A New Man at L.A. Magazine’s Helm : Periodicals: Robert Anson plans a few things--education coverage, closer scrutiny of Hollywood. Are staff changes far behind?

Changes are on the way at Los Angeles magazine.

Renowned journalist Robert Sam Anson, who is best known for his reporting from Southeast Asia in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and his nonfiction books, became the editor of the 35-year-old publication last week. Anson, 50, is the author of books on former President Richard M. Nixon, crime and Indochina and is completing a book on the Walt Disney Co.

On Anson’s list of priorities, he said, will be hard-hitting coverage of Hollywood, an increase in education coverage and a search for young journalistic talent. “When people mention the best magazines in the country,” Anson, said, “I want Los Angeles magazine to be on the list.”

Anson replaces Lew Harris, a 20-year veteran of the magazine, who is credited with changing the look and style of the publication during his three years in the top spot. After Joan McGraw became the new publisher earlier this year, Harris announced he would step down.

He leaves a magazine that ranks among the top five most profitable regional glossies in the country and occasionally turns out pieces that shake the town (exposing lurid tabloid newspaper practices; getting inside manipulative Hollywood press agents). “People liked Lew a lot,” said one staffer.

Yet critics assert that major changes at the 155,000-circulation magazine are overdue. The magazine is rarely considered to be in the same journalistic league as New York magazine, Philadelphia magazine and other city-based regional glossies that turn out work of national import. “If you look at it as the leading city magazine in the No. 2 market in the nation, it’s a joke,” said Charles Rappleye, news editor and media critic at LA Weekly.

Anson, who has lived in L.A. for the past four years, believes the city--and Hollywood in particular--is ready for some muckraking. “This area is so poorly served journalistically,” he said, “it’s just desperate for information.

And while Harris appeared to ignore the snotty new city magazine on the block, Buzz, Anson doesn’t count it out. “Clearly there’s two magazines where there once was one,” he said. Another reason he’ll be paying attention: Son Sam Anson writes for Buzz.

Meanwhile, the buzz inside Los Angeles magazine is that new writers will flow in and some regulars will be cut. “There are some people that are going to go,” said one staffer.

Before his latest book (“The Rules of Magic,” due out next year), Anson, a Cleveland native, was a contributing editor at Esquire and wrote for several other magazines.

Acquaintances laud him as a standout in a generation of “new journalists” who took a street-level angle, took reams of notes and wrote in a literary style.

“I think he’s the last of a breed of broad-shouldered, bare-knuckled, ‘70s magazine journalists who will chopper into any hell hole on Earth and come back with an epic story and an expense account to match,” said Esquire Deputy Editor David Hirshey. “I think it’s a bold move to appoint him editor and one which will clearly differentiate Los Angeles magazine from the rest. . . .”