Even though Tribune's innovation guru keeps advising Sam Zell's newspapers to make stars of their staffs and be funnier, in last month's cutbacks at the Los Angeles Times the editors chose to drop Steve Harvey. He's been one of the paper's best-known bylines for decades, and his "Only in L.A." column offered the only chuckles in the entire California section. So readers have been writing emails of protest to the Times — I don't know how many, but several have been copied my way. Today, the paper runs a best-of collection in California and says Harvey will continue to contribute occasional stories to the paper and feed items to Veronique's L.A. Now blog. There's also an online gallery of photos from "Only in L.A." Either Harvey or Doug Smith, the reporter who recently finished his fifth tour of duty in Baghdad, was number one in seniority on the Times editorial staff. * I stand corrected: Richard Cooper of the Times's Washington bureau is apparently the longest-serving LAT editorial employee.