Los Angeles Times Announces Op-Ed Columnist Lineup
November 10 2005 - 6:49PM
PR Newswire (US)
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- The Los Angeles Times today
announced a new lineup of columnists on its Op-Ed page in an
ongoing effort to provide readers with a wide range of voices and
perspectives reflecting the region's rich diversity. The changes
were announced by Times Editorial Page Editor Andres Martinez, who
assumed responsibility for the daily Op-Ed page and the Sunday
Current section in September. "The opinion pages are the
newspaper's town square," said Martinez. "Our readers expect us to
publish all points of view and the broadest range of opinion --
from those of our editorial board and columnists to those of our
readers and Op-Ed contributors. And we intend to do exactly that."
Starting Sunday, the new weekly Op-Ed columnist lineup will be: *
Sunday: Gregory Rodriguez, Jon Chait * Monday: Niall Ferguson *
Tuesday: Joel Stein * Wednesday: Max Boot, Erin Aubry Kaplan *
Thursday: Jonah Goldberg, Patt Morrison * Friday: Rosa Brooks *
Saturday: Meghan Daum "I think we've put together a smart, original
and provocative team of writers who reflect a variety of
interesting and thoughtful perspectives on local, national and
foreign affairs," said Times Op-Ed Page Editor Nicholas Goldberg.
"A good column involves a relationship developed with readers over
time, and I invite our readers to develop their relationship with
these engaging minds in the weeks and months to come." As part of
the revamping of the opinion pages, a number of regular columnists
-- Michael McGough, David Gelertner and Robert Scheer -- will no
longer be appearing on the Op-Ed page. Robert Scheer will continue
writing his column until the end of the year, on Tuesdays. Scheer's
column has appeared on the Op-Ed page of The Times since 1993, and
before that he served as a Times reporter for 17 years. "Bob is a
forceful writer of strong convictions and it has been a privilege
for this newspaper to publish his column for the past 12 years,"
said Martinez. As part of the changes, Martinez also announced that
the Op-Ed page will rely more on commissioned artwork and
illustrations that complement articles, as well as different types
of stand-alone graphics. Traditional editorial cartoons from a
variety of political perspectives will still appear, but a greater
variety of art will make the page more vibrant and interesting. As
a result of this new direction, Michael Ramirez, The Times
cartoonist since 1997, will be leaving the newspaper at the end of
the year. The Times will no longer have a staff cartoonist.
"Michael is a gifted artist and a sharp political observer, and we
appreciate his contributions to the page," said Martinez. Columnist
Biographies Max Boot (Wednesdays) Max Boot is Olin Senior Fellow in
National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in
New York. Before joining the Council in October 2002, Boot spent
eight years as a writer and editor at The Wall Street Journal, the
last five years as editorial features editor. Boot also is a
contributing editor to The Weekly Standard. He has written for The
New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Financial
Times, Foreign Affairs and many other publications. His last book,
"The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American
Power," was selected as one of the best books of 2002 by The
Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science
Monitor. Rosa Brooks (Fridays) A professor at the University of
Virginia School of Law, Brooks has served as a senior advisor at
the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and
Labor; as a consultant to the Open Society Institute and Human
Rights Watch; as a board member of Amnesty International USA; and
as a lecturer at Yale Law School. She has traveled extensively and
conducted field research on issues such as transitional justice in
Iraq, Indonesia and Kosovo and child soldiers in Uganda and Sierra
Leone. Brooks is the author of numerous scholarly articles on
international law, human rights, and the law of war. Her book, "Can
Might Make Rights? The Rule of Law After Military Interventions"
(with Jane Stromseth and David Wippman), will be published next
year. Jon Chait (Sundays) Chait is a senior editor at The New
Republic, where he has worked since 1995. He has written for The
New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Slate, Time,
American Prospect and other publications. He is currently writing a
book about American politics and fiscal policy scheduled to be
released in 2007. Meghan Daum (Saturdays) Daum has written for
numerous publications, including the New Yorker, Harper's, GQ, and
Vogue. Her voice has been heard in commentaries and features on
National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" and "This American Life,"
and on public radio's "Marketplace." After living for several years
in New York City, Daum moved to Nebraska in 1999, where she lived
on a farm and wrote the novel, "The Quality of Life Report," for
which she also wrote the screenplay. In 2004, she moved to Los
Angeles. Niall Ferguson (Mondays) Ferguson is professor of history
at Harvard University, a senior research fellow of Jesus College at
Oxford University and senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at
Stanford University. Ferguson's books include "Colossus;" the
internationally-acclaimed "Empire," which was accompanied by a
six-part British television series; the award-winning, two-volume
"House of Rothschild;" "The Pity of War;" and "The Cash Nexus:
Money and Power in The Modern World, 1700-2000." He was the editor
of "Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals." Jonah
Goldberg (Thursdays) A member of the USA Today Board of
Contributors, Goldberg also is a contributing editor for National
Review and founding editor of National Review Online, for which he
writes "The Goldberg File." He is a former columnist and
contributing editor for Brill's Content and former media critic for
The American Enterprise. He also served as Washington columnist for
the Times of London, and has written about politics and culture for
the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, the Public
Interest, the Wilson Quarterly, the Weekly Standard, Slate,
TheStreet.com, New York Post, Women's Quarterly and Food and Wine.
Erin Aubry Kaplan (Wednesdays beginning Dec. 7) Kaplan began
working full-time as a journalist in 1992 for The Times and, for a
short time, for a section called City Times, where she continued
covering the Crenshaw district, South Central and events affecting
L.A.'s disparate black communities. She also worked for New Times
Los Angeles and LA Weekly, where she wrote a column, "Cakewalk." A
widely anthologized author, Kaplan's articles have appeared in the
London Independent, the Guardian, Salon.com, The Crisis, Newsday,
Contemporary Art Magazine, the Utne Reader and Black Enterprise.
She has completed a first book, an essay collection entitled,
"Views and Blues from the Edge: Dispatches from a Black
Journalista." Patt Morrison (Thursdays) Morrison is a longtime
writer and columnist for The Times, for which her work has spanned
topics from national politics to the O.J. Simpson case, the Gulf
War, and Britain's royal family. She participated in two of The
Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning team efforts -- coverage of the 1992
riots and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Since 1991, she has
served as columnist and contributing editor for Los Angeles Times
Magazine. Morrison has won six Emmys and four Golden Mike awards as
host and commentator on "Life & Times," the nightly news and
current affairs program on KCET-TV. She is the author of "Rio LA,
Tales from the Los Angeles River" and co-author with Cecilia
Rasmussen of "Angels Walk," a series of Los Angeles historical
markers and guidebooks. Gregory Rodriguez (Sundays) Rodriguez is a
Los Angeles-based Irvine Senior Fellow at the New American
Foundation, a non-partisan think thank in Washington D.C. Rodriguez
has written widely on issues of race, immigration, ethnicity,
politics, and American's changing demographics in a variety of
publications. His essay, "Mongrel America," which first appeared in
The Atlantic Monthly, was included in "The Best American Political
Writing of 2003." Rodriguez's book on how the Mexican past will
shape the American future will be published simultaneously next
year in English by Pantheon and in Spanish by Editorial Planeta
Mexico. Joel Stein (Tuesdays) Stein has written a Hollywood-themed
column for the Current section since early 2005. Formerly a staff
writer and columnist for Time magazine, Stein wrote a dozen cover
stories for the magazine on subjects as diverse as Michael Jordan,
Las Vegas and the Internet bubble. He has also appeared on VH1's "I
Love the Decade You Tell Me I Love," HBO's "Phoning It In" and
Comedy Central's "Reel Comedy." The Times, a Tribune Publishing
company, is the largest metropolitan daily newspaper in the country
and the winner of 37 Pulitzer Prizes, including two this year. The
Times publishes five daily regional editions, for the Los Angeles
metropolitan area, Orange County, Ventura County, the San Fernando
Valley, and the Inland Empire of Riverside and San Bernardino
counties, as well as a National edition. The Times' website,
http://www.latimes.com/, features 50,000 content pages, and is
updated continuously with more than 3,000 stories posted daily.
Latimes.com's award-winning arts and entertainment section,
calendarlive.com, offers an extensive range of entertainment news
reviews and Southern California's most comprehensive event listing.
The Times also produces The Envelope, http://www.theenvelope.com/,
the entertainment industry's most comprehensive, year-round awards
show website. DATASOURCE: Los Angeles Times CONTACT: David Garcia
of Los Angeles Times, +1-213-237-4715, Web site:
http://www.latimes.com/
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