From the Editor

With this issue, Los Angeles Times Magazine launches a new format and several columns that are designed to offer you more voices and more choices. This doesn’t necessarily mean more words to read--the cover story, in fact, will be considerably shorter--but there should be a greater variety of features and columns every week.

By tightening our cover story, we will be able to introduce several new regular columnists:

MARGO KAUFMAN, a gifted Venice writer whose musings on male-female relationships, everyday indignities and the joys and horrors of life in Southern California are already familiar to our readers. Margo has been a contributing editor to the Magazine and has written so many of our “Private Lives” columns that she practically owns that space. We are pleased that Margo now will be writing for us twice a month.

HARRY SHEARER, the multi-talented an actor/writer/radio commentator whose pungent humor is familiar to fans of “Saturday Night Live,” the 1984 heavy-metal spoof “This Is Spinal Tap” and (long ago) “Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.” Harry is a local boy--his childhood home near Los Angeles High was displaced by the Santa Monica Freeway--but his interests and opinions are far-reaching. His Sunday morning radio show, “Le Show,” is broadcast locally on KCRW-FM. Harry’s column, “Man Bites Town,” will rotate with Margo’s.

DRS. MIRIAM SHUCHMAN AND MICHAEL S. WILKES, who will collaborate on a monthly “Health” column. They are practicing physicians--Miriam is a psychiatrist and Mike is an internist--as well as longtime friends. From their inside perspective, they offer consumers guidance on patients’ rights, new medical technology and treatments--and what to ask the doctor.

In addition, we are replacing the “Around Home” column with “Currents,” a guide to new shops, fashions, food and trends in Southern California. Our crew of experts will report weekly on everything from the area’s best bookstores to finding last-minute tickets to supposedly sold-out sports events.

Some popular elements of the Magazine will remain unchanged--”Jack Smith on Sunday” and “Puzzler,” our anchors, are to be found in their usual places--but other features have been repackaged.

Robert Lawrence Balzer’s wine column will now appear every other week along with our “Food” department. The “Looks” column, written by Paddy Calistro, will appear three times a month. And, in addition to major fashion coverage at the beginning of each season, you’ll find a “Fashion” department every other week. Robert Smaus’s knowledgeable writing about garden design, as well as coverage of interior design and architecture, will appear regularly, too, listed in the table of contents with our feature stories.

Finally, we’ll have room every week for a letters column. Please let us know what you think of our new format--and of anything else you read in Los Angeles Times Magazine.

LINDA MATHEWS (SIGNATURE) , EDITOR