Congrats to top Variety film critic Justin Chang on being hired as a senior L.A. Times critic, presumably with a long-term eye to Chang becoming the new Kenneth Turan in a decade or so. (Turan will probably start to think about downshifting his work load sometime during the 2020s.) Chang and his wife have a kid on the way, and you know he’s getting a significant salary bump out of this. TheWrap‘s Jeff Sneider has speculated as to whether Variety and Indiewire owner Jay Penske might want to shift top Indiewire editor/critic Eric Kohn into Chang’s slot. Is that what the just-announced hire of David Ehrlich was about — i.e., replacing Kohn as the new top Indiewire guy?
