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Michael Kinsley, the former editor of the New Republic, Harpers and Slate, is joining the L.A. Times as editor of the editorial and opinion pages. Janet Clayton, who has run the editorial pages, is returning to the newsroom as the editor in charge of state and local coverage. Miriam Pawel, the current honcho for local news, is being reassigned.
*Update: Times people are also gossiping about a succession plan that would have Editor John Carroll, who is in his early sixties, stepping down before too long. With the LAT's five Pulitzers this year, and previous high-level editor changes, he has accomplished much of his agenda of fixing the troubled paper he inherited in 2000. The most talked-about scenario is that Managing Editor Dean Baquet would be elevated to editor in chief. A name being floated as his possible managing editor is Doug Frantz, a longtime friend and former colleague of Baquet's at the New York Times. The talk was fueled by Baquet's recent trip to Turkey to visit with Frantz, who is based in Istanbul for the LAT...Also, prior to today's news, Time's L.A. bureau was said to be working on a piece about the resurgent LAT.
**Absentee editor?: Kinsley's farewell email to the staff of Slate said he will split his time between Los Angeles and Seattle, where he now lives. (MSNBC)
Today's internal LAT memo from Carroll and Baquet announcing the changes follows:
To: The Staff From: John Carroll and Dean BaquetEffective June 14, the following reassignments will take place among key editors:
Michael Kinsley will join us as editorial and opinion editor; Janet Clayton, currently editor of the editorial pages, will return to the newsroom as assistant managing editor for state and local news; and Miriam Pawel, currently assistant managing editor for state and local news, will move to another assignment to be announced later.
As many of you know, Mike is a writer of wit and insight, a clear thinker on public policy and an innovative editor known for spotting and developing talent. He has served as editor of the New Republic and Harper's, and he was the founding editor of Slate. For six years, he was co-host of CNN's "Crossfire." He has written regular columns for the New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, and the Times of London. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Conde Nast Traveler and Vanity Fair. He has done academic work at Harvard College, Oxford University and Harvard Law School. Currently he is writing columns for Slate, the Washington Post and Time.
Janet has had a long and successful career at the Los Angeles Times, serving as editor of the editorial pages since 1995. In two of the last three years, members of her department have won Pulitzer Prizes. In her new job, Janet will oversee the largest single staff in the newsroom.
Janet is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Southern California. After graduation, she studied at Cambridge. She began her career with the Times in the Washington Bureau and served as a reporter in Orange County and in Metro, covering politics as deputy city/county bureau chief in Los Angeles before moving to the op-ed page as an articles editor. She became an editorial writer, then assistant editorial page editor, and finally editor of the editorial pages.
Miriam joined the paper in 2000, and under her direction the staff that covers local, regional and state news has been extensively reorganized. The many improvements in coverage under her leadership include the introduction of the California section in spring of 2001. Recently her staff was awarded the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for spot news coverage in recognition of its aggressive and comprehensive coverage of the 2003 fires across Southern California.
These changes represent our on going effort to improve the newspaper, to give every part of the paper a thoughtful reconsideration from time to time and to expose key editors to a variety of assignments.
Exactly. Soon Seipp will be complaining about the editorials as well as the op-eds.
Good move to ditch Pawell. Local news can only improve.
Posted by: janet at April 28, 2004 12:13 PMI agree this is excellent news, and am flattered you guys seem to think it's all about me, even though it certainly isn't.
What I wonder is if this means Mickey will now have an actual assignment desk?
Posted by: Cathy Seipp at April 28, 2004 12:41 PMOf course it's not about you. It's about a very good newpaper getting better.
One thing that has been holding the LA Times back is its politeness. Hopefully, Kinsley will fix that -- on the editorial page, anyway.
Posted by: Janet at April 28, 2004 12:51 PMThis is good news, quite simply for the fact that Kinsley is always worth reading -- and the L.A. Times isn't.
(Hi Cathy!)
Posted by: David Ehrenstein at April 28, 2004 01:10 PMConsider my jaw dropped.
Posted by: Robert Fiore at April 28, 2004 01:41 PMBut what will this mean for Robert Scheer? And isn't his politeness fabled?
Posted by: KateCoe at April 28, 2004 01:56 PMTouche! Rude Robert Scheer is the exception that proves the rule.
FYI, from MSNBC:
Kinsley called the L.A. Times "a great newspaper with ambitious plans to become even greater."
Indeed, the Times swept the annual Pulitzer prizes announced this month, winning five of the prestigious awards.
Posted by: janet at April 28, 2004 02:37 PMWhat's in it for Kinsley? Compared to the political power centers of NY or DC and compared to national media, isn't this a step down?
Posted by: The Lonewacko Blog at April 28, 2004 02:41 PM>>isn't this a step down?
Unless he was offered the same job at the Washington Post or the New York Times, no. The New Republic and Harper's are in terms of circulation essentially vanity projects. Slate isn't even printed on paper.
The question in my mind is, can he fire Michael Ramirez? Or to put it more accurately, could he please please please please fire Michael Ramirez?
Posted by: Robert Fiore at April 28, 2004 03:16 PMI've always enjoyed Kinsley's writing. This is further proof that the Times is taking serious steps to become a better paper. Now, if they only find someone to cover cafe society in France. You know, someone with savoir faire, someone with sophistication, someone with a cell phone.
Posted by: Allan at April 28, 2004 03:22 PMOh, jeez, surprise, surprise...another lib is being hired by the LAT! As for Ramirez, thank god he's there because almost all the other regular contributors are business-as-usual lefties.
I'm still wondering if the paper will survive in the long run as the local population base becomes increasingly poorer and non-English speaking, and even more apathetic about reading (and all the folk who showed up at the LAT's book fair in the cozy little domain of Westwood don't necessarily reflect the future of LA).
Posted by: David at April 28, 2004 04:01 PMAs a long-time friend and fan of Janet Clayton's, I know that anything she does will be done well, very well. The staff -- state and local reporters -- working with her will be fortunate to have a boss who is so bright and so talented.
Posted by: Emma at April 28, 2004 04:17 PMWhat's "rude" about Robert Scheer?
And yes, FIRE RAMIREZ IMMEDIATELY!
Posted by: David Ehrenstein at April 28, 2004 04:23 PMI worked with Kinsley (well 'with' is way too generous to me because we were never in the same room!) for a while and got to know him a bit while working for Chris Matthews. I think he and Matthews are Stanford buddies, could be wrong about that. IN any case he is a very intelligent, committed guy and good to work for. I think he will improve the Times.
As for the "Another Lib! No!" criticism, Kinsley is an Establishment pragmatist. He may be slightly left-of-center, but he is a professional and likes to get attention with interesting writing and people. He has never shut out interesting conservative voices on Slate. I think this is a net gain for everyone who reads the Times, because Kinsley will improve the paper... not make it more liberal.
Posted by: Ted at April 28, 2004 04:23 PMKinsley is the sharpest political writer working. Why? He doesn't just re-articulate received wisdom in hopes of giving one side or the other a new set of talking points for the day. He actually argues. And because he argues brilliantly, with wit and economy, he does something almost no other political writer does: He persuades.
The LA Times is very lucky. Congratulations. You're on your way to being a must-read editorial/op-ed page on the order of the NY Times.
Posted by: Jeff Turrentine at April 28, 2004 04:33 PMIsn't it amazing how antagonistic people are towards this town?
Kinsley was editor of The New Republic during the Krauthammer/Kondracke era, so he's hardly doctrinaire. I wonder if he could get the guy who did the Zeitgeist Checklist column? He was great.
Posted by: Robert Fiore at April 28, 2004 04:40 PM
If Ramirez goes, they should bring back Paul Conrad on a regular basis and hire John Sherffius as MR's permanent replacement.
I'm looking forward to see what they do differently on LA city and county news.
Posted by: Brad Smith at April 28, 2004 04:44 PMJeez, Cathy, just when I was turning a pale shade of lime thinking that everybody would think this was all about you, Allan makes it a little bit about me. Regardless, it is very good news.
Posted by: Amy Alkon at April 28, 2004 04:52 PMOh, and PS, maybe they'll stop trying to nickel and dime Roman Genn and he'll start doing his drawings for the editorial page again.
Posted by: Amy Alkon at April 28, 2004 04:52 PM> Isn't it amazing how antagonistic
> people are towards this town?
That's one of the reasons I wonder if the LAT is going to survive in the long run, perhaps symbolized by Kinsley wanting to split his time between LA and Seattle? That suggests he is either lukewarm in his commitment to the paper or thinks LA is too much of an armpit to relocate his full-time residence to.
As for Paul Conrad, that old geezer is stuck in the hippie 1960s. Besides, it would make more sense for the LAT to get another cartoonist in the future who writes and speaks fluent Spanish.
Posted by: David at April 28, 2004 05:04 PMYou mean to say that Ramirez sounds better in Spanish? LOL!
If "old geezer" Conrad is "stuck in the hippie 60's" that's a fine place to be.
Posted by: David Ehrenstein at April 28, 2004 05:12 PMFear of what its readership is or might become is what’s been holding back the Times since time immemorial. The hopeful sign of the Kinsley hiring is that the paper is finally overcoming its fear of sophistication. For the last 40 years or more the Times has been under the impression that its competition is the suburban papers, and it has seemed to pitch itself to an imaginary yokel. Since the people writing the Times have not always been the brightest bulbs imaginable you can imagine what they do when they're condescending. (Well, you don’t actually have to imagine it, you can read it.) Newspapers are read by people who read newspapers, whether someone with an animus against the city believes they "reflect" it or not.
Posted by: Robert Fiore at April 28, 2004 05:43 PMKinsley's a bright and talented man, but I wonder what he knows about Los Angeles. The semi-absentee part also has me wondering.
Posted by: Tim McGarry at April 28, 2004 09:07 PMI think it almost certain that someone will be asked to step in to lend editorial direction to local issues. But I don't know who's LA-oriented enough anymore. As it stands, they've been unimaginative and even undisciplined in this regard anyway for a long time. How many Huell Howsery "op-eds" by Kevin Starr have their been; how many Kotkin weaving-all-over-the-road deconstructions of some unusual albeit marginal statistic? Kinsley crowns a trend that has been going on ever since Tony Day, the trend away from local editorial relevance. He can only do better, really.
Posted by: joseph at April 28, 2004 09:22 PM> You mean to say that Ramirez
> sounds better in Spanish? LOL!
The current LAT cartoonist's surname may be Spanish, but that doesn't mean he speaks Spanish. RACIST!
> If "old geezer" Conrad is "stuck in
> the hippie 60's" that's a fine place
> to be.
Yea, he'd agree with you. He strikes me as someone too foolish to have learned some simple hard truths about human nature over the past 30 years.
Posted by: David at April 29, 2004 01:03 AMI'm still wondering if the paper will survive in the long run as the local population base becomes increasingly poorer and non-English speaking, and even more apathetic about reading
Posted by: David the Obscure at April 29, 2004 03:03 PM
of LA Observed
Outstanding news. Someone knock on Seipp's door and make sure she's all right.
Posted by: joseph at April 28, 2004 12:02 PM