Sam Zell, who continues to ruin all that remains good and honest with the beleaguered newspaper industry – a list that includes just the comics page, and those Best Buy circulars, at this point – is taking out one more strand of fishing wire and tying it around the neck of the Los Angeles Times, one of the Tribune Co.'s flagship newspapers that Zell has taken a liking for abusing. Rather than letting the editorial team there, led by editor Russ Stanton, operate the paper's Sunday magazine as it always has, Zell sneakily hired an entire new staff for the weekly LAT Magazine without telling anyone. And that staff, it turns out, is part of the business side of the newspaper, not the editorial unit.

Now, we know what you're thinking: Aren't Sunday magazines already just an excuse to run spots from luxe advertisers with the promise of a huge guaranteed circulation? Why, yes — and we're staring at you, New York Times Magazine. But at the very least, the paper's editorial team had a chance to choose which $45,000 bathtub article to stick in its pages. Now, under Zell's direction, the LAT won't even have that option with its Sunday mag.

A report that first circulated in the NYT said Stanton, having learned the magazine's control would be transferred to the biz side, went so far as to request publisher David Hiller and president Jack Klunder change the name of the publication to something other than the Los Angeles Times Magazine, for fear that readers would assume the book is somehow a product of the editorial department. In a memo to staffers, Stanton insisted, however, that a new staff had not yet been hired. Which is either one boldfaced lie to calm the troops, or a cutesy way of reporting that former InStyle editor Annie Gilbar, who is said to have been hired to lead the new magazine, hasn't yet signed her paperwork.