LAT masthead grows by two

It seems the masthead where the L.A. Times lists its top editors is either expanding — or shrinking — depending on the leadership culture in vogue. Right now the trend is up. Editor Jim O'Shea and editorial page editor Jim Newton just announced that, for the first time, the editor in charge of the website and the editor in charge of Sunday Opinion and the Op-Ed page will be listed among the paper's leaders. Here's the memo:

From: OShea, James
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2007 4:54 PM

To The Staff:

It gives us great pleasure to announce two additions to the editorial masthead of the Los Angeles Times.

In keeping with the integration of the newsroom, Meredith Artley, Executive Editor Interactive, will join the masthead. The alliance between the print and web operations in the newsroom is crucial to our future as a news organization. Putting Meredith on the masthead reinforces this alliance and recognizes her outstanding contribution to these efforts.

We are also adding Nick Goldberg, our longtime Op-Ed and Sunday Opinion editor, to the masthead. Nick's elevation to the masthead reflects his enormous contributions to the paper and his responsibility for building and overseeing our opinion journalism, including our columnists and our many outside contributors.

Please join us in congratulating Meredith and Nick.

James O'Shea
Editor

Jim Newton
Editor of the Editorial Pages

That will make a total of eleven editors named on the masthead. I'm not sure, but that may be an all-time high — but does not include the senior editor most responsible for local coverage, a post that used to be considered important enough to be listed. By the way, they have bios online, but not email addresses or contact info. And if you're keeping score, the new Times masthead includes nine white men and two white women, plus Publisher David Hiller.