by PETER BESAS
Longtime Variety scribe Elizabeth Guider has been appointed Editor of the Hollywood Reporter in LA. Liz started as a trade reporter, mostly covering TV, when she was living in Rome and filed copy for then bureau chief Hank Werba. She subsequently moved on to London, and a few years after Cahners bought out Variety moved to L.A. to work with Peter Bart. She had been a staffer for 18 years with Variety, working as News Editor and assistant to Bart, and, lately, as “editor-at-large” (the nebulous title Tom Pryor was given before walking the plank).
We hear that she now “reports” to Eric Mika in London, who is “senior vice-president and publishing director” of THR. (In Sime’s day, key people were simply told they were “in charge”, with no fancy titles added). Mika himself worked for Variety for many years, first in Rome and then in London, but doesn’t go back as far as the golden Silverman era.
We last had the pleasure of seeing Liz at the 100th Anni celebrations of the old Variety in New York in 2005 and wish her all the luck in the world in her new assignment.