Texas native Randy Harvey is returning home.

The Los Angeles Times associate editor is leaving the newspaper to become a featured sports columnist for the Houston Chronicle.

Harvey started at the LAT as a reporter in 1981, working his way up the ranks to become a columnist in 1996 and senior assistant editor four years later.

The Baltimore Sun managed to lure Harvey away for a two-year stint as assistant managing editor before returning to the LAT in 2006 as sports editor.

“I’ve been suppressing my inner Oscar Madison. After 12 years behind a desk in management, I’m letting him free,” Harvey told LA Observed via email.

We have totally neglected our LAT in 90 feature this summer, but we thought we’d make amends by writing all kind of glowing things about the paper’s Olympics blog which is, truly, damn cool. (Love the on-the-ground touches and particularly like reading Bill Plaschke‘s take on the racial controversy before we’d even heard about the controversy itself.)

But — bully for us — the paper beat us to it!

In a press release extolling the paper’s Olympics coverage, the paper’s PR machine let us know it’s on track to get 1 million pvs by the games’ end.

Congrats!

Press release follows:

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