latimes1

UPDATE: The paper just announced that Nancie Clare was promoted from deputy editor to editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine. I learned the bomb was dropped this afternoon on experienced editor Annie Gilbar, who made the Los Angeles Times Magazine wonderfully readable and visual and vital to the city again, as well as to Hollywood, something that publication hasn’t been for a long long time. Problem is, there’s no advertising for it no matter if it’s good or not. So now the newpaper’s editor Russ Stanton and publisher Eddy Hartenstein have decided, stupidly, to give back the magazine to editorial. Also fired is the head of production responsible for the incredible look of the magazine, Marc Barrington. “It was a business decision. Annie was making $300,000 a year, Marc $200,000, so that’s half a million which they wanted to save,” an insider tells me. (Yikes, imagine if the newsroom knew salaries like that were being paid!) Now the paper will be edited and produced from inside the LA Times, and it will be crappy all over again.

Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.