Ulin shifts to new role at L.A. Times

David Ulin has been the book editor at the Los Angeles Times for five years. He's moving over to be a book critic, with no immediate successor named as editor. The paper reports (or semi-reports?) the move at its Jacket Copy blog:

In an announcement made Thursday to the newsroom, Assistant Managing Editor of Features Alice Short called it "a natural step" for Ulin to make, citing his background both as an author ("The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith") and as an editor (his anthologies included the award-winning "Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology") before coming to the Times in 2005.

Ulin says he's excited by the challenges of this new position. He’s also proud of how, under his watch, the Times' book coverage went online, adding several columns devoted to popular genres, establishing the blog Jacket Copy and thinking about books "in a multimedia environment."