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There had been chatter around Hollywood that the LA Times under Austin Beutner was looking to beef up entertainment coverage, but then he was out and it looks now like the flow is going the other way. The Hollywood Reporter will announce today that it has grabbed Joe Bel Bruno, deputy entertainment editor at the Los Angeles Times, to be news director. He will be in charge of breaking industry news and business coverage, a role he had at the LA Times' Company Town desk. Bel Bruno will report to Executive Editor Matthew Belloni, one of the names that had been in high speculation at the Times and in Hollywood circles as possibly leading a ramped-up entertainment team when Beutner was the publisher. This should put an end to that talk, if Beutner's firing didn't.
Bel Bruno has been at the LA Times since 2011, so if he's getting a buyout to take another job it won't be much of one. Before Company Town he was a deputy Business editor at the LAT, and previously had worked for the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, AP and Knight Ridder Financial/Bridge News.
