Wright bails on LAT

Following some weeks of high-level negotiation, Robin Wright, the long-time L.A. Times reporter on international terrorism, has jumped to the Washington Post. Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus announced her departure in a memo to the staff.

After 15 years of brilliant journalism at the Los Angeles Times, Robin Wright has opted for the calmer and less-dramatic life of a beat reporter at The Washington Post.

We are sorry to see her go -- and I say that as one who has had the special privilege of working closely with Robin as a colleague, coauthor, editor and semi-boss during her entire tenure here.

She's had a pretty sweet, mostly hands-off deal at the Times, but apparently wanted more. Even possibly an op-ed column, like Thomas Friedman at the New York Times.

It was McManus who, earlier in the week, also reported to the staff on the memorial service at the National Press Club for Iraq War correspondent Mark Fineman. He said the poignant service was well attended, including by a surprise interloper: "...former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, who wandered by mistake into what by then had become a quite convivial party and didn't realize for some time that it was a wake..."

Fineman died of a heart attack Sept. 23 while on assignment in Iraq. Sources at the paper, meanwhile, say that Ken Ellingwood, the Atlanta bureau chief, is heading to the Jerusalem bureau and that Megan Stack is crossing from Israel to the Cairo bureau.