LA Times hires new entertainment biz editor

John Lippman, who has covered the business of Hollywood for The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, as well as worked in public relations, is going back to the Times to be the editor of the entertainment pod on the business desk, according to a memo posted on the LA Observed site.

Business editor Davan Maharaj wrote, “Now John is coming to Business as an editor in the entertainment group, replacing Jim Bates. Those of you fortunate to be here in the early 1990s will remember John as the television beat reporter who broke an endless string of stories and chronicled the congenital deal-making among media moguls in the pre-Internet age. He then left us for The Wall Street Journal, where he covered the movie industry and wrote the much-followed Hollywood Report column.

“At the WSJ, John was known for such front-page stories detailing how ‘Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers’ producer Haim Saban came to rule children’s television — Bob ‘Captain Kangaroo’ Keeshan said he was appalled — and how a hot Pasadena start-up called Gemstar TV run by a Cal Tech engineer nearly collapsed from its aggressive accounting methods.

“After 25 years as a reporter covering entertainment and media, John will now apply those skills helping to shepherd the group’s stories into the paper. Before he arrived at The Times the first time, John worked at The Sunday Times in London, Variety, and Broadcasting & Cable magazine.”

Read more here. Lippman, while at The Journal, wrote the front-page article about Rupert Murdoch‘s third wife, Wendy Deng, that the incoming owner of The Journal so despised.