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ALL CHANGE IN LA: The Los Angeles Times magazine, LA, has ended its flirtation with being a stand-alone glossy with the ousting of editor in chief Annie Gilbar in favor of her deputy, Nancie Clare. Clare will now report to the newspaper’s top editor, Russ Stanton, after a little over a year in which the magazine operated independently of the newsroom. (Initial reports last year that the relaunched magazine would report to the marketing department were hotly denied by both official and unofficial sources, but LA’s recruiting of fashion and lifestyle magazine staffers had clearly rankled in a time of serial newsroom layoffs).
On Tuesday, a day after the announcement, online postmortems focused on how much Gilbar had cost the company, both in her production choices and her salary. “Annie was HUGELY overpaid and perhaps now they can share that budget with other more deserving editors — I should know, I hired her,” wrote the magazine’s launch publisher (it is now on its third publisher in a year’s time) Valarie Anderson on the Facebook page of Style Section L.A., a new Web site launched by former Los Angeles Times Image section staffer Emili Vesilind.
Reached by WWD, Gilbar herself confirmed reports she had been making $300,000. “The decision was made because of the bottom line, and I respect that,” she added of her exit.
Although former staffers speculated that integration under the newsroom was another cost-cutting move — eliminating the need to have two separate production coordinators, for example — a spokeswoman for the Times said there would be no change in how the magazine would be put out. — Irin Carmon
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