Sam Sifton, the paper’s Culture Editor who infamously cooked for Nora Ephron in the pages of The New York Times recently, is leaving that job to become — what else? — the new Restaurant Critic. (He’d been editor of the Dining section This means that the Culture section overseeing film, TV, and arts reporting and criticism is without a leader. Noted NYT top editor Bill Keller: “It is eccentric because we are stealing one of our finest editors from one of our most important departments. This is certain to be a cause of anguish and anxiety in Culture, where Sam has run things with great skill, imagination, energy and good humor. Everyone understands that Sam the Culture Editor will be as hard an act to follow as Frank the Restaurant Critic. We’ve set ourselves the task of finding a new Culture Editor who will give us a lift, too. And we expect the anguish and anxiety to be short-lived.”

Get the latest Industry news sent straight to your Wall.