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Times business reporter Kim Christensen has been detached from her his! Hollywood beat to work on the paper's Pellicano investigation team. So they are bringing Joseph Menn down from Silicon Valley to take on the Disney beat. Memo from Business Editor Russ Stanton follows.
This morning's Times also brings the return of investigative reporter Michael Goodman, who reports with William C. Rempel on the crazy views of judicial integrity in Las Vegas. Goodman once formed half of the paper's main local investigative reporting team with George Reasons, left the paper in I'm guessing the 1980s after a powerful series on Tony Spilotro and other Las Vegas mobsters, and continued to freelance for the LAT magazine. More recently he has been around the building as a special investigations reporter; today's series opener calls Goodman a Times staff writer, but gives a personal email address for him.
Stanton's memo:
To: The Staff
From: Russ Stanton, Business Editor
After faithfully serving The Crown for the six past years as assistant markets editor, markets editor, California editor and national editor, Marty Zimmerman wants to try his hand at reporting again. When his vacation concludes later this month, he will do just that, becoming a general assignment reporter for us. He will tackle the financial side of the airline industry, a couple of big stray companies such as Avery Dennison and Fleetwood Enterprises, and other high-profile stories a la the Peltz model. He will report to me.
And after faithfully feeding the technology beast for seven-plus years, a period that included a boom and bust, the settlement of the Microsoft antitrust case and two big deals -- HP/Compaq and Oracle/PeopleSoft -- Joe Menn is moving to L.A. to cover the Walt Disney Co. With Kim Christensen on indefinite loan to the Pellicano effort, we need to have someone actively covering the biggest company in town. Joe is coming off of a terrific run covering Internet privacy and security issues, and the sale of Knight-Ridder Co. His beat-reporting skills and his mastery of technology will not only keep us competitive, but give us a sophisticated take on the Burbank entertainment giant.