Okay, it’s not all bad news, just a reference to the 4th item. Meow.

  • John Arthur and John Montorio, two top editors at the Los Angeles Times, have been named its managing editors. Arthur, currently an assistant managing editor who oversees the front page, will head the news department, and Montorio, the newspaper’s associate editor, will oversee the features department.
  • LA Observed says the Los Angeles Times killed a column suggesting the paper follow the lead of the U.K.’s Mail on Sunday (which distributed 2.9 million free Prince CDs) and partner with older artists to give away music in the paper. The Honolulu Advertiser did this last month with a new single of an upcoming, posthumous Israel Kamakawiwo`ole cd.
  • It’s a war for peace, (or at least that’s what Bushies want us to think), but in publishing it’s seriously so. Two new translations of Tolstoy’s War and Peace are out this fall from Knopf and Ecco. Who will win? In one corner: At 912 pages, chock full of illustrations with a helmet set on the cover for $34.95–Ecco’s book. In the other corner: at 1,312 pages, lean and mean with no illustrations and instead many muscular footnotes, with a golden church dome on the cover for $40—Knopf’s book.

  • “If the papers shut down reviews, it’ll be like having the door slammed in my face and the door removed,” says Lindsay Waters, executive editor of the humanities at Harvard University Press.
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