Tom O'Neil Bids the LA Times Goodbye, Offers up Patrick Goldstein

Tom O’Neil has officially left the LA Times and explains his reasons why — Goldstein, who used to write about the Oscars before a whole industry sprouted up, is named as one of his replacements.  Oh Patrick.  Oh Patrick. Oh Patrick.  This is going to be a fun Oscar year if the likes of Patrick Goldstein are going to take off their flip flops and get into the hot tub with the rest of us grease monkeys.  The mind reels at the possibilities, the insults that will fly, the bitterness, the competition.  Just another day in the blog eat blog world.   Tom’s reasoning:

But human nature being what it is, I always privately yearned to resurrect my dear old Gold Derby, of course, and I had ambitious plans for it. I wanted to make it more interactive –- to empower users to make their own predictions and compete against the experts. Last year, when I told my Times bosses that I planned to do just that, they were surprisingly supportive and offered to help. They took on the job of ad sales and did a terrific job while I remained at Latimes.com writing about Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and more.

So look for Tom’s insights and more predictions over at Gold Derby.  What I like about this move is that there are only a few of us independents left out there.