LA Times Gets New Editor Without Warning: Showbiz Coverage Still Lazy And Irrelevant

If it’s Tuesday there must be a new Los Angeles Times top editor. Not that it’ll matter to Hollywood since the newspaper’s entertainment business coverage remains smug, lazy, and uninformed.EditorRuss Stanton will step down as the Editor/EVP on December 23 after four years andManaging Editor Davan Maharaj will take over the top newsroom job. He’ll become the paper’s 15th editor and is a 22-year LAT veteran. The official statement from LAT President/COO Officer Kathy Thomsonin the paper only saysStanton “moves on to the next phase of his career”.DuringStanton’stenure, the LAT newsroom staff shrank from more than 900 people to about 550. As much asStanton tried to make the LAT a bigger online presence, his leadership emphasized celebrity over substance in entertainment coverage. The result is that thenewsosaur is nowirrelevant in the Hollywood community and the proof is in the LAT‘sdwindling movie and TV advertising revenues.