LA Times' DC bureau turns -30-

Talk about a power vacuum. The LA Times Washington bureau is no more. What we get instead is a Tribune Washington News Bureau which, as Kevin blogged earlier, will feed content to all of Trib Co's outlets. That makes 19 shared reporters, five editors, and two more reporters dedicated to the Times. (Memo and Kevin's take on it here.)

Other than Doyle McManus (he gets a column and, according to E&P, has had a hankering to step down since 2005) and an editorial writer, no one at the bureau will be a Times employee, a point which Cissy Baker, who takes over from McManus as bureau chief, made quite clear in a talk with the staff last week.

Two DC reporters leaving the building are Johanna Neuman and James Gerstenzang, who also ran one of the Times' most interesting, best-named and most successful blogs, Countdown to Crawford. Here's their goodbye post. I hear Don Frederick, who blogs with Andy Malcolm on Top of the Ticket (or ToTT as it's called in in-house emails) is also moving on.

Here's the Chicago Trib's take on the new moves, where one honcho touts the reduced and newly-pooled staff as "reporters without borders". I can't help think what Tribune's latest move really means for us LA Times loyalists is stories without reporters.

--Veronique de Turenne