New LA Times Editorial Staff - New York Times - 3 LA Times - 1/2

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/12/business/media/12times.html?pagewanted=all

The New York Times/Bloomberg take on the new hires/promotions since it cuts to the quick:

BLOOMBERG NEWS

The Los Angeles Times yesterday named three senior editors to help run the newsroom, with one focusing principally on attracting more readers to the daily.

Dean Baquet, editor of The Times, named Leo C. Wolinsky managing editor, assigning him to address readership declines, the newspaper said. An investigative reporter, Doug Frantz, was named managing editor for news and John Montorio was named associate editor for features.

And...

Mr. Baquet said Mr. Frantz would be in charge of day-to-day news-gathering functions, including foreign, national, metro, business, sports and science coverage. Mr. Montorio will direct the paper's feature sections.

OK - let me get this straight.

Ex-New York Times man Dean Baquet hires ex-New York Times man Doug Frantz to run all the news gathering for the LA Times. He then hires ex-New York Times man John Montorio to run all the feature sections for the LA Times. He then asks Californian Leo C. Wolinsky to solve the problem of why hundreds of thousands of people have stopped reading the Times because it has nothing to do with... Los Angeles.

That settles it! Dean Baquet is definitely on David Geffen's payroll! And I think we can all agree, Dean's worth ever single penny that Geffen is paying him.