Big blow to LAT

Science writer Robert Lee Hotz is leaving the Times for the Wall Street Journal to write the Science Journal column. An elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a leader of the National Association of Science Writers, Hotz has been based recently in New York. His farewell email notes that there have been seven different publishers and five editors in his 14 years at the Times, but he writes to his colleagues that "year in and year out, you have always been among the finest in American journalism." He makes the jump on April 9.