?

How might the world be different if more journalists, 10 years ago, had not consigned the threats of “old bearded men” to the fringes of the Muslim world?

The LA Times is going for a guest editor for the Sunday Op-ed section, Current, and so picked the obvious candidate, Brian Grazer for the March 25th issue. From the press release:

We asked Brian Grazer to kick off the program because we wanted to tap into his creative vision. Brian’s an ideal choice because his interests are notoriously wide-ranging, and often unconventional. His career is powered by an endless curiosity, and we thought it would be fun to hitch a ride along the way.

Grazer has so few outlets for self-expression, and besides, he’s a rich white guy, and you know hard it is for them. Usually these sorts of “Something for a Day” go to the highest bidder at an elementary school fund-raiser.

And Nikki Finke has so much more to the story. Still not locally acclimated Nick Goldberg is behind Grazer who picked some not-very-unconventional choices for writers, who include Andre Leon Talley on “fashion and status” and rabid lawyer Marty Singer on the “power of allegations”. There’s also a Nobel Prize winner, because Hollywood types love to hob-nob with the big brains and more to the point, a facial interpretation expert on how to catch liars.

And, remember, Grazer can’t read.