Time.com-ings and Goings

There’s little overlap between TV and art/architecture (other than that televisions are usually located in houses), so I rarely linked out to Richard Lacayo’s Looking Around blog, but for three years it has been one of my favorite reads at this site. Unlike certain bloggers who can lazily toss off some thoughts about TV’s latest outrage and call it a day, Richard daily composed thought-out, researched and illustrated essays on visual arts and art news, and I always envied the depth of insight he brought to his work. It looked like a lot of work, and it was, and Richard is understandably shuttering Looking Around, though he’ll continue to contribute art pieces for TIME. If you’ve ever stopped by his blog, his farewell is here.

Meanwhile, this is the last week for one of my best editors, and friends, at TIME, Josh Tyrangiel, the mastermind of time.com (and inveterate Lost theorist), who leaves us this week to take over BusinessWeek magazine.

Josh and I started in the TIME arts section around the same time, and one early piece I remember him doing was a feature on Robert Smigel’s TV Funhouse, on Comedy Central. It was a funny, insightful piece of TV criticism, and any writer can tell you the feeling you get from reading a well-written story by someone else in your own field: it is like a stake in the freaking heart. So I was glad he soon became TIME’s music critic—and later, London correspondent and then time.com’s editor—and stayed the hell away from my beat. One of Josh’s many talents as an editor, though, is that he never calls attention to the fact that he could probably do all of his writers’ jobs better than they could.

Losing Josh is a big blow for time.com, and accordingly I wish him only failure and woe at his new job, so that he will return to TIME filled with regret. I know, however, that we won’t get that lucky, and that BusinessWeek is lucky to have him spending Mike Bloomberg’s Scrooge McDuckian piles of ducats. Good luck, Josh, and I’ll expect you to weigh in in the comments section when Lostwatch returns.

On a happier note—and you have Josh to thank for this one too—Lev Grossman’s Nerd World blog has been given a steroid injection and an infusion of staff and become Techland. (I like to pronounce it “TESH-lund.”) Among other nerd-culture news, Steve Snyder has been filing dispatches from the world of geek TV, so bookmark it. Because TV is a big world, and I’m only one nerd.