Times names new top entertainment editor
Los Angeles Times Editor Davan Maharaj on Wednesday announced new top editors for the Times’ arts and entertainment coverage team, which he called “one of the most important journalistic franchises at The Times.”
Maharaj named Business Editor John Corrigan as assistant managing editor in charge of arts and entertainment. Corrigan succeeds Sallie Hofmeister, who had been responsible for arts and entertainment since 2009. Maharaj earlier announced that Hofmeister would leave The Times at the end of this week.
Corrigan will head a department that reports on the city’s home industry with movie, television and arts coverage as well as the Showtracker, Hero Complex and Pop & Hiss blogs. He’ll be responsible for the paper’s critics and for The Envelope, the Times’ awards section. After state and local news, the paper has more reporters covering entertainment than any other area, and that section brings in a significant part of the paper’s advertising revenue.
“John brings a wealth of experience and energy to his new role,” Maharaj said in a memo to the staff. “During his tenure as Business editor, he led a team of reporters and editors in making our financial report a model of what we want our journalism to be: a combination of elegant features, hard-hitting investigative stories and quick-hit breaking news on blogs.”
Corrigan, Business editor since February 2009, already works with reporters on the financial side of entertainment, on the paper’s Company Town team. He edited the 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning series “The Wal-Mart Effect” and oversaw coverage of Toyota’s sudden-acceleration crisis, which won a Gerald Loeb Award for business journalism.
Maharaj also announced a new arts and entertainment editor at The Times — Laurie Ochoa, a former editor of L.A. Weekly and co-founder of the literary journal Slake: Los Angeles. Ochoa worked for the Los Angeles Times for a decade before leaving to become executive editor of Gourmet magazine. At The Times, she edited the Food section and wrote for the Calendar section.
Finally, The Times promoted television critic Mary McNamara to senior culture editor, a new position in which McNamara will help generate coverage areas and story ideas. McNamara, who has been at The Times for 21 years, will continue to do television criticism.
