The Los Angeles Times hired Lorraine Ali as their new pop music editor, succeeding Randall Roberts, who will serve as a deputy editor going forward.

Ali returns home to the LAT, where she started her writing career in the mid-1990s under Robert Hilburn. She was a former contributing editor at Newsweek and a senior critic at Rolling Stone.

After the jump is the LAT memo:

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When a public radio station rechristened this summer as the home of “smart rock” hopes for good publicity, it really can’t do much better than glowing words of endorsement from Paul McGuinness. The manager of U2 is front and center in Randy Lewis’ LA Times write-up about Cal State Northridge’s KCSN, praising the efforts of new program director Sky Daniels to transform the formerly automated classical music outfit into a non-profit champion of emerging pop and rock n’roll artists.

Daniels was an early supporter of U2 while the music director at WLUP in Chicago and later joined the band’s record company. He is now working at 88.5 FM on the LA dial with two other early Bono boosters–former KCRW “Morning Becomes Eclectic” host Nic Harcourt and ex-LA Times critic Robert Hilburn:

Hilburn covered U2′s first Los Angeles concert in 1981, singling it out from a wave of overseas arrivals at the time: “The band with the most commercial potential here may be U2, a gutsy and richly talented Irish quartet,” he wrote.

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Hasselhoff Child Support: David Hasselhoff has agreed to pay $25,000 a month to support his ex-wife and children. We hear he’s taking the money directly from his beer and burger fund.

Danny Federici Dies: Danny Federici, keyboardist for the E Street Band, died Thursday after battling melanoma for three years. He was 58. Former rock critic Robert Hilburn is quoted extensively in the un-bylined obit. We have to wonder if he was interviewed, or if that was just Hilburn’s copy reworked.

OMFG: Hoping to boost old fashioned ratings for its hit show Gossip Girls, the CW television network said it would no longer offer free Internet streams of new episodes when the show returns Monday. Said fans of the show, “L8r, losers.”