Shakeup on LAT editorial board

Five of the Times' eleven editorial writers are moving on, most of them getting the word last Friday that change is in their immediate future. All of those leaving were holdovers from the editorial board that existed when Michael Kinsley and Editorial Page Editor Andrés Martinez came to the paper last year. Martinez tells me they will be replaced by new hires and that all but Jacob Heilbrunn, who is based in Washington and has plans to leave the paper, will shift to assignments on the news or features staff. They include Alex Raksin, who won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2002 (along with Bob Sipchen), and Andrew Malcolm, the former New York Times correspondent who Martinez says was already slotted to become a roving writer on the news side. The others are Molly Selvin, who is based in Los Angeles, and Greg Johnson in Orange County. Martinez says the moves are prompted in part by "Michael and I [wanting] to bring on some new blood to the editorial board," in part by his preference that editorial writers not stay in their jobs forever, and in part by the desire of Managing Editor Dean Baquet to add talent to other sections of the paper. Other recent moves on the editorial page include the hiring of Michael Newman from the New York Times as Martinez' deputy, Judy Dugan's move from deputy to the editorial writing staff, and Sandy Banks going upstairs to Metro.