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Drex Heikes, recently replaced as editor of the LAT Magazine [actually, he was doing the #1 job from the #2 slot, with the top editor job vacant], becomes deputy editor for news of Sunday Opinion—or whatever it will be called. Staff reporters on the news side will be part of the mix. The announcement by Opinion editor Bob Sipchen says Heikes joins "a major initiative to reinvent the soon-to-be-renamed weekly section....Changing Opinion’s name will expand the section’s range and open new opportunities for the paper’s reporters, who are not allowed to write under the present title."
Also around:
• Walter Mosley's Little Scarlet is the next Los Angeles selection for One Book, One City. Malibu's going with the original Gidget novella by Frederick Kohner.
• A review of Daniel Olivas' Devil Talk at the Chicano blog La Bloga turns into a discussion on whether it is a political statement to italicize Spanish words in text that is mostly English.
• Sandra Dijkstra writes about the pleasures of being a West Coast book agent at CaliforniaAuthors.com. Also, The Elegant Variation blogs last weekend's Swink party in Venice.
• With baseball Opening Day almost here, Rich Lederer and Eric Neel heap praise on Vin Scully. Lederer's piece is titled "I Saw It On the Radio."
• The L.A. Press Club is honoring Linda Deutsch of Associated Press at its dinner on June 11 in Hollywood. (Not SPJ, as I first mis-reported...)
• Local AP News Executives Council writing award winners include Kim Murphy, Bill Plaschke, Barry Siegel, Steve Lopez and Peter G. Gosselin of the L.A. Times; Wendy Thomas Russell and Eric Johnson of the Press-Telegram; Grant Parpan, Leon Worden and Tim Whyte of the Santa Clarita Signal; Andrew Galvin, Hang Nguyen and Chris Knap of the Register; Tom Kisken and Colleen Cason of the Ventura County Star; and David Schwartz, Selicia Kennedy-Ross, George Watson, Guy McCarthy and Ben Schnayerson of the San Bernardino Sun.
• Christopher Lisotta won GLAAD's Outstanding Magazine Article for "Homophobia of All Hues" in The Nation.
• Abigail Goldman, Erika Hayasaki, Scott Gold and Charles Duhigg are said to be Times finalists for the Livingston Awards for young journalists.
• KNBC did a story on Bazoo, the dog shot by Long Beach police.
• Shana Ting Lipton, whose godmother Barbara Parkins was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, has posted a piece she calls "Sympathy for the Devil: Contemporary musings on Bobby Beausoleil and the legacy of the 60s."