Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
Joe Flint will take the lead on Company Town, the L.A. Times' entry in the blog space where the NYT has The Carpetbagger. Flint has a long resume and does impressions too, based on the memo from entertainment editor Sallie Hofmeister, which follows after the jump.
From: Sallie Hofmeister, Assistant Managing Editor/Arts and Entertainment
I am pleased to announce that veteran entertainment reporter Joe Flint is joining Calendar as the motorman behind Company Town online, our breaking news blog covering the media business. Although the blog will continue to draw upon contributions from the entire entertainment staff, the anchor will be Joe, who brings to the job an acerbic wit, three gigabytes of Outlook contacts and nearly 20 years of experience covering the business, including seven at the Wall Street Journal.
Joe started as a reporter for Broadcasting & Cable magazine in Washington. Moving to Los Angeles, he became a television reporter and editor for Daily Variety before jumping to Entertainment Weekly, where he wrote a weekly column, On the Air. In 1999, Joe became a staff writer for the Journal in New York, covering television as well as major media giants such as Viacom, News Corp., CBS and Disney.
Joe took a break from journalism in 2006 to become director of industry programs for the Paley Center for Media in New York. There, he organized conferences, panels and speaker series on media topics. A third-generation newsman, Joe is the ink-stained profession's equivalent to blue blood: His father, Jerry Flint, is the dean of
automotive journalists at Forbes, and his grandfather, the late Royce Howes, won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing at the Detroit Free Press.
Joe will report to John Lippman. He will be seated on the second floor right next to his new boss, who looks forward to Joe's spot-on impersonations of Sumner Redstone, Leslie Moonves, Peter Bart and Robert Walden playing Donald H. Segretti in "All the President's Men."