Vulture‘s Hollywood guy Kyle Buchanan is the new “Carpetbagger” for the New York Times. He’ll be the fourth to carry that brand, the previous three being Cara Buckley, Melena Ryzik and the late, great David Carr.

The carpetbagger term fit Carr because he was basically a brainy, independent-minded New York guy (lived in Montclair) who never really played the Hollywood game. Buchanan, on the other hand, has been playing it all along, Los Angeles-based in more ways than one, schnorring and observing his way through the six-month-long award season with the rest of us.

Buchanan will launch his Times coverage with the early fall film festivals — Telluride, Toronto, New York. This morning I asked Buchanan who will succeed him as the new Vulture award-season person. “To be determined,” he said.

It always bothered me when Buckley and Ryzik would declare that Oscar season begins in December….no! It begins with Telluride and ends with the Oscar telecast, which this year will take five and a half months. Get that through your heads.

Buchanan quoted by Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson: “I’m excited to cover Hollywood out of Hollywood. Mostly, though, I hope to bring the same wit and curiosity to the job that my predecessors did. Yes, there are a lot of silly things about the Oscars — and trust, I love covering the silly things too — but I believe that when you really understand awards season, this is a continually exciting and surprising beat where the stories lend us a prism through which we can better know the world. Even a simple snub isn’t always just a snub: It can tell us a lot about what we canonize as a society and reveal where our blind spots still lie.”

Well said, Kyle. This is what L.A. Daily News critic and Oscar disser Bob Strauss is either incapable of understanding or refuses to consider.