Molly Hennessy-Fiske to cover L.A. County government

Here's the memo to the staff from David Lauter, California Editor:

I'm happy to announce that Molly Hennessy-Fiske, who has done excellent work in Washington, Baghdad and on the Metro staff, will be taking on a new assignment, joining our City-County bureau to focus on L.A. County government.

Molly joined The Times initially in the Washington bureau in 2006, where she wrote about economics and the gathering home mortgage crisis, did excellent work on the Virginia Tech shootings and served two tours in our Baghdad bureau. Since moving to the Metro staff last year, she has had a role in practically every major story to come along, from the wildfires to gang shootings, the San Marino murder mystery and, most recently, the Chatsworth train crash. She has been an innovator on our morning desk, pioneering in efforts to get our stories out on the Web quickly and cleanly. And she has proven herself repeatedly as a versatile, dogged and resourceful reporter -- qualities she'll need in dealing with the county bureaucracy and the supervisors.

In her new assignment, she'll be partnering with another determined, energetic reporter, Garrett Therolf, who has been breaking stories on the county beat since taking it over early this spring.

Please join me in congratulating Molly on her excellent work so far and a new, challenging assignment ahead.

Nita Lelyveld named morning assignment editor as Megan Garvey takes on new role

The announcement from Hiring and Development Editor Susan Denley:

Nita Lelyveld has been named morning assignment editor in Metro, replacing Megan Garvey who is moving into a new role working with health and county government reporters as well as on an effort to further integrate the California report with latimes.com.

Details follow, from California Editor David Lauter’s note to the California staff:

Four reporters move to California staff

California Editor David Lauter's memo to the newsroom:

Between train crashes, birthdays and other distractions, I've gotten behind on staff announcements, so here, belatedly, is good news about several excellent additions to Metro, each of whom will strengthen our reporting in important areas.

Kimi Yoshino -- Kimi's first story for The Times, back in 2000, was about a 4-year-old boy badly injured on a Disneyland ride. She had just started working in our Orange County office when she was thrown into the story and quickly demonstrated the qualities that have marked her reporting ever since -- dogged pursuit of facts, tenacity and clarity of writing. Over the next couple of years, she developed a thriving beat in which she repeatedly broke stories on the safety of theme parks, fights over development projects and the impact of tourism on the region's economy. In 2006, Kimi moved to the downtown Business section, where she wrote about the excesses of wealth during the frothy final days of the housing bubble. She took on harder news assignments, as well, traveling to Iraq late in 2007 for a stint in our Baghdad bureau -- an assignment which proved even more memorable than expected. Kimi, who attended UC Davis, came to The Times after six years in the Central Valley, working for the Stockton Record and the Fresno Bee. In Metro, she will cover the health care beat, an assignment that's central to our coverage of the region and its governments.

Alexandra Zavis -- Alex has been a mainstay of the Baghdad bureau since we hired her away from the AP in 2006. She spent a decade with the AP in Africa, covering conflicts in places that have become bywords for intractable fighting -- Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan. She also did turns in Afghanistan and Iraq, where she covered the initial U.S. invasion while traveling with a Marine unit. In our bureau, Alex dived quickly into Iraq's chaos, covering the war during one of its most intense periods, through the execution of Saddam Hussein, the U.S. surge strategy and its aftermath. She accompanied U.S. troops into one of their largest operations of the war, the offensive against Sunni forces in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, and wrote vividly of the fighting in places like Baqubah, Muqdadiya and the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Alex grew up overseas and is a graduate of Oxford, so actually reporting here in the U.S. is a relatively new experience for her. So far, she says, she's navigated the bureaucracy of the DMV and found herself an apartment, so she's cleared the initial hurdles. Here in Metro, she'll start out on a general assignment rotation.

Charles Piller -- Charlie came to The Times in 1998, after two years as a freelance columnist for the Business section and previous stints as a senior editor at Macworld and PC World magazines. He was a founding board member of the Center for Public Integrity, based in Washington, D.C., and is an expert on the Freedom of Information Act. For The Times, Charlie has written about technology, infectious diseases, the FBI’s computer woes and the failings of ballistic evidence. His reporting coups include pieces on terrorist incursions into cyberspace. His series on the Gates Foundation and its investments won the LA Press Club’s investigative reporting award. Among Charlie's great skills is an ability to work his way through large databases, ferret out their secrets, then turn his hard-won knowledge into highly readable prose. That skill was on display in his recent stories on how some charities spend hugely disproportionate sums on their fundraising endeavors, and he will now put it -- and other skills -- to work as a member of the Metro projects team.

Kim Christensen -- One of Julie Marquis' earliest memories of her work at The Times was being beaten -- soundly and repeatedly -- by Kim Christensen. That was back in 1996, when Kim was at the Orange County Register, working his way toward a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of what came to be known as the UCI fertility scandal. A few years later, Kim moved to the Oregonian in Portland, where he and three colleagues won the Pulitzer gold medal for Public Service for their stories on how the Immigration and Naturalization Service abused both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals. Along the way, he's written about Medicare scams, women's prisons and police shootings. He's also spent a brief stint at Kroll Associates, which in an earlier, simpler era would have been called a detective agency. Now, he'll be working for the Metro projects team, where Julie can keep an eye on him.

'A Life in Shards'

"Asian art expert dies in custody," read a 7-inch story on Page B13 in The Times in mid-May. The fate of that Asian art expert, a 62-year-old museum director named Roxanna Brown, turned out to be a provocative tale that ran in The Times Sept. 11-13. How it got from brief to three-part story is a tale all its own.

It was written and rewritten (and rewritten) before it came to be published in three parts ("A passion for art, a perilous pursuit"; "Her career revived, scholar turns tipster"; "Once an aid in a federal probe, antiquities scholar becomes a key target"). While some objected, most readers sent praise for the stories by reporter Jason Felch, and asked for follow-up stories.

"I've read The Times for nearly 40 years now. This is the first morning ever that I've opened the paper and looked for a story. I had to know how the Roxanna Brown saga ended. Mr. Felch, your coverage of this woman's life was just terrific. Good job," wrote Pat Conwell in La Mesa.

Felch was on paternity leave when Brown was arrested. The reporter, who has covered the story of American museums and the antiquities trade since 2005, when a curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum was indicted by Italy for trafficking in looted art, was intrigued by how it came to pass that a person initially described as unwitting victim of the alleged scheme ended up dying in prison.

Felch was back in the newsroom in June, reviewing documents and photographs and interviewing associates of the the scholar-turned-tipster-turned-accused. It was, he and his editor decided, a compelling and complicated story worth telling. The question between him and editor Julie Marquis soon became clear as well: What was the best way to report it?

First Felch wrote a straight news piece, short and to the point, starting with information from an  affidavit of Brown's arrest. The idea was to twin it with a longer story -- which he also wrote at the time -- that filled in the details of how Brown went from being a farm girl in Illinois to a 22-year-old reporter in Vietnam to a woman at the center of an international smuggling investigation.

The problem with that two-story approach, says Marquis, was that the first story would give away the ending. Ultimately, she says, "I think most people love old-fashioned storytelling. This was a case when the material seemed to justify a narrative approach."

That's when Felch and Marquis decided it was worth his writing it yet again.

George Wilhelm named Sports Photo Editor

Deputy Managing Editor Colin Crawford's note to staff:

I am pleased to announce that George Wilhelm has been promoted to Sports Photo Editor. George has worked as a photo editor in Sports on a temporary basis for five years and has demonstrated strong skills and a wealth of knowledge while directing our Sports photo coverage.

George was a biology major at San Diego State University when he changed course midstream to study photojournalism at Pierce College. He earned an AA degree a week before starting his first job as a staff photographer at the Thousand Oaks News Chronicle in 1978. He moved on to The Simi Valley Enterprise in 1980 where he was eventually promoted to chief photographer. George joined The Times in 1986 in the Valley Edition.

During his years with The Times he has won numerous local, regional, and national awards for news, feature, and sports photography, including a 2nd place Sports Portfolio award from the University of Missouri Pictures of the Year competition. Most recently, George conceived of and worked with Times photographer Rob Gauthier on a project to chronicle the travels of hockey's Stanley Cup after the Anaheim Ducks had won the trophy in 2007. The project, published in a special section, won numerous awards, including the Sigma Delta Chi award for Sports Photography.

Michelle Maltais, Editorial Broadcast Manager

Here's a note to the staff from Managing Editor Davan Maharaj announcing an appointment to a newly created position.

Michelle Maltais, one of the first converts to a multi-platform newsroom, will help colleagues across The Times make the leap to video in her new role as Editorial Broadcast Manager. As we begin integrating the print, web and television operations of Tribune newsrooms in Los Angeles, Michelle will act as The Times’ primary editorial liaison with KTLA, KSWB in San Diego and KTXL in Sacramento. She’ll also work closely with Nancy Sullivan [executive director, Communications] to coordinate appearances by Times reporters and editors on outside media.

Michelle is uniquely suited for the job. Shortly after joining The Times as a Metpro copy editor in 1997, she began working with the Business section to expand its reach on radio – including the LA Times-KFWB Noon Business Hour. In 2001, her role grew to include video for broadcast and online. And in mid-2007, she became one of the first web deputies, responsible for enhancing the Business report on latimes.com. Along the way, Michelle has been honored by the American Copy Editor Society and shared in a Times editorial award.

Although not a Trini, Michelle does have some of the islands in her blood. She grew up in the Coachella Valley, got her BA in English from Scripps College and her MS in journalism from Columbia.

She starts immediately, reporting to me. Once the newsroom reorganization is finished, she will be sitting next to the city desk.

As for that reference to "Trini"....Maltais explains, "Davan, who is of Trinidadian descent himself, mentions in passing a kinship for my heritage …my mother is Jamaican."

Ombudsmen columns

Below are links to some of the past week's columns by ombudsmen, readers' representatives and editors around the nation. More columns and information about ombudsmen in the U.S. and around the world can be found at the Organization of News Ombudsmen website (which has a permanent link on the right side of this page).

Jim Newton to return as editorial pages chief

Publisher Eddy Hartenstein's note to Times staff:

I’m pleased to announce that Jim Newton has agreed to return to The Times to resume his duties as editor of the editorial pages. You all know Jim, so no introduction is needed. I would like to note that his decision to rejoin our enterprise, despite the demands of his book-writing career, is a vote of confidence in what we are trying to accomplish.

He’ll start on Monday and report to me.  In the meantime, Jim asked that I send along this note:

“As you all know, The Times has a special claim on my heart and I’m convinced that Eddy represents our best chance for sustaining and building great journalism. Given that, I’m delighted that he’s offered me the chance to return, and I’m thrilled to move back into my old office—the best in the building. See you all in a few days.”

Please join me in welcoming Jim back to the team.

When mistakes are made ...

The readers' representative office sometimes hears from readers who claim that the first thing they look at each day is the "For the Record" box on Page A2 (published online at a corrections link on the left bar of the latimes.com homepage). Whether it's an affinity for accuracy or a sense of schadenfreude that's behind their interest in the page, the readers are seeing the result of an emphasis on correcting the record that was strengthened eight or nine years ago at The Times.

The "For the Record" section also includes contact information for the readers' representative office. And many of the corrections and clarifications are there thanks to the participation of (as Jay Rosen at PressThink identifies them) the people formerly known as the audience -- those readers who contact The Times in an effort to help keep the published record straight.

Nowadays, The Times addresses inaccuracies that might have gone unnoted years ago. An opinion piece in Op-Ed in 2001 had Toni Morrison born in "Loraine," Ohio. At the time, a reader noted that the city is spelled "Lorain." No correction ran; today it would be corrected. Why the fuss over an E? It's simpler to acknowledge in writing all misspelled proper nouns rather than have staffers debate how many wrong letters of a name warrant correction.

Though some matters are black and white -- ages that are wrong, proper nouns that are misspelled -- in other cases, things are less clear. The section is called "For the Record" for a reason: Not everything is a correction. Sometimes entries simply clarify.

That gray area is where readers, editors, reporters and members of this office often find themselves wrangling over what warrants a for-the-record. Just one recent example: Did the headline and Sept. 10 editorial about the 99 Cents Only Stores upping prices to 99.99 cents deserve a for-the-record? The headline read "The almost 1% solution." Mathematics-minded readers pointed out that the price change wasn't "almost" 1%. But the editorial referred to a "1% price hike," then said, "or rather, a price hike that approaches 1%." Was the thing wrong? Misleading? Yes, and no. Because the correct figures were in the article, it was decided that for the average reader it wasn't a correctible offense. But -- although letters to the editor cannot be used in place of a for-the-record -- letters-page editors did decide to publish on Sept. 14 a reproval from Christopher Hoffman of Long Beach. As Hoffman pointed out, "A 0.99-cent increase is not 'a price hike that approaches 1%,' it equals 1% exactly. Simple math: 101% of 99 is 99.99. Or 99.9900000000 -- without rounding, the need for a parabolic curve or anything else."

What has brought the most debate in the newsroom these days are questions raised by the fact that The Times publishes constantly, on the Internet.

John Glionna: Correspondent -- Northeast Asia

Here's a memo to the staff from Foreign Editor Bruce Wallace and Managing Editor Davan Maharaj:

We are very pleased to announce that John Glionna is joining The Times’ foreign staff to contribute to our coverage across Asia. We’re all familiar with John’s superb work, not only from the Bay Area where he has been based since 2000, but as a roving pinch-hitter on the foreign staff producing stories ranging from the aftermath of a Pakistan earthquake to the 50,000 Filipinos who live among the dead in a Manila cemetery.

John grew up in Syracuse, New York and graduated with a BA degree in English and American literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His first job was as a copy clerk for the Washington bureau of the New York Times, but moved to the writing side of the business soon after. He began at the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, moving to the Kansas City Star and San Diego Tribune before joining The Times San Diego County edition in 1989. He later worked at the paper’s San Fernando Valley edition as a metro reporter, and was a state reporter based in Santa Monica.