Well, so much for that. Dean Baquet, the Los Angeles Times editor who was fired in November for refusing to enact layoffs sought by the Tribune Company, has been appointed Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, which nicely quashes the hopes of those in L.A. who were hoping a new owner of their Times — maybe some local billionaires, maybe even the founding Chandler family again — would buy the paper and reinstall the beloved Baquet. (Delving into Timesology: This would seem to be a slap in the face of Philip Taubman, the longtime Timesman who's currently running the Washburo, but, then, he's been given the "associate editor" title previously held only by the sainted Johnny Apple. So who knows.) Innumerable Angelenos are no doubt disheartened by this. But three months ago, New York's Kurt Andersen took a hard look at the L.A. Times and decided that the paper's problem wasn't so much Tribune's ownership but its out-of-whack ambitions — and that Baquet might well not have been the right person to solve that problem anyway.

Vanity Kills [NYM]
Baquet Rejoins Times as Washington Bureau Chief [NYT]