Saturday, September 08, 2007

Take Back the Times: Janet Clayton May Be Making A Shrewd Change


President Lyndon B. Johnson used to say that no one should hold the same job for more than five years, that it was necessary to move on, if one wanted to move up.

This observation springs to mind as we contemplate the decision of Los Angeles Times Metro Editor Janet Clayton to leave the Times and pursue other career options. Clayton has done well in three major jobs at the Times, as a reporter in the City-County bureau under Bill Boyarsky, as editorial page editor and, most recently as Metro Editor. Since no further advances seemed in the offing, and since she is still in full possession of all her faculties and energy, it may indeed be a good move for her to leave the paper and do something else.

Other Times editors have made such moves, and they have prospered. Ed Guthman has made several such changes in his life, and they all worked out well. From a soldier in World War II, he became a prize-winning Seattle newspaper reporter, press secretary for Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy, then was hired by Otis Chandler as national editor of the Times, then, when relations frayed with Frank Haven and Mark Murphy, he went to the Philadelphia Inquirer as editorial page editor, and, finally, when he retired from that post, he returned to Los Angeles and became a long-serving journalism professor at the Annenberg Center. Now, his has been a life in which he has taken full advantage of his talents.

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Janet Clayton May Be Making A Shrewd Change

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