Los Angeles magazine's January issue, landing this week, has pieces on LAT homicide blogger Jill Leovy and on the Wendy McCaw situation at the Santa Barbara News-Press. There's also some parsing of the presidential candidates and Patric Kuh's treatment of the best new restaurants in town. But the news is in the magazine's offices, where editor Kit Rachlis is going on book leave for four months, starting Jan. 2. He also notified the staff today that a new senior editor is coming aboard: Richard E. Meyer, the long-time Los Angeles Times byline who, behind the scenes, has been the go-to editor and rewrite artist for the paper's biggest projects in recent years. Rachlis' email:

Hey, everybody,

I'm delighted to announce that Rick Meyer will be joining the magazine as a senior editor. For the last 28 years, Rick has worked at the L.A. Times, where he earned a reputation as one of the paper's most elegant writers. He was twice a Pulitzer finalist in feature writing, in 1995 for a profile of a paralyzed woman who was discovered to have been fully cognitive after it was thought she had been in a coma for years, and in 2001 for a piece on the parents of a boy who killed two and wounded another in a high school shooting. For the last seven years, Rick has applied everything he learned as a writer to editing. Among many pieces, he worked on two­ — "Enrique's Journey" by Sonia Nazario and "A Father’s Pain, a Judge’s Duty, and a Justice Beyond Their Reach" by Barry Siegel — ­that went on to win numerous awards, including Pulitzers. Rick will write as well as edit for the magazine. He begins January 2. Please welcome him. He will be sharing an office with Steve Oney.

Kit

Rachlis has been gathering former Times colleagues, most recently Pulitzer winner and author J.R. Moehringer and former West magazine managing editor Ann Herold — to go with executive editor Mary Melton, senior editor Karen Wada and senior writer Jesse Katz. Also, former Times writers Mark Arax, Dave Ferrell, Shawn Hubler and Miles Corwin either have stories in this issue or are writing pieces.

Noted: The magazine's top new restaurant is..............Fraiche.