New LAT column: entertainment

It's going to be on the op-ed page or in whatever the reinvented Sunday Opinion section is to be called, written by Time (and ex-Entertaiment Weekly) columnist Joel Stein. In today's New York Observer, Tom Scocca calls Stein "the face of the late-90�s snarkiness bubble...a take-him-or-leave-him figure," and quotes Michael Kinsley saying he never liked Stein's Time columns. Still, he gets the gig.

Mr. Stein pitched Mr. Kinsley something else: a column about the entertainment industry. And Mr. Kinsley, to his own surprise, loved Mr. Stein�s ideas. "They were fantastic," Mr. Kinsley said. "I was thrilled."

Entertainment, Mr. Kinsley said, is "the local story. It�s also the national story that we ought to own." Just as The Washington Post�s opinion pages cover politics, Mr. Kinsley argued, the Los Angeles Times should do the same for its local industry.

Sure, but everyone puts The Washington Post�s local industry on their op-ed pages. Does Mr. Stein�s take on Hollywood really fit in an opinion section? "It might run in our Sunday section," Mr. Kinsley said. "It might run in op-ed."

"I would hope that people would have a broader range of interests than politics," Mr. Kinsley added.

Mr. Stein compared his new role to that of a long line of comic op-ed writers, including Russell Baker and (ulp) Art Buchwald. Not Bob Novak. If anyone tries to leak the name of a C.I.A. agent to Mr. Stein, he said, he�ll cooperate with investigators immediately. "I�m going to rat out anyone that gives me information if it means me going to jail," he said. "Other than that, I feel kind of lost."

Stein says he'll be moving to L.A. Stein's website, bio, Time columns and his page at International Creative Management, which reps him for lectures.